ABOUT CECIL J. WIILIAMS
Orangeburg native Cecil Williams has been a photographer more than 60 years and owns the largest collection of photos documenting racial change in America. His images appear in hundreds of book and in 15 films. He has had 100 one-man exhibits and recently created the Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum - the state’s first and only of its kind.
Growing up, wanting to draw and take pictures, the segregated library barred Williams at age 9. Rather than be discouraged, he was inspired when his brother gave him a hand-me-down Kodak Brownie. One photo opportunity in Charleston transformed him: Thurgood Marshall arriving to engage in legislation that led to Brown v. Board of Education.
Other encounters would impact his life - leading Arthur Ashe in a semi-finals tennis match during a national tournament (Ashe won), photographing Civil Rights protests at age 18 for JET Magazine, and documenting Harvey Gantt's "integration with dignity" at Clemson University. In 1960, he was befriended by Senator John F. Kennedy while attempting to photograph Kennedy's appearance at a New York hotel. He also photographed The Orangeburg Massacre, Edwards v. South Carolina, Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike, and hundreds more events. He was twice arrested while marching and demonstrating.
In addition to over 200 awards and citations, he earned the Governor’s Award for the Humanities, the Order of the Palmetto, and The Times and Democrat’s 2018 Person of the Year. “Any success I have can be attributed to so many people whose shoulders I stand on, then and now,” Williams said. He is married to Barbara J. Williams, retired educator, and president of the Orangeburg NAACP.
In addition, Cecil Williams, is leading this initiative to ask SCOTUS to rename school desegregation case
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SUMMERTON, S.C.Civil rights leaders in South Carolina plan to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to rename the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregation of public schools across the country.
Over the next three months, a group representing past plaintiffs and their descendants plans to file paperwork asking the high court to reorder the set of five 1954 cases that led to the Brown ruling, The Post and Courier reports. The group, which has teamed up with a lawyer in Camden, South Carolina, wants to replace Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka with a South Carolina case that was filed earlier but is lesser known.
Briggs v. Elliott is a South Carolina case named after Harry Briggs, one of 20 parents who brought a lawsuit against Clarendon County School Board President R.W. Elliott.