Rev. A.W. Wilson; Rights Movement Pioneer

The Rev. A. W. Wilson, 87, whose church became a rallying point for the 1955 bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement and raised Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence. Wilson for 50 years was pastor at Holt Street Baptist Church and continued preaching there in recent months despite failing health. The yearlong Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott began after Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, refused to give up her seat on a segregated city bus. Boycott organizers held their first meeting at Wilson’s church, the site of mass gatherings and King oratory that are now part of civil rights lore. In Montgomery on Friday.