Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, graduating from Morehouse College, in Atlanta
The first influence on Walter Williams' human rights activism was Martin Luther King, Jr. Walter Williams later on a panel, speaking with Coretta Scott King.
Walter Williams' major mentors were Dorr Legg, Jim Kepner, and Don Slater, founders of ONE Institute of Homophile Studies, in 1956.
The next influence on Walter Williams' activism was Harry Hay shown here, throwing a kiss along with his partner John Burnside and Jim Kepner, who is the founder of the national gay archives.
Barbara Gittings led gay rights protests in the 1960s and she was chair of the American Library Association committee that selected Walter Williams' book The Spirit and the Flesh as the gay book of the year in 1986.
In 1969 a riot at the Stonewall bar in New York City set off a stage of radical gay activism that heavily influenced Walter Williams.
Walter Williams' first participation in a gay rights. Protest was in Chicago in 1978.
San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk was a major influence on Walter Williams' activism in the 1979 March on Washington for lesbian and gay rights that Williams was Southern Ohio coordinator of.
From the 1980s through the first decade of the 21st century, Walter Williams was sought after as a speaker at many conferences for LGBTQ activists. This photo shows Professor Williams after his keynote speech "A Global Perspective on LGBTQ History," at a 2009 conference for activists in West Hollywood, California. Shown with him are Torie Osborn, former executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, and Roland Palancio, founder of Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos.