NAMES IN THE NEWS : Civil Rights Leader Is Ailing

Civil rights leader Hosea Williams, who has organized a Christmas dinner for the homeless and hungry for 19 years, is hospitalized with bronchitis and pneumonia but plans to get back into action soon.

“I’m feeling much better, and I hope to be released in a few days,” Williams said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his room at Emory Hospital.

Williams, 64, said his annual Christmas and Thanksgiving feasts since 1970 have fed nearly half a million people at a cost of nearly $1 million and used 65,000 volunteers.

“This was our 19th year, and I’d say we fed a total of about 35,000 at the Christmas dinner, counting the deliveries to sick and old people at their homes,” he said. “You watch these families eating, and you realize, if they didn’t eat here, where would they eat? They’d just go to bed hungry.”

Williams said the program has expanded so much that he is going to turn it into a year-round operation.

“I’ve a job, a real obligation to feed the hungry. They’re the fastest-growing population in Atlanta, even more so than the homeless. A lot of people have homes, they live here, but they have nothing to eat,” Williams said.

Hosea Williams