Early Life and Military Service
George Willis III, also known as “Yellow Socks” during his boxing days, led a life of service and dedication to his community. Willis joined the army as a teenager to become a paratrooper and made a name for himself in the boxing ring, once upsetting the crowd in Yokohama, Japan, after securing a split-decision victory over his Japanese amateur opponent.
Ministry and Education
After graduating from the Interdenominational Theological Center in 1965, the Reverend George Sylvester Willis III pastored at Texas churches, including in Waco, Dallas, and Houston, before his death in 2012 at age seventy-seven.
Legacy
The US Army veteran continued his studies after leaving Atlanta, pursuing his passion for justice and equality. Even as he led churches, Willis served as a substitute teacher in Texas.
Quotations
Kay Willis Describing George
Ever studious, George Willis stood ready to jot down sermon ideas whenever they came to him.
“He always kept a pen and pencil in his pocket,” Kay Willis says. “Whenever the Lord gave him a message, he wrote it down.” When someone did George Willis a kindness, he’d often respond with three successive thank-yous. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he’d say. Kay Willis has found herself at times repeating the same six-word appreciation.Classmate Willis would “sit at the feet of Dr. King” at Friday night sermons and consume his message, says his widow. “You learned from the master. That’s where he got his stability. He said he was a servant,” she says.
Greene, Ronnie. Heart of Atlanta: Five Black Pastors and the Supreme Court Victory for Integration (pp.53, 54). Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.
Description of Pickrick Showdown
George Willis was driving, Albert Dunn in the passenger seat, and Woodrow T. Lewis in back. Dunn and Willis had been ringleaders of the integration plan, hungry to test the new law at a restaurant that had served its popular diner fare only to White customers, and Lewis felt equally emboldened to demand a seat at the table. As the trio pulled toward the Hemphill Avenue establishment, they witnessed a mass of bodies standing out front, up to one hundred people, anxiously awaiting their arrival. Many held axe handles, the largest of them thirty-six inches long.
“There was a mob of Whites standing there when we drove up to the Pickrick restaurant yard,” Lewis says. “Willis was very, very angry and Dunn too. They were saying, ‘Look at them, look at them, look at them.’ Willis said, ‘I should take this car and drive it right through the crowd.’”
Greene, Ronnie. Heart of Atlanta: Five Black Pastors and the Supreme Court Victory for Integration (pp. 83-84). Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.