“Actual unity will be achieved, not by preaching, pleading or exhortations, but almost unconsciously as people work together for mutual benefits to each other and the advancement of the race as a whole. Meaningful, practical activities that involve–even children in attacking the problems of our race will be the cement in which we will call unity.” Dr. Chancellor Williams
Chancellor, the Man
Dr. Chancellor James Williams was born on December 22, 1893, in Bennetsville, South Carolina, and was the youngest of five children. His father was a slave (prisoner of war), and his mother was a nurse and an evangelist. He attended Marlboro Academy for his elementary and secondary education. After moving to Washington, D.C., he attended Paul Lawrence Dunbar High and received his Master of Arts Degree in Education at Howard University in 1930. Chancellor completed postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago and Iowa in 1935. He obtained a P.H.D. in Sociology from American University in Washington D.C. in 1949.
In 1945, Dr. Williams joined the faculty of Howard University in the History Department. He retired in 1966 but returned in the early 70’s as a distinguished lecturer.
At Howard University, he placed himself under the guiding influence of one of the greatest African scholars of the 20th century, Professor William Leo Hansberry. After becoming a visiting research scholar at Oxford University and the University of London, he immediately began his field studies in Mother Africa. His presence in Africa would give him the cultural and ideological nucleus destined to illuminate his soul and mold him into a magnificent scholar of World African history.
During his research studies, he was based at the University College in Ghana, which later became the University of Ghana. Dr. Williams was actually residing in Ghana when it gained independence from Britain in 1957, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah.
His many accomplishments included the positions of high school teacher and principal, university professor, President of Log Cabin Baking Company, and Vice President and General Manager of Cooperative Energies. Blind and experiencing declining health, the last years of his outstanding life were spent in a nursing home in Washington, D.C. Our brilliant scholar was the father of (14) children and joined the Ancestors on December 7, 1992.
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