Roy Williams

Roy Williams (1888 - 1981) was an African-American born in Washington, DC, and known in New York as a Bahá'í in 1918. There are gaps of knowledge such as his upbringing and much of his later years. However significant activities Williams was involved in are known. He and his sister moved to join the Cleveland, Ohio, Bahá'í community in 1919. They recieving Tablets from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and he had discussion with Louis Gregory and decided to join him in touring the South to promote the religion. This first trip started through Virginia and West Virginia, included reaching Atlanta, southern Florida, possibly Miami where Bahá'ís like Howard MacNutt were active building an integrated community, and on to Texas before running out of money. This first trip also gathered donations for the forthcoming Bahá'í Temple which would serve integrated audiences. Similar trips took place in 1920 through 1922 and included speaking in over 30 cities. Along the way Williams also accepted an invitation from a couple of white women Bahá'ís in Springfield to aid holding the second Race Amity Convention which was a surprise initiative but was endorsed among the last communications from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. From 1924 through 1928 William was on various committees appointed by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States tasked with various implementations of the teachings on the oneness of humanity including successive Race Amity Conventions.

Little is known about his life in the 1930s. In 1941 he married Bernice Cooper of Greensboro, North Carolina. The couple moved to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, before moving to Greenville, South Carolina, to aid restoring the Bahá'í community there to having a local assembly and where they would live for decades to come. The community struggled with legally enforced segregation until it successfully appealed to the city council in 1953, represented by Williams, for holding integrated meetings. Williams appeared in a number of newspaper articles sporadically to 1973 when he was last reported as a treasurer of the Greenville assembly. By 1977 he and Bernice were reported members of the Guilford County Assembly. When he died in 1981 he was in Greensboro and the funeral was held in Wilmington, where he was burried in a plot of the Sadgwar family, who had also known Gregory.

Born and raised

Roy Williams was born on February 19, 1888 in Washginton, DC. He had a sister Amy and his mother was named Bertha Joyce. Williams had Cherokee ancestry on his mother's side and Cajun ancestry on his father's side. His paternal grandmother, Nellie, was from Virginia but her children were born in Maryland. The Joyce family of his mother and grandmother and kin lived in Washington, DC, at least most of this period. After being born in DC himself, his mother Bertha, perhaps also known as Marie Bertha, is mentioned a member of 19th Street Baptist in DC in 1895. An uncle had died in 1901, and in 1910 the Joyce family, with Bertha divorced by then, lived on 1st St NW. It is known that Williams had seen ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, perhaps in New York or DC, in 1912. He was a workman and saw a crowd of people in eastern garb and recognized 'Abdu'l-Bahá from the newspaper coverage.

Very little details are known about Williams growing up or his early adulthood, although it is known that he was educated at Howard University of Washington DC and the University of Pennsylvania, and by 1918 he was living in Harlem, possibly with his sister, and had joined the Bahá'í Faith. He and his sister are among a list of some 40 known African Americans to join the religion during the ministry of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Louis and Louise Gregory often dined at Williams' grandmother's home in DC and may have taught Louise some recipes in southern cooking Louis had grown up with. Williams learned that his mother had joined the religion in New York. He was impatient at a meeting she was attending and interrupted it to borrow the book that was so much of their attention - it was a book about, and perhaps by, Thornton Chase; perhaps his The Bahai Revelation. Upon reading it he was convinced of the religion.

Williams was often in the company of early Bahá'í Hooper Harris and also gained skills in carpentry to build and repair furniture, and met Louis Gregory and witnessed him leading sessions at the national convention.

First trip south

In advance of the formal release of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, Gregory and Williams had teamed up to travel to the South to promote the religion. Gregory and Williams were “starting for the Southland to present the divine Glad Tidings in all the states mentioned in the Master’s great Tablet to the South" before March 1919, perhaps even a more than a year before. In March Gregory also reports that Williams had written an article on the Faith and the League of Nations for the Portsmouth Star. Williams addressed the 1919 national convention in New York, and was noted "of Cleveland". This may have been the event at which it became known he had also learned the prayer by the Báb in Arabic known as "the Remover of Difficulties" which he did at a convention setting when asked by Zia Baghdadi and Louis Gregory during which there was much division and settled upon his chanting the prayer. Amy was noted going to the convention in a Cleveland newspaper as well. Roy and his sister Amy had taken up residence in Cleveland, a community long knowning Gregory and integrated, which continued to be their place of residence. However there was covenant breaking causing disunity in the community and Roy sent 'Abdu’l-Bahá three letters which were answered in July. Williams had spoken of traveling for the Faith which 'Abdu’l-Bahá endorsed. Amy also received a Tablet. Williams was also mentioned in a Tablet to Gregory. Another uncle of Williams died in early May.

Though initiated before the formal unveiling of the Tablets of the Divine Plan as a group of Tablets at Ridvan, (the first Tablet to the Southern States was published in Star of the West in 1916,) the work became specifically known by the summer of 1919. By June Gregory and Williams had been through Richmond, Virginia, and Charleston and Huntington, West Virginia. Williams also made it to Atlanta during 1919 where Williams and Gregory spoke to many churches, colleges, and ministerial meetings, and encountered brave whites in Atlanta who supported the work of integrated meetings. In Atlanta some children had been much moved by the meetings. Public meetings across the south were regularly segregated in the period and some were unadvertised. Among Williams’ topics before November was of the Bahá'í Temple to which well-wishers gave him money to donate to the work of raising a Temple allowing all races to worship together, but the people were confused Williams and Gregory would not accept donations to help them in their travels. Williams went on to southern Florida, perhaps the first black Bahá'í to make it there, (and activity in Miami - see Howard MacNutt,) before traveling included to Austin, Texas, and speaking at Sam Houston College and HBCU Tillotson College, but ran out of money in Texas by spring 1920. Williams recalled Gregory and he would often meet ahead of public meetings with the local police to establish relations and was sometimes the only place they could sleep. At other times he received bus fair from Louis Gregory or Agnes Parsons. Overall, despite the tension of a year of riots across the nation, Williams found that the topic of the Covenant was the safe and calming to whites and blacks. That winter, in December 1919, Williams mother and grandmother attended the New York community's Feast which included Juliet Thompson and Laura Barney-Dreyfus. Williams work was more commented upon by July 1920. Williams efforts were second only to Gregory.

Next trips

Taken mid-winter, the 1920 US Census at the beginning of the year has Williams' residence on Cedar St. in Cleveland, working as a machinist in a factory. Williams returned to traveling though he always gave the priority of achievement to Gregory either following him or using his network of contacts. Across the next few years Gregory and Williams went through 30 towns just in South Carolina. Williams was also a skilled carpenter which aided financing the trip. However communications were cut off with the death of Joseph Hannen when he was run over in DC - in fact he had letters in his pocket for Williams on him. After this death there is a gap in documenting Williams efforts - Hannen was crucial in maintaining communications and continued correspondence with travelers in the South. Williams wept some 60 years later remembering receiving the blood splattered mail for him that Hannen had had on him.

In February 1921 Williams spoke in Philadelphia on the spreading religion. He was there two weeks among churches and colleges. Next Williams spoke at the 1921 national convention in later April in a section with May Maxwell on "the inviolability and power of the Word”. In August 1921 Williams received a Tablet from 'Abdu’l-Bahá referring to racist attitudes and animosities between the races, that, if not changed would result in "great calamities". Circa 1921 Williams also carried on a correspondence with Agnes Alexander and a blind Bahá'í in Japan as well. Gregory came through town in the fall of 1921.

Race Amity Convention

Williams was a member of the organizing committee of the first one held in DC. By December of 1921, after the first Race Amity Convention in DC in May, Williams aided the two white women Bahá'ís of Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of Thornton Chase but which he had long left behind, in setting up their own Convention. Planning began in November, which, to the surprise of Williams had already garnered interest and energy from the first convention, and to the surprise of William H. Randall, roughly equaled the first in size. He spoke at that convention. Williams wrote up an article for Star of the West published in April 1922. He notes it was among the last words of 'Abdu’l-Bahá to American sending a confirming telegram November 8 and dying twenty days later, and was held the first week of December. Christian ministers, a rabbi, Bahá’ís and philanthropic workers, choirs signing negro spirituals, piano and soloists and an audience around a thousand filled the Central High School auditorium. Mayor E. F. Leonard spoke as did a state senator. African American colonel Charles. L. Young spoke as well just a month before he died.

The 1920s and 30s

It would be three years before the next Race Amity Convention, perhaps partly out of grief of the passing of 'Abdu’l-Bahá. Williams was a member of the organizing committee of the next Race Amity Convention. From 1922 to 1924 there is a gap in mention of Williams. In 1924 he was named to a committee for having the next Race Amity Convention. It was held in Philadelphia. The Secretary of the Assembly claims it was Williams who “first planted the seed” of having the Convention there. This was the first appearance of Leslie Pinckney Hill at Bahá'í events and soon he would be counted as a Bahá'í while leading a nearby HBCU. Williams was reappointed to the Race Amity Convention committee in 1925, however no convention was held that year. In 1926 Williams was included in gathering called by National Spiritual Assembly to review race issues. In 1927 a national committee with Williams suggested to the national assembly to appoint national Race Amity Committee again, and a convention was held at Green Acre along with several in other cities. While many more occured in 1928 and 1929, there is a gap in mention of Williams as there was in the earlier 1920s. This time it extended to the 1930s. No Bahá'í source yet identified mentions him. A reasonable 1930 Census report has him with a wife of 10 years, Annie L. Williams, born in Jamaica and speaking Spanish, and living with a grandmother Nellie Joyce, the same surname as his mother Bertha. They were living on Unison Landing Rd in Burlington, New Jersey, just a few miles and a few years from being involved in the 1924 Amity Convention in Philadelphia. However things had changed by the 1940s and there is as yet no documentation when or how these changes came about.

He served as director of the trades department of the Hampton Institute in Virginia and as a supervisor for the National Youth Administration for 1939-1941.

To Greenville

Bernice Cooper--who attended Bennett College in Greensboro- learned of the Faith in Greenville, South Carolina, and joined the Faith in 1942. And she married Williams in 1941 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Bernice had been born 1914 in Seville, Florida, worked in South Carolina schools many years, and graduated from Bennett College in 1937. She was an honor student at least in 1934. Both her parents were born in South Carolina, while she and her mother rented a home in Orlando, Florida, in 1930 on North Bryan St. Her mother Olive was a waitress. In 1940 Bernice rented an apartment in Henderson, Vance county, North Carolina, on Rockspring Street, had finished 4 years of college and was a high school teacher, (as were all her neighbors) at Henderson Normal Institute, the only school for blacks under the segregation system at the time in Vance County. The couple briefly moved to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1943, just before national assembly member W. Kenneth Christian taught at the state college in nearby Greenville, North Carolina, and William Tucker joined the Faith, as well as the formation of the first assembly in North Carolina in Greensboro in 1943, (see Louise Sawyer.) However the couple soon moved then to Greenville to aid the community recover an assembly and were the first black pioneers to there because of the first Seven Year Plan, where he eventually joined the Chamber of Commerce as its first black member. The assembly re-formed in November, 1943. By then Williams was a master carpenter and had a shop for furniture restoration while Bernice taught at Sterling High School, which burned down in 1967. He continued teaching cabinet making carpentry for disadvantaged children until his retirement in 1973.

Newspaper coverage of the Williams, or at least the address they lived at on Madison St, and the Bahá'ís began in March 1944 under the segregation laws of the period and led up to the Ridvan period when members of the community including Williams attending the national convention as well as the Centennial of the Declaration of the Báb. The following October Williams appeared in Atlanta for a Race Unity meeting. However there were tensions over personality and sensabilities between Roy Williams and William Bidwell that did not relate to race. However their issues also complicated other differences in the community causing it to mount to a paralysis by 1944. Gregory came through in the winter of 1944-5 to try to improve community relations though the community remained unstable.

Another gap of some years from the mid-1940s passed until in 1950 when a series of meetings were held at various centers in Greensboro, North Carolina, with speakers including Williams with newspaper coverage and radio stations. Interestingly he was being called "Dr.". Could there have been an academic degree? In 1951 there was a North and South Carolina Regional conference in Greenville and coveraged noted that Williams was chair of the Greenville assembly.

De-segregation

In early 1953 the Greenville community rallied and Williams presented the case for Bahá'í meetings being integrated to the city council and was given approval, (and being called "Dr." again.)

Another gap in identified coverage and then in 1955 the community was noted holding Martyrdom of the Báb in Greenville; Williams was noted as “publicity director”.

Again there is a gap in known mentions from the mid-1950s. In 1961 a Mrs. Bernice Williams, quite possibly Roy's wife, was visible speaking to the city council against segregation.

The next visibility presently known is in 1963 when Williams gave a talk for World Peace Day in Greenville. Then, though Williams is not specifically mentioned, the Greenville community hosted an initiative similar to the Freedom Summer campaign with connections at the Bahá'í School in Michigan, later called Louhelen Bahá'í School, because Greenville was integrating its schools that Fall. Training sessions for a project were noted in the Bahá'í News in August. Some 80 youth attended the training in mid-June with faculty like Firuz Kazemzadeh. After the classes in various subjects, 27 individuals went to 8 locations including Greenville. Six youth went to Greenville under the sponsorship of the local assembly there for a 6 week program. Local youth joined in. The group worked on tutoring some 55 black students about to attend newly integrating schools, held informational meetings on the religion, and supported petitioning for the public swimming pool being integrated. The work was capped with a parent-teacher banquet reception at a church and a picnic for the students conducted by the Bahá'í teachers. The group visited many churches, restaurants, parks, stores, and a community center to demonstrate solidarity with the black community. Side ventures included the Bahá'í Summer School near Ashville, North Carolina, going to Greensboro, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference training camp near Savannah, Georgia.

It is not clear but probably it was during this period that Williams was a school principal though this was noted only much later.

After about a decade of not being mentioned, Williams was noted treasurer of Greenville Assembly in 1973, just after the wave of activity mostly down east in the state. Both Williams were elected to the Guilford County Spiritual Assembly in 1977.

Death

Williams death was announced January of 1982 in The American Bahá'í with telegrams from the Universal House of Justice and the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States after his death. The House said:

"Grieved passing devoted servant Cause Roy Williams. His pioeer effort foster racial amity following passsing Master and tireless service as member national amity convention committee fro its inception warrant honored place annals Cause America. Convey wife family loving sympathy assurange prayers progress his soul.

Williams died September 12-14, 1981, in Greensboro and the funeral was held in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he was buried in the Sadgwar family plot. The relationship of the Sadgwar family with Gregory, and the family's reconnection with the Bahá'ís from the mid-1970s, may have been a strong draw for him.

Bernice lived out her years in Greensboro where she died in 2002, and was buried.

See also

• Janet Ruhe-Schoen (2015). Champions of Oneness: Louis Gregory and His Shining Circle. Baháí Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61851-081-5. OCLC 982132115.

• Bahá'í Faith in South Carolina