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 Cecil Williams,
a native of
Orangeburg, graduated from Claflin University with a bachelor’s degree. He is a
professional photographer, videographer and author/publisher of three books.
By the age of nine, he had already begun his career in
photography, having fallen in love with the profession after acquiring a
hand-me-down camera from his family. By 15, he was working professionally and as
a freelancer for such publications as JET, the Afro-American and the
Pittsburgh
Courier and as a stringer for The Associated Press.
Over the years, Williams’ photographs have appeared in thousands
of publications in the United States and abroad. In the 1970s, he founded and
published View South News, first as a quarterly magazine and later as a
newspaper. Through the small press operation of his business, he has published
49 books for clients throughout the South.
In 1996, he was the writer, producer and director of “Freedom
and Justice,” an 86-minute film documentary. His publication, “Freedom and
Justice: Four Decades of the Civil Rights Movement As Seen By a Black
Photographer of the Deep South,” is one of the most comprehensive sources of
photographs from that era. In May 2006, he published a sequel photo-documentary
entitled “Outside the Box in Dixie.”
In February 1994, Williams received a commendation from the S.C.
General Assembly for the photographic exhibit “Quiet Heroes.” In August 1995, he
was selected by the S.C. Arts Commission to participate as artist-in-residence
at William A. Perry High School in Columbia.
In Oct. 1995, Williams received the Presidential Citation,
awarded by President Henry N. Tisdale of Claflin University, for outstanding
contributions to the college and community. In April 1996, Williams was featured
as one of four civil rights photographers in a screening of “Exposures of a
Movement” at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. In Feb. 2005, he
was the featured presenter during the MLK program at Exeter Academy in New
Hampshire.
Other honors include the Freedom Fighter Award, presented in
1994 by the Orangeburg Branch NAACP; Outstanding Young Men of America; Who’s Who
in American Colleges and Universities; and the Martin Luther King Jr.
Distinguished Service Award, presented in 2005 by Delta Zeta Lambda Chapter of
Orangeburg Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc.
For more than 20 years, Williams was the official yearbook
photographer for South Carolina State University, Claflin University, the South
Carolina NAACP and the National Conference of Black Mayors.
COMING IN
2011....UNFORGETTABLE
by Cecil
Williams
 ORANGEBURG 1968
A Place and Time Remembered
by Sonny Dubose and Cecil Williams
Orangeburg 1968 documents one of the least remembered chapters
of America s Civil Rights history the Orangeburg Massacre. On February 8, 1968,
over 150 students gathered on the campus of South Carolina State University to
protest the segregation policies of the town s only bowling alley. Amid
escalating tensions, students protested by building a bonfire on the edge of the
campus. State Highway Patrolmen fired live ammunition into the unarmed group in
an attempt to end the protest. Killed were Henry Smith, Samuel Hammond, both
students at South Carolina State University, and Delano Middleton, a 17-year-old
Wilkinson High School student. The Orangeburg Massacre was the first incident of
its kind on an American university campus but it received little national
attention and almost no mention in histories of the Civil Rights Movement. In
producing this outstanding volume, Sonny DuBose, author of The Road to Brown,
and Cecil Williams, author-photographer of Out-of-the Box in Dixie, and
Freedom
and Justice, compiled interviews and photographs of living participants
and observers. In addition, participants are included interviewed by Avery
Research Institute College of Charleston. Williams exclusive and extraordinary
photographs from this publication will also be featured in 10 seconds in
Orangeburg, a PBS documentary scheduled in March 2008 and Black Magic, an ESPN
program.
- ISBN-10: 0944514332
- ISBN-13: 978-0944514337
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Hardcover $44.95**
Review The Times and Democrat
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Out-of-the-Box in
Dixie |
Now in the second
edition...The missing history! The unrecorded quiet heroism! Spanning
more than a half century of racial change from Briggs v. Elliott in 1949
to the Rally for the Removal of the Confederate Flag in 2000, Cecil
Williams' expansive volume explores the Civil Rights Movement from the
inside perspective of an activist and photojournalist. This is the story
of people who changed the course of United States history and caused the
national office of the NAACP to redirect its approach from suing
separate but equal facilities to challenging segregation as a violation
of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 'The Orangeburg
Freedom Movement,' the second wave was the catalyst for the Montgomery
Bus Boycott, which many historians claim was the beginning of America's
Civil Rights Movement. Until recently, few people have heard of Briggs
v. Elliott or the Orangeburg Freedom Movement. Readers will be
enlightened by the indisputable photographic record of Cecil Williams as
he profiles the heroic people in South Carolina who sacrificed for
democratic reform and societal change
- ISBN-10: 0944514766
- ISBN-13:
978-0944514764
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Hardcover $44.95**
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