Samuel Woodrow Williams

rdf:langString Samuel Woodrow Williams

rdf:langString Samuel Woodrow Williams

rdf:langString Samuel Woodrow Williams

rdf:langString NAACP Meritorious award, Phi beta sigma citizenship award

rdf:langString

rdf:langString Minister

rdf:langString professor

rdf:langString activist

rdf:langString 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). 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. 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.