Samuel Woodrow Williams

Samuel Woodrow Williams was a Baptist minister, professor of philosophy and religion, and Civil Rights activist.

Williams was born on February 12, 1912, in Sparkman (Dallas County) then grew up in Chicot County, Arkansas.

An African American, Williams attended Morehouse College where he received his bachelor's degree in philosophy and later attended Howard University earning his master's degree in divinity.

Williams aided in the Atlanta Student Movement and helped found both the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Atlanta Summit Leadership Council, which then helped to organize the Atlanta branch of the Community Relations Commission (CRC).

Simultaneously he was co-chairman of the Atlanta Summit Leadership Conference and acting president of the Atlanta Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Samuel Woodrow Williams was born in Sparkman, Arkansas in Dallas County on February 12, 1912.

He was the oldest of eight children of Arthur William and Annie Willie Butler Williams.

He enjoyed hunting, fishing, playing basketball and baseball as well as reading and writing.

In 1932–1933, Williams attended the historically black Philander Smith College in Little Rock and then transferred to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

Williams received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Philosophy from Morehouse in 1937.

Williams then earned his masters of divinity from Howard University from 1938 to 1942.

He studied under Dr. Alain Locke and Dr. Benjamin E. Mays.

He began doctoral studies at University of Chicago, but did not complete the program.

After completing his formal educations Williams joined the faculty of Morehouse College in 1946 as the chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

As chair of the department he wrote annual reports to the president and lead meetings on the improvement of the department and college as a whole.

In 1947, Williams became pastor at Friendship Baptist Church and lectured at more than 20 colleges and universities throughout the South preaching that men should lead their lives through principle and moral awareness.

In his final years of life Williams expanded his sermons to focus on a non-violent approach, arguing that society is a slave to social systems, social patterns, and burdened by the anxiety to destroy one another.

In the 1950s Williams began his association with the Atlanta branch of the NAACP.

He joined the executive branch and later became president in 1957.

The SCLC is an African American Civil Rights organization that began in 1957.

During his time as president Williams engaged in his first legal battle in January 1958 when the NAACP filed suit against Atlanta's school board and forced it to begin what became a long and fraught process of compliance with Brown v. Board of Education.

After the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Reverend John Porter and Williams filed suit against the segregated Atlanta trolley system with and won in 1959.

Williams and the NAACP pushed flr education reform, desegregation of hotels and restaurants, and challenged hotel misconduct and discrimination.

Williams played a key role in the Atlanta Student Movement.

The movement was characterized by an appeal that composed both their complaints as well as their desired goals for proposed change.

Williams was one of the adults that encouraged students to draft "An Appeal for Human Rights," the manifesto of the Atlanta Student Movement.

He received an honorary doctorate from Arkansas Baptist College in 1960.

This appeal was published in early March 1960 in the Atlanta newspapers and the New York Times.

As the NAACP president Williams pledged full support to this act of civil resistance.

They conducted a nonviolent protest and civil disobedience that produced productive dialogues between activists and government authorities.

Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts and sit ins that contributed to the Civil Rights Movement.

During the same year Williams became a founding member and a vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC).

In 1963, Williams, as the head of the Department of Religion, expressed his concerns that there was only a minor in religion and of the absence of an honors program for the department.

Williams wanted Morehouse to have religion at the center of its programs.

During his time at Morehouse, Williams earned a reputation of intellectually rigorous and demanding of his students.

While teaching at Morehouse, Williams mentored Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook who later become the president of Dillard University and the first black mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson.

Williams is also credited as mentor and former teacher of Martin Luther King Jr., leader in the Civil Rights Movement.

This message was conveyed through a sermon that he dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., entitled "He was no Criminal," in 1969.

Williams died from complications as a result of a major operation.

The Negro History Collection at Atpanta libraries was renamed the Samuel W. Williams Collection on Black America and is now housed at the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, part of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System in Atlanta's Sweet Auburn Historic District.