Honoring A Gospel Legend Through Pictures in 30 Seconds

Marion Williams, an American gospel singer, was born in Miami, Florida on August 29, 1927. Her father, originally from Nassau, Bahamas, worked as a butcher, a barber, and a music teacher while her mother, born in South Carolina, worked as a laundress. One of 11 siblings, she was one of only three who survived past the first year. She grew up attending two adjacent Pentecostal churches, the Church of God and the Church of God in Christ. Her father died when she was nine. By the age of 14, she had left school to help support the family by working as a maid, a child nurse, and a laundress, becoming the family’s chief supporter after her mother lost both legs to diabetes. She sang at church, tent revivals, and on street corners. In 1943, she joined the Melrose Gospel Singers, a 10-member group that accompanied Rev. Jerry Pratt in churches throughout Florida.
In 1945, while Williams visited her sister Rebecca in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she attended a Clara Ward Singers Concert at the Ward African Methodist Episcopal Church. There Williams met and was invited to join the Ward Singers, but since she was only 16, her mother refused. She ultimately joined them and performed with them from 1947 to 1958. In 1958, she formed her own group, the Stars of Faith, with fellow former Ward singers Frances Steadman, Kitty Parham and Henrietta Waddy.
She appeared in Bill Moyers’s PBS special Amazing Grace (1991), the film Fried Green Tomatoes (1992), and Wynton Marsalis’s production In This House, On This Morning (1993). During 1993, she became the first singer and gospel artist to receive a MacArthur Foundation grant and was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors. She died of renal failure on July 2, 1994 in Philadelphia. She is survived by her son Robin, her brother Isaac, and three grandchildren.