Cecil Williams kept his ear to the ground
The longtime pastor of Glide Memorial Church was involved in nearly every major social justice movement in the Bay Area for 60 years.
Pastor and activist Cecil Williams (San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images)
In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, which is based on a true story, Will Smith portrays Chris Gardner—an unhoused, Black, single father in San Francisco. In one scene, he and his young son go to Glide Memorial Church, where they’ve been told they can get a hot meal and secure a bed for the night. While they are waiting in line, the pastor comes outside to announce that there are only a few beds left. Gardner and his son will get the last one. Those familiar with San Francisco may recognize the pastor in these scenes as Cecil Williams, Glide’s real-life longtime pastor.
Williams, who served in various pastoral roles at Glide for nearly six decades, died this April. He spent many of those years regularly greeting folks in line for Glide’s free hot meals, and he leaves behind an enormous legacy of ministry and activism in San Francisco—one that inspires leaders today to work for liberation and to reimagine what the church can be.
I first met Williams in 2017 through Glide’s Emerging Leaders Internship program for college students, where I worked on a history project to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love in San Francisco and at Glide. My project led me to the Glide archives and gave me the chance to interview Williams and his wife, Janice Mirikitani, the former Glide Foundation executive director who died in 2021. As the summer wore on, I became obsessed with chronicling Williams’s legacy: he had been a massively important figure in the religious landscape of San Francisco, and yet most people in my generation didn’t know who he was.
