Early Life and Career
Williams was born in Brunswick, Georgia in 1894, the daughter of Josephine Frances (Jenkins) and Ephraim Wilford Worthy. She attended an all-black public elementary school and Selden Normal School in Brunswick, and then studied at Atlanta University for one year. In 1917 her family moved to Trenton, New Jersey, where she attended the State Normal School (now The College of New Jersey) as an extension student. She taught in the Trenton school system for eight years.
She met Samuel A. Williams, a Newark post office worker, and they were married in New York City on April 2, 1926. Their only child, Samuel Alexander, was born on February 15, 1927. After their son's birth, the Williams family moved to East Orange. She became active in civic and church activities, as well as becoming youth division adviser and board member of the local branch of the NAACP. Her husband was a member of the national board of the NAACP and was New Jersey state president.
Williams volunteered for the YWCA of The Oranges and Maplewood and served in several leadership capacities. She was one of the organizers of the East Orange League of Women Voters, serving as its vice president in 1947. In 1952, Governor Alfred Driscoll appointed her to the New Jersey Migrant Labor Board.
Read more about this topic: Madaline A. Williams
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Is it not enough to make me come back to life out of spite, to have someone who spat in my face while I existed come and rub my feet when I am beginning to exist no longer?”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)