Rev. Cecil Williams (1929-2024): ‘He never gave up on anybody’

Rev. Cecil Williams (1929-2024): ‘He never gave up on anybody’

The Rev. Cecil Willliams, co-founder of San Francisco’s GLIDE Foundation and a prominent advocate for civil rights and social justice, died Monday at the age of 94 in his home “surrounded by friends and family,” according to a statement.

Over two decades, charity auctions offering the opportunity to have lunch with Warren Buffett raised $53 million for Glide. 

In a telephone conversation with me Thursday, Buffett called Williams “one of the great thinkers of our times.”

Glide Foundation via Instagram

“He took people that the world had given up on and they had given up on themselves and he never gave up on anybody…

“It shows what one person can actually do. It wasn’t because he had an IQ of 200. It wasn’t because he really had any money behind him. It wasn’t because he had any special education. He did have a religious aspect to it, but that religion was not limited to a given denomination. It was the love of his fellow man.”

In 1963, Williams, then in his early 30s, moved from his segregated hometown in west Texas to San Francisco, where he revitalized the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in the city’s Tenderloin district with Sunday services featuring gospel music and jazz. Eventually, its membership grew to 10,000.

Over the years, Williams and his wife, Janice Marikitamo, who died in 2021, started numerous community outreach programs.

Buffett recalled that while his first wife, Susan Thompson Buffett, was living in San Francisco, she helped distribute meals for Glide.

“So, she told me about him. And I thought, this guy probably isn’t for real. And I went to one church service