Atlanta’s Joe Beasley, international civil and human rights advocate, dies

Rick Beasley recalls a memorable Thanksgiving dinner where he sat with his father, Joe Beasley, and a group of strangers. When Rick inquired how the family knew his father, the wife simply replied, “I don’t know your father. We just met him.”

That moment highlights Joe Beasley’s amazing warmth and openness, as he extended an invitation and shared a holiday meal with people he had just met.

He would often invite homeless people to Thanksgiving dinners, give his coat to a stranger who was cold and press dollars into the hands of people asking for a handout.

“I didn’t want people taking advantage of him, but they did, they took advantage of his goodness,” Rick Beasley said. “His mentality was to help those who were less fortunate. To help people improve their lives.”

Joseph Henry Beasley, an Atlanta civil rights leader and an international human rights advocate and organizer, died on Tuesday in Atlanta. He was 88, just two weeks shy of his 89th birthday, family members said.

Beasley was one of five children born to Alice and Rozie Beasley, who worked as sharecroppers in Inman. Rozie was a bootlegger as well. To give their children more opportunities, the Beasleys left Fayette County and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Joe finished high school.

He spent 21 years in the U.S. Air Force, where he served as a police supervisor. While in service, he demanded that the kitchen, which made familiar food for Hispanic personnel, have a Soul Food Day, with vegetables and chitlins on the menu.

He graduated from Park College near Kansas City, Missouri, with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and then became the Kansas City director of National Rainbow/PUSH coalition. The organization sent him to Atlanta, where he was named the organization’s Southern director.

Beasley quickly became “a moral force in Atlanta,” said Bill Bolling, founder of the Atlanta Community Food Bank. Bolling and Beasley worked together to start the food bank, said the Rev. Kenneth Alexander, head pastor of Antioch Baptist Church North. “Dr. Beasley could break down and explain the necessity of doing the right thing without being offensive,” Alexander said.

Because of Beasley’s relationship with Bolling, Antioch Baptist Church North became one of the food bank’s main distribution centers.

After being elected the first Black leader of Stone Mountain High School’s student government, the Rev. Markel Hutchins had the opportunity to meet Beasley.

Beasley became “a surrogate grandfather and a mentor,” Hutchins said. While a student at Morehouse College, Hutchins says that he and his friends would often find themselves at Beasley’s house, where they talked about global problems, as well as issues facing people in Atlanta.

“He was authentic, real and sincere,” said Hutchins, chairman and CEO of Movement Forward Inc. Beasley helped people in Africa, Haiti, Colombia and Brazil. “There are a lot of people who advocate for things publicly but are different privately. He was the same (in private and in public).”

Working with the African National Congress, Beasley registered people in South Africa to vote and campaigned in 1994 for Nelson Mandela.

He advocated to have the Confederate battle flag removed from the Georgia state flag and worked to keep Grady Memorial Hospital open. He pushed to help provide housing and shelter for unhoused people.

“My father was all about public service,” said Rick Beasley. “My mother was an educator. Service was what they were about.”

Joe Beasley was president of African Ascension, which developed economic and political ties throughout Africa and the African diaspora.