Cecil J. Williams (born November 26, 1937) is an American photographer, publisher, author and inventor who is best known for his photographs documenting the civil rights movement in South Carolina.
He began his career at an early age, photographing wedding and family parties. He studied art at Claflin University, while also being a photographer for the university.
His work has been published in hundreds of books, newspapers and television documentaries. His photography and art has been exhibited in galleries in the Southeast.[1]
Cecil J. Williams was born on November 26, 1937, and raised in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
He was the third child of Ethel and Cecil L. Willams. His parents both have mixed African-American ancestry; his mother's side is half white, and his father's half Native American.[2]
Ethel Williams spent her whole life as a dedicated educator, teaching at the elementary, high school, and college level. Cecil L. Williams was a self-employed tailor, with an almost 80% white clientele. He did the alterations for downtown stores such as Belk-Hudson, Barshay Marcus Clothing Store, and Limehouse Men's Stores.[2]
Williams helped his father with his business by delivering the clothes back to the stores when they were finished, and at the end of the week delivered the bills and collected money for his father's services.[2]
At the age of 9, Williams received a gift which changed the course of his life. His older brother had been given a camera by his mother, but he went on to be more interested in music and the saxophone, which ultimately led him to hand the camera down to Williams. A Kodak Baby Brownie was the first camera he would ever own, which he still has, and which still works. This was the start to a newfound passion, and he later used an extra bedroom in the family's house as a darkroom to develop negatives.[2]
He began photographing people on Sundays when people were dressed at their finest. As he kept taking pictures, he began to realize that he could make money from this. He began earning a dollar or two by taking pictures of people in the local Edisto Gardens.[2]
When Williams was 12, his mentor, E.C. Jones from Sumter, South Carolina, asked him to take photos of the churches of Clarendon County, which happened to hold the families of the DeLaine and the Pearson families from the Briggs v. Elliott petition.[2]
Career
At the age of 14, Williams was one of 25 photographers around the world freelancing for JET magazine. JET caught wind of the movement growing in Orangeburg. They needed an onsite correspondent for constant updates, and someone to document the events.[2] The only time Williams' work appeared on the cover of JET was his picture of Coretta Scott King speaking at the protest during the 1969 Charleston hospital workers' strike.[3]
Williams has photographed significant desegregation efforts in South Carolina since the 1950s. Some of his most notable pictures are of the activity during the Briggs v. Elliott case in Summerton. It was the first of five desegregation cases pushing to integrate public schools in the United States. The five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that declared that having "separate but equal" public schools for whites and blacks was unconstitutional.
In November 2023, Williams's dream of gaining attention to the hijacking of the name, Briggs v. Elliott, where the U.S. Supreme Court titled the class action suit—Brown v. Board of Education—a suit composed of 5 cases—finally gained some traction. He solicited the help of Dr. Thomas Mullikin—an attorney who practices law in Camden, South Carolina—to assist in filing a petition to the Supreme Court asking to rename the Brown case to Bragg v. Elliott; the first of the cases and catalyst that inspired 4 other suits. A response has not yet been received.
In January of 1960, during Williams' senior year at Claflin University, he was visiting relatives in New York City. He had read that John F. Kennedy would be at a downtown hotel at a press conference, and went there in hopes of capturing some images. He forgot his press pass, and the hotel security was about to kick him out of the room right as Kennedy was about to come up to the podium. Kennedy told them not to kick him out, and ended up giving Williams his personal address. For the next year, while campaigning all over the United States, Williams became a close acquaintance of Kennedy, and one of his favorite photographers.[4] Williams was one of the few in the press community to be allowed on Kennedy's private 10-seater jet.[2]
He graduated from Claflin in 1960 with a bachelor's degree in art. He studied under painter and sculptor Arthur Rose Sr. there.
Although better known for photography, Williams' painting, art, graphics, and architectural renderings represent proficiency, especially among minimalists. Although at that time, because of his race, he was barred from attending Clemson University in his state to study architecture, he drew plans for several residences; one of which was featured in the June 1977 issue of Ebony; "Space Age Home".[5]
Williams worked as the official photographer for the South Carolina branch of the NAACP, South Carolina State University, Claflin University, and National Conference of Black Mayors, Inc. for more than 20 years, beginning in the 1960s.[7]
His work has been exhibited at many institutions and museums, such as Claflin University, University of South Carolina, Columbia Museum of Art, Clemson University, Columbia College, Furman University, Rice Museum in Georgetown, South Carolina State University, and Museum of the New South in Charlotte.[8]
In 2015, Williams invented the FilmToaster, a camera scanning platform and system that digitizes film negatives faster than other methods.[9] In 2019–2020, in collaboration with the Barry and Peggy Goldwater Foundation, Arizona Highways magazine, and Scottsdale's Museum of the West, photographs by Barry Goldwater were on exhibit. All the photos were printed by the FilmToaster.[2]
Williams owns a portrait studio, event, and wedding photography business based in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He serves as the director of Historic Preservation at Claflin University. He is a Getty Images contributor and photographer. He also tours the nation giving presentations at conferences, events and institutions about his work during the civil rights movement.[10] He is a member of the American Society of Media Photographers.[11]
He holds membership with Delta Chi, the Orangeburg, South Carolina Boulé[12] of Sigma Pi Phi, the oldest African-American fraternity.[13]
Williams lives in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He is married to Barbara Johnson Williams, a retired educator.[5] They met while Barbara was attending college, and he was the university photographer. Going through old photos, they discovered that when Barbara was in high school Williams had taken a picture of her, not knowing who she was.[2]
Museum
In the summer of 2019, Williams opened the Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum to house hundreds of images and artifacts from the civil rights movement.[4] The museum looks like an ultra-modern-day home which Williams designed himself in 1983, 36 years before he made it into his own museum.[4] The theme of the museum is "The South Carolina Events that Changed America". The museum will also double as the neighborhood community center.[2]
Awards and honors
As a Claflin University student, Williams was named an honoree of both Outstanding Young Men of America and Who's Who Among Students in American Colleges & Universities. He was given the 1994 Freedom Fighter Award by the Orangeburg branch of the NAACP. Also in 1994, he received a commendation by the S.C. House of Representatives, introduced by Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter.
He received the Presidential Citation in 1995 from Henry N. Tisdale, president of Claflin University. In 2006, he was also the recipient of Claflin University's highest award, the Bythewood Award. The South Carolina African-American Heritage Commission gave him the 2006 "Preserving Our Place in History" Award.[8] In 2016, the Commission presented him with the DeCosta Jr. Trailblazer Award.[14] In 2017, Governor Henry McMaster awarded him the Order of the Palmetto.[15]
Published works
Books
Freedom and Justice: Four Decades of the Civil Rights Struggle as Seen by a Black Photographer of the Deep South (1995)
Out-of-the-Box in Dixie: Cecil Williams’ Photography of the South Carolina Events that Changed America (2012)
Orangeburg 1968…: A Place and Time Remembered, co-written with Sonny Dubose (2012)
Unforgettable All the Memories We Left Behind: The Art, Design, and Photography of Cecil Williams, 1950–2013 (2016)
Painter Showcase: A Gallery of Modern Portraiture, Beyond the Camera's Capability (2013)
Images of America - Clarendon County, co-written with two other authors, published by Arcadia Publishing (2002)
Orangeburg, also known as The Garden City, is the principal city in and the county seat of Orangeburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population of the city was 13,964 according to the 2020 census. The city is located 37 miles southeast of Columbia, on the north fork of the Edisto River.
Pi Kappa Phi (ΠΚΦ), commonly known as Pi Kapp(s), is an American Greek Letter secret and social fraternity. It was founded by Andrew Alexander Kroeg Jr., Lawrence Harry Mixson, and Simon Fogarty Jr. on December 10, 1904 at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. The fraternity has 187 active chapters (168 chartered chapters and 19 associate chapters), and more than 113,000 initiated members.
The Orangeburg Massacre was a shooting of student protesters that took place on February 8, 1968, on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, United States. Nine highway patrolmen and one city police officer opened fire on a crowd of African American students, killing three and injuring twenty-eight. The shootings were the culmination of a series of protests against racial segregation at a local bowling alley, marking the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American university.
Phi Sigma Pi National Honor Fraternity (ΦΣΠ) is a gender-inclusive/mixed-sex national honor fraternity based in the United States. The fraternity is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization incorporated in the state of Pennsylvania to foster scholarship, leadership, and fellowship. Phi Sigma Pi chapters are at more than 140 four-year collegiate institutions.
Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. (ΦΒΣ) is a historically African American fraternity. It was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on January 9, 1914, by three young African-American male students with nine other Howard students as charter members. The fraternity's founders, A. Langston Taylor, Leonard F. Morse, and Charles I. Brown, wanted to organize a Greek letter fraternity that would exemplify the ideals of Brotherhood, Scholarship and Service while taking an inclusive perspective to serve the community as opposed to having an exclusive purpose. The fraternity exceeded the prevailing models of Black Greek-Letter fraternal organizations by being the first to establish alumni chapters, youth mentoring clubs, a federal credit union, chapters in Africa, and a collegiate chapter outside of the United States. It is the only fraternity to hold a constitutional bond with a historically African-American sorority, Zeta Phi Beta (ΖΦΒ), which was founded on January 16, 1920, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., through the efforts of members of Phi Beta Sigma.
Claflin University is a private historically black university in Orangeburg, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1869 after the American Civil War by northern missionaries for the education of freedmen and their children, it offers bachelor's and master's degrees.
While the traditional social fraternity is a well-established mainstay across the United States at institutions of higher learning, alternatives – in the form of social fraternities that require doctrinal and behavioral conformity to the Christian faith – developed in the early 20th century. They continue to grow in size and popularity.
Charles Harris Wesley was an American historian, educator, minister, and author. He published more than 15 books on African-American history, taught for decades at Howard University, and served as president of Wilberforce University, and founding president of Central State University, both in Ohio.
Sigma Pi Phi (ΣΠΦ), also known as The Boulé, is an African American professional fraternity. Founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1904, it is the oldest fraternity for African Americans. The fraternity does not have collegiate chapters and is designed for professionals in mid-career or older. Sigma Pi Phi has over 5,000 members and 139 chapters throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, The Bahamas, Colombia and Brazil.
Moneta J. Sleet Jr. was an American press photographer best known for his work as a staff photographer for Ebony magazine. In 1969 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his photograph of Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow, at her husband's funeral. Sleet was the first African-American man to win the Pulitzer, and the first African American to win the award for journalism. He died of cancer in 1996 at the age of 70.
Bernie Boston was an American photographer most noted for his iconic Flower Power image.
The North American fraternity and sorority system began with students who wanted to meet secretly, usually for discussions and debates not thought appropriate by the faculty of their schools. Today they are used as social, professional, and honorary groups that promote varied combinations of community service, leadership, and academic achievement.
College literary societies in American higher education are a particular kind of social organization, distinct from literary societies generally, and they were often the precursors of college fraternities and sororities. In the period from the late 18th century to the Civil War, collegiate literary societies were an important part of campus social life. These societies are often called Latin literary societies because they typically have compound Latinate names.
Gloria Blackwell, also known as Gloria Rackley, was an African-American civil rights activist and educator. She was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in Orangeburg, South Carolina during the 1960s, attracting some national attention and a visit by Dr. Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her activities were widely covered by the local press.
Lewis Carnegie Dowdy was an American educator and the sixth president, and first chancellor of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
Fraternities and sororities at the University of Virginia include the collegiate organizations on the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. First founded in the 1850s with the establishment of several fraternities, the system has since expanded to include sororities, professional organizations, service fraternities, honor fraternities, and cultural organizations. Fraternities and sororities have been significant to the history of the University of Virginia, including the founding of two national fraternities Kappa Sigma (ΚΣ) and Pi Kappa Alpha (ΠΚΑ).
Benjamin F. Payton was an African-American academic administrator. He served as the president of two historically black universities: Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina from 1967 to 1972 and Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama from 1981 to 2010.
The Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum is a museum in Orangeburg, South Carolina, commemorating the civil rights movement. The curator of the museum is photographer Cecil J. Williams.
William Wilson Cooke (1871–1949) was an American architect. He worked in the Office of the Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury and was the first African American man to be employed there. Cooke was the first African American to obtain an architect’s license in the state of Indiana in 1929. He designed many buildings for Claflin College, the Cookman Institute, and the United States Postal Service. Early in his career he worked as a school official.
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