Honoring religious leaders — Hosea Williams was a chemist, who founded Bonnor Bros. hair products. He also marched with Dr. King, and was one of many outspoken leaders during the Civil Rights Movement. He was a leader of the Savannah Georgia NAACP Branch, where he led sit-ins, which led to the city becoming the first in Georgia to desegregate lunch counters. One of his high moments came in 1987 when the Ku Klux Klan attacked him and a crowd of marchers attempting to honor Dr. King.
He returned the next weekend with 20,000 marchers and filed a lawsuit against the Klan, later being awarded nearly $1 million in damages. Rev. Hosea and his wife Juanita T. Williams founded Hosea Feed The Hungry and Homeless, a Christian aid organization that has distributed $3 billion in aid to the homeless since it was founded.
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| Hosea Williams |
As much as I gleaned from warriors and the warrior tradition I am surprised I didn't know of Rev. Hosea Williams.
1987.
In that year I was deeply entrenched in the so-called war on drugs in the capacity of a law enforcement officer. The philosophical challenges faced in those years in whatever contribution was made to society were pressing and demanding of the soul, mind and body. A great many people don't start things and as spectators outside of the process of activating changing energies into their spheres of influence they cannot appreciate the depths of a man or a woman's work fully until they've benefited, or they are reading about it in the aftermath of revolution.
The agitators for peace, and change, and those who resist the force of comforts have the difficult job of listening to the voices inside their heads and hearts and responding with an affirmation, a yes to that which is bigger than they are in Life. It is scary to take that step, but it is worse to look back at a life that ignored the voices and went ahead to forge a way to live comfortably without the spiritual responsibility of answering the call of their soul.
Men like Rev. Williams, and women like Irene Morgan ring the bell of freedom knowing the contradictions of wanting to be free and fighting to be free hold millions an arm's length away from being free by the attendant fears surrounding activism. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 2.17.14
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