Platt Williams, Santa Rosa NAACP pioneer, dies at 85

The civil rights struggle was something happening far away when, in May of 1962, Platt Williams and six other black men stepped into Santa Rosa’s Silver Dollar saloon and settled onto bar stools to which they knew they were not welcome.

“I’m sorry, boys. You’ve had too much already,” declared the bar owner, who’d long made it clear the Silver Dollar was off-limits to black men and women. Following Santa Rosa’s first-ever sit-in, Williams and other pioneers of the fledgling local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed a lawsuit that put an end to the bar’s exclusionary practice and shone as a small but vital victory in the new activists’ pursuit of equal treatment.

Williams, who was born in Louisiana and came to California in 1949 to run track at Santa Rosa Junior College and to raise a family beyond the indignity of segregation, died New Year’s Eve at his home in Santa Rosa. He was 85.

“I think my father put Santa Rosa on the map for the civil rights movement,” said daughter Brenda Williams of El Cerrito. For many years she thanked him both on Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, as he was the sole parent to seven children after his wife, Jearldine, died young of diabetes in 1971.

Though profoundly committed to equality and community, said daughter Trina Williams of Murfreesboro, Tenn., “His family came first. That meant everything to him.”

She recalled one of the grandchildren saying the other day, “There went my Barack Obama, my Martin Luther King, my Rosa Parks.”

“That’s who he was, a nonviolent, caring man. Anybody who came into contact with him will be blessed forever.”

Platt Williams and the late Gilbert Gray were among only a handful of black people living in Sonoma County when they founded the Santa Rosa chapter of the NAACP in 1953. Williams served as its first president.

In March 1960, Williams and Gray and a small group of other NAACP members picketed outside of downtown Santa Rosa’s S.H. Kress and F.W. Woolworth stores to protest the policy of segregation at soda fountains in the companies’ stores in the South. Williams told a Press Democrat reporter at the time that he thought it was important to march against Jim Crow laws, even though they weren’t practiced in Sonoma County.

He invited anyone with differing views to “sit down with us and talk it over.”

For years as a leader of the local NAACP, Williams worked to bring in prominent activists such as Dick Gregory and Angela Davis. All through the 1960s and ‘70s, the chapter, which remains active today, supported civil rights efforts in the South and advocated for equal treatment of blacks and other minorities locally.

Recalling Platt Williams, Santa Rosa’s Willie Garrett, a veteran of the early days of the movement, said, “It was wonderful working with him. We had a thing going here in this community.”

Many of their colleagues from the heyday of the movement, including Gilbert and Alice Gray, Homer Harris and Ernest Pigg, have passed on.

Williams worked 36 years for Sears in Santa Rosa, starting as a custodian and working his way up to manager of the paint department. He provided work experience to many local teens, both at Sears and at the Sonoma County Fair, where he operated a janitorial service through the run of the summer fair.

For a time, he was president of the local NAACP chapter and his daughter, Brenda, the vice president. She recalls the time he took part in a protest fully aware that his participation could cost him his job at Sears.

After nearly 40 years of work, her father tried retirement but didn’t like it. So he took a job as campus supervisor at Analy High School in Sebastopol.

“He attended all the games, the dances, and kept an eye on the kids,” said retired principal Marty Webb. “He was a wonderful man. The kids always liked him. He was fair.”

In his free time, Williams liked most to fish, work in his garden and watch his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren play sports. Son Marvin Williams of Rancho Cucamonga played in a great many football games and without fail could spot his father up in the stands.

“He was always like that, for every one of his kids,” he said. He added that throughout his father’s life he was committed not only to his family but to the community, and “not just to black people, to all people.”

Veteran justice activist Mary Moore of Camp Meeker said she last saw Williams about three years ago at a Sebastopol City Council meeting, advocating more affordable housing.

“It’s hard to keep plugging away, but that’s what he did,” she said.

Williams was bedridden by heart disease at Christmas. One morning following the holiday, he looked up at daughter Brenda Williams and asked, “Am I still here?”

She said his hands were folded as for prayer when he died on Dec. 31. “Now that he’s gone, even though we hurt we know he was ready,” she said.

“He fought the good fight and his battle is over. He smiled to the very end.”

In addition to his daughters in El Cerrito and Tennessee and his son in Rancho Cucamonga, Williams is survived by daughters Carolyn Haywood of Santa Rosa and Lauraette Vaughn of Cordova, Tenn.; son Dennis Williams of Santa Rosa, 23 grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandson.

A service is at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Eggen & Lance Chapel. Interment will follow at Santa Rosa Memorial Park.

Williams’ family suggests memorial contributions to the American Heart Association, 1400 N. Dutton Ave. Santa Rosa, CA 95401; the American Cancer Society, 1451 Guerneville Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95403, or the O.P. Williams Library at the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County, 467 Sebastopol Avenue, Santa Rosa, CA 95401.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD