Cecil J. Williams

In the summer of 2019, Williams opened the Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum to house hundreds of images and artifacts from the civil rights movement. The museum looks like an ultra-modern-day home which Williams designed himself in 1983, 36 years before he made it into his own museum. The theme of the museum is "The South Carolina Events that Changed America". The museum will also double as the neighborhood community center.

In 2015, Williams invented the FilmToaster, a camera scanning platform and system that digitizes film negatives faster than other methods. In 2019–2020, in collaboration with the Barry and Peggy Goldwater Foundation, Arizona Highways magazine, and Scottsdale's Museum of the West, photographs by Barry Goldwater were on exhibit. All the photos were printed by the FilmToaster.

As a Claflin University student, Williams was named an honoree of both Outstanding Young Men of America and Who's Who Among Students in American Colleges & Universities. He was given the 1994 Freedom Fighter Award by the Orangeburg branch of the NAACP. Also in 1994, he received a commendation by the S.C. House of Representatives, introduced by Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter. He received the Presidential Citation in 1995 from Dr. Henry N. Tisdale, president of Claflin University. In 2006, he was also the recipient of Claflin University's highest award, the Bythewood Award. The South Carolina African-American Heritage Commission gave him the 2006 "Preserving Our Place in History" Award. In 2016, the Commission presented him with the DeCosta Jr. Trailblazer Award.

Williams ran as a candidate in the South Carolina Democratic Party leading up to the 1984 United States Senate election in South Carolina. He was the second black person to do so in the state. He lost in a close race to Melvin Purvis. He ran again as a candidate in the Democratic primary preceding the 1996 United States Senate election in South Carolina. He lost to Elliott Springs Close.

Although better known for photography, Williams' painting, art, graphics, and architectural renderings represent proficiency, especially among minimalists. Although at that time, because of his race, he was barred from attending Clemson University in his state to study architecture, he drew plans for several residences; one of which was featured in the June 1977 issue of Ebony; "Space Age Home".

The only time Williams' work appeared on the cover of JET was his picture of Coretta Scott King speaking at the protest during the 1969 Charleston hospital workers' strike.

He also documented Harvey Gantt's desegregation of Clemson University in 1963, the 1969 Charleston hospital workers' strike, and the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre. The massacre involved the South Carolina Highway Patrol shooting and killing three African American men and injuring 27 other South Carolina State University students.

In January of 1960, during Williams' senior year at Claflin University, he was visiting relatives in New York City. He had read that John F. Kennedy would be at a downtown hotel at a press conference, and went there in hopes of capturing some images. He forgot his press pass, and the hotel security was about to kick him out of the room right as Kennedy was about to come up to the podium. Kennedy told them not to kick him out, and ended up giving Williams his personal address. For the next year, while campaigning all over the United States, Williams became a close acquaintance of Kennedy, and one of his favorite photographers. Williams was one of the few in the press community to be allowed on Kennedy's private 10-seater jet.

He graduated from Claflin in 1960 with a bachelor's degree in art. He studied under painter and sculptor Arthur Rose Sr. there.

Williams worked as the official photographer for the South Carolina branch of the NAACP, South Carolina State University, Claflin University, and National Conference of Black Mayors, Inc. for more than 20 years, beginning in the 1960s.

Williams has photographed significant desegregation efforts in South Carolina since the 1950s. Some of his most notable pictures are of the activity during the Briggs v. Elliott case in Summerton. It was the first of five desegregation cases pushing to integrate public schools in the United States. The five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that declared that having "separate but equal" public schools for whites and blacks was unconstitutional.

Cecil J. Williams (born November 26, 1937) is an American photographer, publisher, author and inventor best known for his photography documenting the civil rights movement in South Carolina beginning in the 1950s.

Cecil J. Williams was born on November 26, 1937, and raised in Orangeburg, South Carolina.