DECATUR - At the same time the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was marching for equal rights in the South, the Rev. George A. Coates was making his civil rights mark in Canada.

Other local activists remember how both men brought about change.

Coates, the former pastor of St. Peter's African-American Methodist Episcopal Church and longtime activist in Decatur, died in 2003.

But a lot of the things King was doing in the United States, Coates was doing by fighting for equal education and getting blacks to vote in Windsor, Ontario, where he was born, said his wife, Lillian Coates, 70, who resides at Fair Havens Christian Home. Her husband also sought equal rights for blacks living in Nova Scotia.

"He believed that right is right, and God created us all," she said.

While preaching at a church in Nova Scotia, Coates became involved in the Halifax Colored Citizens Improvement League, an organization that sought reforms to improve the economic and social conditions of those African-Canadians.

He left Canada and moved his family to Decatur in 1970 to become senior pastor at St. Peter's AME Church.

Coates, however, didn't leave his yen for equality in Canada and saw that change also was needed in Decatur. He got that opportunity while serving on the city's Human Relations Commission between 1994 and 1998.

Coates worked for equality for black teachers and principals in the Decatur School District and helped create more positions for them.

"He was very respected in the community. He also was slow to anger and lived what he preached," Lillian Coates said.

Coates was a minister who was not afraid to take a stand and speak out, said Horace Livingston, owner of the Voice Newspaper in Decatur.

Livingston also was in the thick of picketing and rallying against racial injustice in the community during the 1960s, '70s and '80s.

He particularly remembers when Coates was on the front lines demonstrating against the expulsion of six Eisenhower High School students following a fight at a football game in 1999. The incident brought the Rev. Jesse Jackson to town.

"I asked Rev. Coates when he was going home, it was after 11 p.m., and he was still sitting in his lawn chair in front of the Keil Administration Building in protest against what happened to those students," Livingston said.

"Rev. Coates was a good man; we both saw eye-to-eye on a lot of things."

Community activist and Macon County Board member William Oliver had his share of hard-fought battles in Decatur.

Oliver, 71, had mixed feelings about the march that took place around Central Park in downtown Decatur to coincide with King's march in Selma, Ala., in the mid-1960s.

"I didn't march because I didn't feel it was a front-line demonstration. I didn't see any point to it, when those down in Alabama were taking all the heat and getting hurt. All they wanted to do was march around a water fountain here in Decatur, Illinois," he said.

Since then, Oliver considered himself an instigator for change during the 1960s and '70s.

"I was raising so much hell back then," Oliver said. "We were having issues with the police department because blacks complained about how they were being treated. There was no housing ordinance, and we had a boycott against the schools for not having enough black teachers."

While chairman of the downstate Region 4 United Auto Workers, Oliver took on civil rights and contract issues for workers.

He also didn't hesitate to fight for equal pay for the women who were being hired in the local factories in the 1970s and '80s.

Oliver took his activism to another level while serving as city councilman from 1977 to 1997.

His biggest fight was getting the city to change the name of Broadway to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the 1980s.

"It turned into a race issue," he said when he first proposed the street name change to honor King. "The first time it was voted down by the city council members 6 to 1. Then, after Gary Anderson became mayor and was an advocate for the street name change, the city council finally passed it 6 to 1."

Oliver respected Coates and called King an "amazing man of color" who had a way of uniting blacks and whites during a nonviolent movement.

"If Dr. King was alive today," Oliver said, "he would say, 'I gave you a dream and you still haven't woke up yet.' "

Local resident Jim Taylor traveled to Selma, Ala., for the 30th anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

"It was like living it all over again," said Taylor, 65.

As a young man, Taylor was the silent marcher during demonstrations for equal rights for blacks in Decatur.

He was out with Oliver, a good friend, walking up and down Broadway, trying to get people to sign a petition for the street's name to be changed.

"If Dr. King were alive today, he would probably be just as unhappy as he was back then. As things have changed, a lot of things haven't," Taylor said.

Today, the nation celebrates the birthday of national civil rights leader King, who was shot and killed April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn.

While attending the 15th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Banquet in 2001, Coates was quoted in a newspaper article saying that he met King in Detroit when they were both active in the civil rights movement.

He said King's vision will be reached someday.

"It takes time for it to be a reality in the hearts and minds of men and women," Coates said. "The things that survive are ideas that have substance and truth."

Sheila Smith can be reached at sheilas@herald-review.com or 421-7963.