Biography of reverend samuel billy kyles

By David Waters of The Commercial Appeal

Posted: April 27, 20165

His given name was Samuel, like the prophet.

But when he was a small boy in Mississippi in the 1930s, his mother started calling him Billy, after the famous evangelist Billy Sunday.

“My mother would see me having funerals for dead birds or baptizing cats and dogs, so she started calling me little Billy,” Rev.

Samuel Billy Kyles recalled in an interview a decade ago.

“When I started school and people were calling me Samuel, I had no idea who that was. I was Billy.”

For the rest of his life, he was Billy to family and friends, and Rev.

Kyles to countless others around the world who were influenced by his ministry, music and witness — not only to history but to the gospel.

Rev. Kyles, who saw his decades of work for civil and human rights as a logical and necessary extension of his ministry, died Tuesday after a long illnes