Jan. 20--Kale Williams Jr. returned from the Navy after World War II on a path toward becoming a pacifist, but he was far from done fighting and spent much of the rest of his life battling for social justice issues like fair and open housing.
Williams led the now-defunct Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities for more than 20 years, a time during which he initiated what today is known as housing mobility, the notion of scattering public housing in urban and suburban neighborhoods, according to Alexander Polikoff, former executive director of Business and Professional People in the Public Interest.
"He was the boss in the running of the first housing mobility program in the country, and that was a pretty big deal," said Polikoff, lead counsel on the landmark Gautreaux litigation that tackled discrimination in public housing. "Kale was a consummate administrator and a compassionate human being, and that's a powerful combination."
Williams, 90, died Jan. 7 of complications from Parkinson's disease at his home in Boulder, Colo., according to his wife of 66 years, Helen. The longtime Hyde Park resident moved to Boulder in 2013 to be closer to family.
Williams was born in Kansas and grew up in the town of Cedar Vale. At 17, he joined the Navy to fight in the Pacific during World War II.
At war's end, he came home to study at the University of Chicago, where he got a master's degree in social sciences, his wife said. His experiences in the war contributed to his becoming a pacifist as well as to his quest for social justice.
He became a Quaker, joining the 57th Street Meeting of Friends in the early 1950s and working for the American Friends Service Committee from 1951 to 1972 in the Chicago, Philadelphia and Pasadena, Calif., offices, including directing the Chicago office for many years. During his years with the AFSC, he challenged racial segregation and helped address injustice in Chicago and elsewhere.
He was active in the events surrounding the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s visits to Chicago to support open housing.
"Kale was part of the leadership of the Chicago Freedom Movement during the (1966) marches on the Southwest Side through Marquette Park," said Steve Perkins, who met Williams when he was with the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference.
"Dr. King and others were met by virulent opposition," said Perkins, now with the Center for Neighborhood Technology. "Kale was quite fearless -- it didn't faze him. He didn't have a second thought about going up against the powers that be in the city of Chicago to break down the walls of segregation."
In the late 1960s, Williams and his family lived in Nigeria while he ran a relief program during the civil war in that African nation.
After the late Mayor Richard J. Daley committed to open housing, community leaders and business people formed the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities to turn that commitment into action. Williams joined the council, where he was the longtime executive director until retiring in 1992.
During his time there, the council led efforts to break up segregated and concentrated public housing practices, working to replace those isolated high-rise sites with scattered-site housing that moved families into more human-scale housing in Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs.
A column by the late John McDermott of the Chicago Reporter that appeared in the Chicago Tribune when Williams retired praised the work he and the council had done.
"By taking into account the fact that middle-class communities can have reasonable concerns about the impact of poverty and by offering them a program that attempts to fit into the community rather than dominate it, Williams and the council have appealed to the better instincts of Chicagoans and wrought a minor miracle in American race relations and social policy," McDermott wrote.
In 1994, Williams became a visiting professor of applied ethics at Loyola University Chicago. He later was appointed the senior scholar in residence at Loyola's Center for Urban Research and Learning, a post he held for about 10 years.
His heart was never far from concern for others, according to Philip Nyden, director of the center.
"Kale is probably best described as a militant pacifist," Nyden said. "He was very gentle -- a wonderful person -- but on social justice he could be fierce in his commitment to those issues."
In addition to his wife, Williams is survived by sons Kale and Mark; daughter Sara Williams-Mann; sisters Joan Cornett, Barbara McGinnis and Nancy Richards; brothers Bill and Richard; and five grandchildren.
Plans are being made for a spring memorial in Chicago.
Megan is a freelance reporter.
