Hosea Williams leads Poor People’s rally: 1968
Hosea Williams is shown leading a rally on the National Mall in June 1968 near the Smithsonian Museum during the Poor People’s March.
The missiles in the background formed part of what was then known as the Smithsonian’s “rocket row” located on the Mall.
The six-week Poor People’s campaign from May 21st until June 24th for economic justice and against the Vietnam War drew upwards of 100,000 people at its peak in addition to the 3,000 encamped on the national mall.
Originally conceived by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a massive civil disobedience exercise to demand re-prioritizing U.S. policy away from Vietnam and toward domestic economic equality, it devolved into a permitted series of demonstrations and lobby visits following King’s death in April that included choreographed civil disobedience.
The protest ended in defeat as no economic bill of rights passed Congress and many existing programs were limited or dismantled in the coming decades. Some historians mark the end of the national civil rights movement that began with the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in 1957 with this demonstration.
Williams served with the United States Army during World War II in an all-African-American unit under General George S. Patton, Jr. and advanced to the rank of Staff Sergeant. He was the only survivor of a Nazi bombing, which left him in a hospital in Europe for more than a year and earned him a Purple Heart.
Upon his return home from the war, Williams was savagely beaten by a group of angry whites at a bus station for drinking from a water fountain marked "Whites Only."
Of the attack, Williams was quoted as saying, "I was deemed 100 percent disabled by the military and required a cane to walk. My wounds had earned me a Purple Heart. The war had just ended and I was still in my uniform for god's sake! But on my way home, to the brink of death, they beat me like a common dog.
The very same people whose freedoms and liberties I had fought and suffered to secure in the horrors of war...they beat me like a dog...merely because I wanted a drink of water."
The attack led Williams to become a civil rights activist, first with the NAACP and later with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In 1963 he was recruited to the staff of King. He was active in the Freedom Summer voting registration campaign and was arrested on 124 occasions. King once described Williams as "My wild man, my Castro".
With John Lewis, Williams led the Selma to Montgomery protest march on 7th March, 1965, that was attacked by mounted police. The sight of state troopers using nightsticks and tear gas was filmed by television cameras and the event became known as Bloody Sunday.
During the late 1960s, at King's urging, Williams collaborated with the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations on the Chicago Campaign. In 1968, he returned to the South as field director for the SCLC's Poor People's Campaign, and in April of that year witnessed King's assassination. In the 1970s, Williams was elected executive director of the SCLC.
After leaving SCLC, Williams played an active role in supporting strikes in the Atlanta, Georgia area by black workers who had first been hired because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Williams was elected to Georgia General Council in 1974 and controversially endorsed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980. After becoming a member of the Atlanta City Council, he led a march in Forsyth County, which resulted in a violent confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan in 1987. Two years later, Williams failed in his bid to be elected mayor of Atlanta. Hosea Williams died in Atlanta on 16th November, 2000.
Williams motto was “Unbossed and Unbought.”
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskrqbSDg
The photographer is unknown. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.
Hosea Williams leads Poor People’s rally: 1968
Hosea Williams is shown leading a rally on the National Mall in June 1968 near the Smithsonian Museum during the Poor People’s March.
The missiles in the background formed part of what was then known as the Smithsonian’s “rocket row” located on the Mall.
The six-week Poor People’s campaign from May 21st until June 24th for economic justice and against the Vietnam War drew upwards of 100,000 people at its peak in addition to the 3,000 encamped on the national mall.
Originally conceived by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a massive civil disobedience exercise to demand re-prioritizing U.S. policy away from Vietnam and toward domestic economic equality, it devolved into a permitted series of demonstrations and lobby visits following King’s death in April that included choreographed civil disobedience.
The protest ended in defeat as no economic bill of rights passed Congress and many existing programs were limited or dismantled in the coming decades. Some historians mark the end of the national civil rights movement that began with the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in 1957 with this demonstration.
Williams served with the United States Army during World War II in an all-African-American unit under General George S. Patton, Jr. and advanced to the rank of Staff Sergeant. He was the only survivor of a Nazi bombing, which left him in a hospital in Europe for more than a year and earned him a Purple Heart.
Upon his return home from the war, Williams was savagely beaten by a group of angry whites at a bus station for drinking from a water fountain marked "Whites Only."
Of the attack, Williams was quoted as saying, "I was deemed 100 percent disabled by the military and required a cane to walk. My wounds had earned me a Purple Heart. The war had just ended and I was still in my uniform for god's sake! But on my way home, to the brink of death, they beat me like a common dog.
The very same people whose freedoms and liberties I had fought and suffered to secure in the horrors of war...they beat me like a dog...merely because I wanted a drink of water."
The attack led Williams to become a civil rights activist, first with the NAACP and later with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In 1963 he was recruited to the staff of King. He was active in the Freedom Summer voting registration campaign and was arrested on 124 occasions. King once described Williams as "My wild man, my Castro".
With John Lewis, Williams led the Selma to Montgomery protest march on 7th March, 1965, that was attacked by mounted police. The sight of state troopers using nightsticks and tear gas was filmed by television cameras and the event became known as Bloody Sunday.
During the late 1960s, at King's urging, Williams collaborated with the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations on the Chicago Campaign. In 1968, he returned to the South as field director for the SCLC's Poor People's Campaign, and in April of that year witnessed King's assassination. In the 1970s, Williams was elected executive director of the SCLC.
After leaving SCLC, Williams played an active role in supporting strikes in the Atlanta, Georgia area by black workers who had first been hired because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Williams was elected to Georgia General Council in 1974 and controversially endorsed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980. After becoming a member of the Atlanta City Council, he led a march in Forsyth County, which resulted in a violent confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan in 1987. Two years later, Williams failed in his bid to be elected mayor of Atlanta. Hosea Williams died in Atlanta on 16th November, 2000.
Williams motto was “Unbossed and Unbought.”
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskrqbSDg
The photographer is unknown. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.