PENSACOLA, Fla. (WKRG) — Minister and leading civil rights activist, the Rev. H.K. Matthews, died Monday evening. He was 97.
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Matthews, who was born in Alabama and moved to Pensacola in the 1950s, spent most of his life championing equal rights, particularly in Pensacola and northwest Florida.
“He was often called the Martin Luther King of Pensacola because he was one of the most influential men in Pensacola and throughout the “northwest Florida” area,” a post on the Rev. HK Matthews: Victory After the Fall Facebook page said.
During the 1960s, while serving as president of the Pensacola Council of Ministers, he was arrested 35 times for leading sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in northwest Florida, according to an article on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute website…