Natural inside Attapulgus, Georgia, both of his parents were teenagers committed to a trade institute for the blind in Macon. His mother ran away to her hometown, in which she died in the period of his childbearing. He was raised by her parents, Lela & Turner Williams, & left personal by age Fourteen.

He served sustaining the U.S. Army during World War II, in an all-African-American unit under General Patton. He advanced to staff sergeant, and was late the merely survivor of a Nazi bombing, which left him around the hospital in Europe for more than the year and earned him a Purple Heart.

He late earned the high school diplomthe at age 23, so a bachelor's degree and a master's degree (both in chemistry) from Atlanta's Morris Brown College and the former Atlanta University. In the early 1950s he married Juanita Terry and then worked for the USDA.

He ended higher within the hospital once more for all over the year when existence seriously beaten for applying the bubbler marked "whites only". He was arrested for more protests more than 125 times.

He 1st joined a NAACP, but late became the leader in the SCLC along with Martin Luther King, Jr., Joseph Lowrey, and Andrew Young among many others. He as well led a first 1965 march on Selma, Alabama, & was beaten unconscious, allowing him by using the fractured skull and the severe concussion.

Within politics, he later served on the Atlanta City Council and in the Georgia General Assembly.

Inside 1987 he led another nationally-covered march, this of these consisting of 75 population around Forsyth County, Georgia, which at the instance (prior to becoming the major exurb of northern metro Atlanta) had there are no non-white residents. He & a others were assaulted with stones and other objects per KKK and other white supremacists. A second march a as a consequence week brought 20,000 population & an tremendous showing of police and sheriff department officers, plus national media, but using the massive turnout of whiten counter-demonstrators con, organized per Forsyth County Defense League. Williams late sued a League for "discrimination," however misused. The "Bi-Racial Committee" Williams experienced demanded, comprised of Williams' associates & local officials, was constituted to integrate a county. It met behind closed doors at a Forsyth County Courthouse, however disbanded when just deuce meetings, by owning none of its objectives achieved.

He founded Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless, a non-profit foundation widely known in Atlanta for providing hot meals, haircuts, clothing, and more loose services for the needy in Thanksgiving and Christmas each year. He likewise became known within his later on years for his erratic camping, at least another time existence cited for drunk driving.

Each his married woman & his boy Hosea Williams II died before his have demise at Piedmont Hospital in Atlantthe, after a ternion-month battle using cancer. Services were held at a historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where close friend Dr. King was when a pastor. His girl Elizabeth Omilami carries on when head of the foundation.