Samuel Woodrow Williams

Williams died in October 1970 after a surgical procedure. He was buried at Atlanta's South-View Cemetery.

On February 19, 1969, Williams delivered a sermon on "A Challenge to Young Black College Students" stating that saying only Black teachers educate Black scholars is invalid and that good committed teachers regardless of color were needed. In his sermons, he stressed that the black community is in sophisticated evasion cloaked in the fragile robe of good faith. He wanted his audience to steer away from moral double takes that is eroding away the moral integrity of the nation. Although, Williams was pro-civil disobedience, he, on occasion, lead sermons asserting that the system of society allows for the murder of a man in order to preserve social collectivities. Williams also warned the system is what allowed the enslavement, and exploitation of Blacks due to white despising Blacks. Williams loath the way the system had set up artificial barriers to deny other men their God given right.

After becoming pastor in 1954, Williams made vast improvements to the church such as building a low-rent apartment complex in 1969 and a parking lot that was paid off in 8 months. Williams continue to deliver sermons all across the country, however. Samuel Williams delivered a most-notable remarkable sermon on June 30, 1968, to an all white audience at All Saints Episcopal Church. There, he urged his audience to question what was their responsibility for justice, contending the power of deciding was in their field because they made up the vast majority. That is where he established his platform of schools should be a forum for the Christian's demand for justice.

In 1966 Mayor Ivan Allen  established the Community Relations Commission (CRC). Mayor Allen made Williams Vice Chair of the Atlanta branch. The organization gave grassroots communities a mechanism to voice their concerns to city officials at the highest level. The organization worked for ending discriminatory hiring and promotions at City Hall. The CRC, under Williams conducted a study that proves the lack of minority hiring and the promotional practices of the city of Atlanta. This study was necessary in the CRC's argument in minority promotions.

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

Williams helped found the Atlanta Summit Leadership Council (ASLC). During the 1960s and 1970s the ASLC pressured the school board and city to end segregation emphasizing boycotts, sit-ins, marches, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, and civil disobedience. Through the ASLC Williams led campaigns to expose the city of Atlanta and fought to expand mass transit into the predominantly African-American west side of the city.

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.

The SCLC is an African American Civil Rights organization that began in 1957. SCLC's goal is to form an organization whose trademark is of peace and non-violence. Although during the initial years of operation, leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Williams encountered repression from white organization, police and the Ku Klux Klan. SCLC advocates for the involvement of churches in political activism. Members of the SCLC were harassed, threatened and attacked, yet Williams and others believed the church should continue to include social-political activity.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

Friendship Baptist Church is one of the most prominent black baptist churches in Atlanta founded in 1865. In 1947 Williams became assistant pastor of Friendship Baptist Church. Later to become Senior Pastor Williams was one of the most activist-oriented pastors in Friendship's history.