Leon Williams, San Diego's trailblazing Black leader, dies at 102
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Leon Williams. Photo: San Diego County
Leon Williams, San Diego's first Black council member and first Black county supervisor, died Saturday of cardiac arrest. He was 102.
Flashback: Williams shaped public life in San Diego during a trailblazing career that started when he was appointed to the City Council in 1969.
- He served on the county board of supervisors 1982 through 1994, and he became Metropolitan Transit System chair in 1993, serving until he retired in 2006.
- Williams remained the only Black person to serve on the county board of supervisors until 2023, when Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe won a seat.
Zoom in: In 1947, Williams became the first Black person to own a home in Golden Hill, which had a white-only restriction at the time, per the San Diego History Center.
- The city in 2017 renamed the block, where he still lived, Leon Williams Drive. It's the intersection of E Street and 30th Street.
- In a 2020 Union-Tribune interview, he recalled arriving in San Diego in 1941 after leaving Oklahoma and attempting to check into the Hotel Pickwick downtown, only to be told, "We don't serve your kind."
Between the lines: Williams was pivotal in creating the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. and the Centre City Development Corp., two redevelopment agencies that reinvested tax revenue to combat blight downtown and in southeastern neighborhoods.
- He spearheaded the county's creation of the Office of the Public Defender, disagreeing with the county outsourcing criminal defense for people who couldn't afford it to private lawyers, despite prosecuting cases itself through the District Attorney's office.
- The county's Human Relations Commission is named after him, as is the trolley stop at SDSU, as recognition of his role extending the light rail to the college as MTS chair.
The big picture: The southeastern San Diego area that Williams represented remains the seat of Black political power in the region, part of his legacy.
- Black officials represent the area on the City Council (Henry Foster), board of supervisor (Montgomery Steppe), state senate (Akilah Weber), state assembly (Lashae Sharp-Collins), and the neighborhood was the springboard for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.
- What's next: Williams is survived by his sister, three brothers and 10 children, the Union-Tribune reported.