HISTORY WATCH Archie Williams’ legacy
Archie Williams, born and raised in the East Bay during the Great Depression, lived a life full of great accomplishments while dedicating himself to the education and personal growth of others. Williams was an Olympic gold medalist, a flight instructor for the famous Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and a teacher, coach and educator at the former Sir Francis Drake High School for more than 20 years. With the recent renaming of Drake High to Archie Williams High School, his legacy will be celebrated and kept alive for generations to come. Williams was born in Oakland in 1915 at the height of America’s Jim Crow era. At that time, African Americans were denied most civil rights and opportunities, while often shouldering the fear of racial violence. In that atmosphere, Williams never wavered in his desire to succeed and his determination to get an education. He grew up near Telegraph Avenue on the border of Berkeley and Oakland. As a young child, his parents ran a grocery store and rented rooms to University of California, Berkeley, students. His father died when Williams was 10 and his mother, Lillian, and grandmother, Fannie Wall, ran a home for local children, including many orphans. Wall was well known throughout the East Bay as a social activist and was a good friend of educator and civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune. Williams was always intrigued with airplanes and flight, and dreamed of one day becoming a pilot, even winning a model airplane building contest sponsored by the Oakland Tribune. From his parents’ front yard on Telegraph, he could see the distant Campanile Tower at UC Berkeley and was determined to one day earn an engineering degree from Cal.
Though Williams grew up in a relatively safe, integrated neighborhood, he said he remembered not being able to join the Boy Scouts with his White friends and the signs at the nearby Idora Park pool that read, “No Blacks allowed.”
While attending University High School in Oakland, Williams ran track, mostly for fun, but did get his name in the local papers after winning some quarter-mile races.
After high school, he and a friend decided to enroll at San Mateo Junior College, which was free to attend. Within a short time, Williams was taking advanced math classes and getting good grades. He joined the track team coached by Tex Byrd, who helped Williams improve his running skills while encouraging him to study and get the grades he would need to attend Cal. Although he won the junior college conference in his distance, when he transferred to Cal in the fall of 1935, he was still relatively unknown.
As a sophomore, Williams began taking courses to earn his degree and joined the track team coached by Brutus Hamilton under whose tutelage Williams soon posted record times in 400-meter races. At the 1936 NCAA finals in Chicago, Williams set a new world record of 46.1 seconds. This earned him an automatic berth at the Olympic qualifying meet in New York City. He was accompanied by Hamilton, who was an assistant coach for the Olympic team and his teammate, Bob Clark, who would win the silver medal in the decathlon later that summer. Williams finished first at the trails and was soon on a boat to Europe, the Olympics and athletic fame.
History Watch is written by Scott Fletcher, a volunteer at the Marin History Museum, marinhistory.org. Images included in History Watch are available for purchase by calling 415-382-1182 or by email at info@ marinhistory.org