JOSEPH B. WILLIAMS: USMMA GRADUATE

In 1944, Joseph B. Williams made history becoming the first African American man to graduate from the US Merchant Marine Academy.

Upon graduating, Williams continued navigating unchartered waters by serving in the Navy — which was finally accepting African-American soldiers as officers — thus becoming the second African-American man to be made an officer in the Naval Civil Engineer Corps.

Williams founded the High Mulzac Endowment Fund in honor of the first African-American master of a U.S. flag merchant ship. This fund supports programs for minority students at the Academy.

Williams served in both WWII and the Korean War, after which he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in 1949 and law degree in 1954 from New York University.

After becoming head of New York’s Family Court and Criminal Courts in 1966, and headed the Model Cities Program with a mission to improve life in the inner city. He was a co-founder of the Coalition of Blacks in the Courts. In 1986 he was appointed to the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Team, where he remained until his retirement in 1991.

Joseph B. Williams (1922-1992)

“The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.”- Albert Einstein

photo credit: http://www.usmm.org/cadetcorps.html