Beryl Williams

The Dr. Beryl W. Williams Scholarship was established to honor Williams, Dean of Continuing Studies at Morgan State University, upon her retirement in 1981. Williams believed that, “continuing education was of great and lasting value to Morgan State University and as the workforce changed there would be a need for people to retool their skills.”

In 1975, she received a plaque of recognition from the city of Baltimore's Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and the news was featured in Jet magazine.

In 1974, Williams was nominated by Mayor Schaefer and unanimously confirmed to the Board of School Commissioners by the Baltimore City Council. She was Vice President of the Baltimore City School Board until 1984.

Williams taught at several southern colleges before moving to Baltimore in 1948 where she began her career at the old Morgan College as a part-time English instructor before becoming a full-time English and Mathematics instructor. She was appointed the first female academic Dean at Morgan State University, for the Center of Continuing Education, in 1970. She remained in that position until her retirement.

She was born Beryl Elizabeth Warner in Bangor, Maine. Her father was a Bangor and Aroostook Railroad porter and her mother owned and operated a Bangor boarding house. In 1935, she became the first African-American to receive a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Maine; she earned her master's degree in mathematics in 1940, and in 1972 she received an honorary doctorate of pedagogy degree from the same university.

Beryl Elizabeth Williams (May 23, 1914 – May 7, 1999) played a leading role in the desegregation of the Baltimore public school system and is considered the mother of continuing education at Morgan State University, a historical black college located in Baltimore, Maryland.