On Sunday, about 50 Evanston residents marched along Church Street and Chicago Avenue, surrounded by bitter cold temperatures and few passers-by, to remember The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights struggle he helped lead.
Sunday’s march was a peaceful one — around Evanston’s First United Methodist Church, 1630 Hinman Ave. — but it reflected the more violent times of an earlier struggle: Marchers sang the same songs, “We Shall Overcome” and “This Little Light of Mine.”
The Rev. G.H. Williams, who spoke after Sunday’s march about King’s legacy and his own role in the civil rights era, evoked an earlier march for the audience.
In 1966 more than 200 civil rights activists marched through Cicero, a southwest suburb of Chicago, under police protection as a hostile mob threw stones at them.
“Police was slamming our sisters down on the ground, beating them with billy clubs,” Williams said. “If God hadn’t have been with us, all of us would have been gone. … We had a better time integrating Mississippi than we did Chicago.”
Williams was in Mississippi when Emmett Till was hanged. He marched with King to Montgomery, Ala., helped bury four white men who were killed for registering blacks to vote and saw a white woman get shot for marching for civil rights with blacks.
“You might not know his name, but that is because Reverend Williams is one of those who has walked the walk and not just talked the talk,” said the Rev. Sara Webb Phillips, one of the church’s preachers.
Williams witnessed many acts of violence against those fighting for civil rights and was imprisoned more than 18 times for his efforts, he said.
“I’ve seen some of my own brothers cut so badly, shot, torn asunder,” he said in a sonorous voice that silenced even the most rambunctious of the congregation’s children.
Despite the violence Williams witnessed in the South, he said he was more afraid of Chicago — one of the country’s most segregated cities.
Williams’ guest sermon had a special significance for the church, which sent members to march in Alabama during the 1960s and participated in the movement to integrate Chicago’s schools through busing, according to parishioners.
During his speech, Williams called on the church’s younger members to be active. In the 1950s, young people were supposed to let the elders lead, Williams said — but King formed his legacy by defying that precedent.
“In spite of being one of the youngest ones there, when (King) spoke, everyone listened,” Williams said. “It was young people who dared to be different, that’s how we got started. Old people were reluctant to move.”
Williams was with King the night before his assassination and can still remember the last words they exchanged.
“He said, ‘All I want to do is God’s will,'” Williams recalled. King’s eyes were flashing and “there was a heavenly glow about his face.”
“I looked over and he said, ‘I have seen the promised land, and I won’t get there. But you will,'” Williams said. “It was for this purpose he lived and for this cause he died. And yet, he is more alive today than ever before.”
