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Tom Houck, longtime Atlanta voting-rights advocate and civil rights tour founder, dies at 79
Tom Houck, who worked with Martin Luther King Jr. as a teenager and spent decades in Atlanta politics and media, has died at 79. In later life, he led tours highlighting the city’s civil rights history.
Tom Houck, a longtime Atlanta civil rights activist, political commentator and founder of the Civil Rights Tour of Atlanta, has died at 79. His cause of death had not been announced as of Oct. 23, and no memorial service details were available.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Houck moved to Atlanta in 1966. At 19, he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff and worked as an aide and driver for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., serving until King’s assassination in 1968.
Houck later worked as a field director for the Voter Education Project and deputy director of the Youth Citizenship Fund, advocating for the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18. He returned to Georgia in 1973 and worked on campaigns for Andrew Young, Maynard Jackson, John Lewis and Zell Miller.
He moved into broadcasting and political commentary in 1977. From 1980 to 1991, he hosted a show on Newsradio WGST and became a regular panelist on “Sunday News Conference” and “The Georgia Gang.” He also contributed to Atlanta Magazine and Creative Loafing.
After leaving journalism in the 2000s, Houck founded the Civil Rights Tour of Atlanta to bring visitors to sites including King’s birthplace and final home, Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Atlanta University Center, a major consortium of historically Black colleges and universities.
In a 2015 interview, Houck said he saw a need to better communicate Atlanta’s importance to the civil rights movement to visitors from around the world.
The Atlanta City Council said Houck spent his later years working to preserve the city’s civil rights history. The council plans to honor him with a moment of silence at its Nov. 2 full meeting, and said his work supported voting rights and helped mobilize minority voters across the South.