Franklin Williams, 72; Ex-Delegate to U.N. Panel

Franklin H. Williams, a lifelong civil rights activist who became the first black American named to the U.N. Economic and Social Council and who also helped establish the Peace Corps, died Sunday of lung cancer. He was 72.

Williams, a former assistant attorney general in California, served as the American ambassador to Ghana during the 1960s and led several American delegations to United Nations conferences. In 1970, he was named president of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, a foundation that works to improve education for American Indians, blacks and Africans.

Williams served in a racially segregated division of the Army during World War II before becoming an assistant to Thurgood Marshall, then special counsel to the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, and appeared before the Supreme Court, winning reversals for several young blacks facing death sentences.

He became NAACP regional secretary-counsel for the Western states and then served as assistant attorney general in California from 1959 to 1961. In that post he helped force the Professional Golfers Assn. to admit blacks and was named by then-Atty. Gen. Stanley Mosk as the chief of a newly created constitutional rights section.

After President John F. Kennedy’s election, Williams went to Washington, where he helped Sargent Shriver form the Peace Corps, serving as the organization’s regional director for Africa for three years.

In 1963, Williams was named U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council.