Emma Hamilton Dancing

John Francis Williams was born in 1896. He received a bachelor of laws degree from Yale Law School in 1922, and was a member of Zeta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. He began practicing law in Philadelphia in 1925. Two years later, he joined the Raymond Pace Alexander Law Office, considered the largest Black law firm at the time. He served as a deputy attorney general, and later practiced with the firm of Williams, Spaulding, Tucker, Watson, and Baker.

In 1934, he was quoted by a newspaper as saying that a “battle to the finish” was needed against segregation and that:

Negroes who passively accept segregation are not being fair to their race … a movement is growing to cut us off socially from the rest of the world. Such a movement is undemocratic and un-American. As soon as that fact is realized by white people, segregation will be at an end. We must, by all resources at our command, make them realize it. All changes will be gradual, however, and only time will completely solve the race problem.

He was married to Irene B. Williams. He was a member of the Elks, the Pyramid Club of Philadelphia, and the Masons, and served as president of a Black law club in Philadelphia. He died in Philadelphia in 1950.