ATLANTA, Ga. — Tom Houck, who drove Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement and later became a familiar voice in Atlanta politics and media, has died. He was 79, and city officials announced his death Friday.
Born in Massachusetts, Houck was thrown out of high school in 1965 after joining the march from Selma to Montgomery. He came to Atlanta at 19 and joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where he became the youngest member of its executive staff. From 1966 until King was assassinated in 1968, he served as King’s driver and personal assistant, and he was arrested several times at demonstrations.
Side by side with John Lewis and Julian Bond, he organized drives to sign up minority voters in states throughout the South. In the early 1970s he pushed for the amendment that lowered the voting age to 18, and he went on to lead field work for the Voter Education Project and later became deputy director of a youth voting group based in Washington. His campaign work later helped Zell Miller, Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young and John Lewis.
Houck spent years as a political commentator, a regular panelist on a weekly public affairs program and the host of a radio talk show that often featured state and local leaders. After leaving journalism he started a public relations firm, and in the 2000s he led bus tours devoted to Atlanta’s civil rights history.
The Atlanta City Council issued a statement praising his lifelong work for voting rights and said it will hold a moment of silence in his honor at its Nov. 2 meeting.
