Rapper Sean "Puffy" Combs has pledged his financial support for the late Hosea Williams' Atlanta-based Feed the Hungry and Homeless campaign, following the civil rights leader's death last week.

Combs announced Sunday he would help underwrite the program's annual Thanksgiving dinner, which is expected to feed an estimated 30,000 people Thursday at Turner Field in Atlanta.

I am honored that I am able to help in Reverend Williams' mission this Thanksgiving," Combs said in a statement. "Every year I give food to the hungry and underprivileged in New York through my charitable fund, Daddy's House. It's never enough and we all need to do whatever it takes to stop the disease of hunger.

Williams' daughter, Elizabeth Omilami, spoke with Combs about supporting the program during a fundraising event Tuesday at Justin's restaurant in Atlanta, which Combs owns and operates, according to Felicia Jeda in the Feed the Hungry and Homeless press office.

My

father's mission will continue to live on with the people he inspired, like Mr. Combs," Omilami said in a press release.

In addition to meals, Feed the Hungry and Homeless provides clothes, medical and dental screenings and job placement services as part of its holiday dinner program, which also serves some 40,000 in the metro-Atlanta area on Christmas Day.

Williams was a longtime member of the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and he worked on Martin Luther King Jr.'s staff in the early '60s. Williams began serving Thanksgiving meals to the homeless and needy out of his Atlanta church in 1970.

Williams died at age 74 Thursday at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta from cancer-related complications. The civil rights leader had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 and underwent surgery to remove a cancerous kidney last year.

Combs has been involved in various charitable endeavors via his Daddy's House Social Programs, which have hosted

summer camps and sponsored trips and other youth activities in New York.

Daddy's House provides Thanksgiving dinners to families in New York's Harlem district, feeding some 4,000 people in the last two years.