Mourners Honor Civil Rights Leader Williams

Singing “We Shall Overcome,” more than 1,000 mourners followed Hosea Williams’ mule-drawn coffin Tuesday in the civil rights firebrand’s last march.

Many of the mourners honored Williams by wearing his trademark denim overalls, red shirt and red sneakers as they walked the same funeral route taken after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

“We have to begin Thanksgiving a little earlier this year because today we have to thank God for sending us one of his most bravest servants,” King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, said at a three-hour service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, King’s former pulpit. The service was broadcast to an overflow crowd in the King Center next door.

Williams, who died last week at 74 of complications from kidney cancer, was a top lieutenant to King, organizing his early marches and demonstrations across the South. He helped lead the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., in 1965, when white troopers and sheriff’s deputies used tear gas, nightsticks and whips to break up a voting rights march.

“Hosea, the blows to your head redefined America,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who called Williams “a man of power, of hope.”

Two mules pulled Williams’ coffin through downtown, past the gold-domed Capitol, stopping at Williams’ alma mater, Morris Brown College. From there his body was to be taken by hearse to an Atlanta cemetery.

He was to be laid to rest in his overalls, red shirt and red sneakers next to his wife, Juanita, who died in August.

In a letter read by U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, President Clinton said: “He energized black communities throughout the South. . . . He was a foot soldier in a new kind of army.”

For decades, Willams was known for organizing dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas to feed the poor and hungry, sometimes 30,000 at a time. The tradition that began in 1970 will continue this season. It will be run by Williams’ daughter Elisabeth Williams-Omilami.