Williams, Fannie Barrier (1855–1944)

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Williams, Fannie Barrier (1855–1944)

African-American lecturer and civil-rights leader . Born on February 12, 1855, in Brockport, New York; died on March 4, 1944, in Brockport; daughter of Anthony J. Barrier (a businessman) and Harriet (Prince) Barrier; graduated from the New York State Normal School in Brockport, 1870; attended the New England Conservatory of Music and the School of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C.; married S. Laing Williams (an attorney), in 1887 (died 1921); no children.

Taught at freedmen's schools throughout the southern United States (c. 1880s); co-founded Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses, Chicago (1891); spoke at World's Columbian Exposition (1893); co-founded National League of Colored Women (1893); inducted into Chicago Woman's Club as first black member (1895); co-founded National Association of Colored Women (1896); co-organized Colored Women's Conference of Chicago (1900); appointed director of Frederick Douglass Center (1905); elected to Chicago Library Board as first black and first female member (1924); published work included contributions to A New Negro for a New Century (1900), co-authored with Booker T. Washington and others.

Fannie Barrier Williams was born in 1855 in Brockport, New York, the youngest of three children born to Anthony J. Barrier and Harriet Prince Barrier , the only black couple in town. Accepted in the community throughout her childhood, she studied the classics and graduated from Brockport's State Normal School in 1870 with the intention of becoming a teacher. In contrast to her experiences in the northern United States were those Williams had as she moved throughout the South to teach at the freedmen's schools that had been established during Reconstruction. There she encountered the overt racial prejudice that proved disillusioning to such an idealistic young woman, but also shaped her later career.

Passionate about the arts, she left teaching in the South to attend classes at both the New England Conservatory and the Washington, D.C., School of Fine Arts before marrying attorney S. Laing Williams and moving to Chicago in 1887 to assist her husband in promoting his law practice. In Chicago, the couple was soon accepted as an integral part of the city's closely knit black community, and Williams became friends with well-known activist Ida Wells-Barnett , who encouraged the transplanted young woman to become active in civil affairs, particularly in the club movement that would later result in the Colored Women's Conference of Chicago. Williams was up to the task, and helped organize the inter-racial Provident Hospital, as well as an affiliated training school for nurses, in 1891. A charismatic, attractive, articulate, and well-educated black woman, Williams was welcomed at many social organizations; in 1893, she addressed the World's Congress of Representative Women on "The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation," and spoke as well before the World's Parliament of Religions. These engagements quickly put her in the national spotlight, and led to numerous speaking engagements across the nation. In 1893, she acted on her experiences of racial discrimination by co-founding the National League of Colored Women (NLCW), an organization that would later become the National Association of Colored Women and in which she was active throughout the remainder of her life. Her activities on behalf of the Colored Women's Conference of Chicago in 1900 resulted in support structures that benefited families throughout the city.

Ironically, a year after founding the NLCW, Williams again encountered racism, this time from a Northern source. When her name came up on the list of proposed members at the exclusive Chicago Woman's Club, it caused an extended debate among the members, all of whom were white. After a year of sometimes hostile discussion, but with the support of several influential friends, Williams broke the color barrier by becoming the club's first African-American member in 1895. This experience prompted Williams to take an even more active role in promoting the cause of blacks, most of whom lived in far less comfortable surroundings. Contributing essays on the subject of race to such newspapers as the Chicago Record-Herald and New York Age, she also enthusiastically spoke out in favor of Booker T. Washington's program of self-improvement and economic, rather than social, advancement. Perhaps because of her support, Washington supported Laing Williams in his successful bid to become assistant district attorney for Chicago in 1908. Sixteen years later, Williams became the first woman as well as the first African-American to be appointed a member of Chicago's Library Board. She held this position for two years, leaving Illinois in 1926 to return to her family in Brockport, where she died 18 years later, at the age of 89.