Summer job: Williams at the Breakers Hotel in Atlantic City in 1950

In 1949, the summer before he entered South Carolina State College as a pre-law major, Williams worked as a bellhop at the Ocean Forest Hotel in Myrtle Beach. In the summers to follow, eager for new experiences, he ventured farther up the coast, working at traditional oceanfront hotels like the Cavalier in Virginia Beach and the Breakers in Atlantic City. He made enough money during the summers to pay his way through the school year, enabling him to devote all his time to his studies. He also took along used textbooks so he could get a head start on fall classes in his spare time.

But there wouldn't be a lot of private time. The most lasting benefit of his summer work wasn't financial or scholastic, but social. The Breakers provided a dormitory for its college student workers, and living there gave Williams a happy glimpse of what life might be like in a more egalitarian world. "White, black, Jewish-boys and girls-all together, working together, helping each other," he remembers. "Sometimes the hotel would sponsor picnics on the beach for the student workers, and we would roast wieners-kosher wieners."

Back at S.C. State, Williams served in the university's ROTC program and in his junior year met his future wife, Jean McKiever of Conway, who was majoring in home economics. After he graduated, a financial setback kept him out of law school, and he accepted a job with an insurance company in Augusta, Ga. His work took him to Birmingham, Ala., and other places in the Deep South where he witnessed ugly scenes of racism that made a deep impression on him.

Wedding Day: Williams and his wife Jean McKiever Williams

He and Jean married in December 1954 at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Myrtle Beach, and soon afterward two job offers brought Williams to Horry County. His father-in-law, Charles McKiever, who was beginning to lose his eyesight to diabetes, asked him to help him with his business, McKiever's Funeral Home in Conway. Williams couldn't make up his mind whether or not to accept, so he asked his mother for advice. "God put you two together for a reason, and He will show you a way," she told him. At about the same time, E.M. Henry, principal of Chestnut High School, North Myrtle Beach's black secondary school, offered Williams a position as a history teacher.

These two offers set the pattern for his career. He took the teaching job, which launched his career as an educator, and he began working part-time at the funeral home, learning the business through his father-in-law. He passed the state board examination for morticians and has been a licensed funeral director since 1961. Almost as soon as he began teaching, he started work on his master's degree in education and public school administration, taking courses at night and during the summer. By the time he finished his master's, also in 1961, he was teaching at Whittemore High School in Conway.

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