Norman Williams

Location: MUSE Winston‑Salem

Interview by Michael S. Williams
Videos by Jonathan Harmon

Anderson High School, Class of 1967

Education was all Norman Williams knew growing up. His mother was an educator, and his father, Kenneth Raynor Williams, led Winston-Salem Teachers College (president) and Winston-Salem State University (chancellor) from 1961-1977. That grounding, along with his educators including those at Anderson High School, provided an "education [that] could not be taken away from us," he said.

Williams, who went on to attend Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, came back to Winston-Salem to work at the university where his father served. He attributes the will to do well in life to the community in Winston-Salem and the teachers from Anderson, including Flonnie T. Anderson, the AP English and Drama teacher Williams calls "the most influential and memorable" instructor he had.

That influence extended outside of his formal schooling. At a young age, the younger Williams appreciated how his father and people like Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse College and an Atlanta Public Schools Board member, navigated the times in which they were living. Mays would often stay with the Williams family while in Winston-Salem because Blacks weren't allowed in the hotels. "He was at my house, and we'd sit and talk," Williams said. And if any issues involving rights occurred, he said he'd watch them handle it "in a professional way," and that had an impact on him.

Mays, close friends with the elder Williams, knew the importance of schools like those that made up the Big Four. After the Brown v. Board decision, he wrote in 1971 in the Atlanta Daily World of the annihilation of the Black educator, calling it traumatic.