Dr. Percy V. Williams, a pioneering educator who was Harford County’s first African American school board president, died Nov. 14 at Harford Memorial Hospital in Havre de Grace. The Harford County native and Havre de Grace resident, for more than half a century a forceful advocate for equal educational opportunities for all children, was 95.

“Dr. Williams brought about necessary change to Harford County with respect to cultural equality,” current school board President Mark M. Wolkow said in the school system’s remembrance honoring Dr. Williams that was published Tuesday. “His legacy will outlive all of us as each student who graduates from Harford County Public Schools takes advantage of opportunities set forth by his leadership and actions.”

Dr. Williams was one of 10 children of the late Hattie Brown and Vandellia Armitage Williams, a sharecropping farmer whose family was uprooted from the Perryman peninsula during the creation of Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1917 when Dr. Williams was just 3. The Williams children grew up in the era of segregation when black children in Harford County were not allowed to attend school with white children and were shunted into crowded, older buildings, where they were taught only by members of their own race and classes stopped at seventh grade. To earn a high school diploma, a black child had to leave the county to attend school in neighboring counties or Baltimore City, usually in a “colored only” school.

“My father was a common laborer, but he insisted that all of us would get an education,” Dr. Williams told his biographer, John Lee Sr., author of “Portrait of a Black Educator: The Struggle Continues,” in 2002. “My parents paid for me to ride the train to Elkton, where I graduated in 1931. My parents made sure that all of my brothers and sisters went to some sort of school beyond high school.”

After moving to a small farm off Old Robin Hood Road between Aberdeen and Havre de Grace, Dr. Williams’ father, Vandellia, who died at age 100 in 1987, became a founder of the Harford County Colored PTA, the group instrumental in getting the white establishment in Harford County to offer high school courses and diplomas to black children. Following his graduation from high school in Cecil County, Dr. Williams earned his teaching certificate from Bowie Normal School and began teaching at the Havre de Grace Colored Elementary School on the corner of Stokes and Alliance streets. He studied for five summers to earn his bachelor’s degree from Virginia State University and later studied nights and summers to earn a master’s degree from Temple University in Philadelphia.

During World War II, Dr. Williams served tours with the Army in the European and Pacific theaters. Returning home in 1946, he was appointed supervisor of colored schools for Harford County. During this period, the county school system under Superintendent Charles Willis, and with the approval of the local African American community, consolidated its smaller, colored only schools into two larger facilities that provided classes from grades one through 12. In 1950, Dr. Williams was named principal of the new Central Consolidated School in Hickory, today’s Hickory Elementary. Dr. Leon Roye became principal of the Havre de Grace Consolidated School in Oakington, today the Roye-Williams Elementary School, named in honor of Dr. Roye and Dr. Williams.

During his tenure as a principal, Dr. Williams earned a doctorate in education from New York University, becoming one of the only educators in the county at that time to hold a doctorate. In 1962, he joined the Maryland State Department of Education, serving in a variety of capacities until 1970, when he was assistant state superintendent, the highest position ever held in the state agency by a Harford County resident. He oversaw programs to help both disadvantaged and gifted and talented students.

The Harford County school system Dr. Williams left in 1962 was still segregated by race, even though the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the so-called separate but equal doctrine in education eight years earlier. It was a situation that did not sit well with Dr. Williams and many people in the Harford County African American community; however, even when the issue was pressed in court, the local white establishment pushed back and won delaying actions, claiming the integration of schools should not be forced and warning that many black teachers could lose their jobs as a result. The Harford school system was not fully integrated until the 1965-66 school year and then, only after pressure from the state department of education, of which Dr. Williams was then a part.

Two years after retiring from the state education department, Dr. Williams was appointed to the Harford Board of Education by then-Gov. Harry Hughes. He served 10 years, including two years as board president.

Patrick Spicer, legal counsel for the Harford County Board of Education who recently wrote a history of the end of school segregation in the county, said Dr. Williams was one of several outstanding leaders who tenaciously fought segregation.

“As a historical figure, he probably is one of the most important people in Harford County in the 20th century,” Spicer said. “He did not give up, and I think without his leadership... desegregation may have taken an even longer period of time in Harford County, or been more difficult than it was. It’s hard to underestimate his impact here.”

Barbara Wheeler, who is serving in her second year as the superintendent of Kent County Public Schools, remembers meeting Dr. Williams for the first time in the 1960s when she was a teacher at a Title I school in Baltimore City and Dr. Williams was in charge of those schools with large enrollments of disadvantaged students.

“He would come and visit my classrooms on a regular basis,” Wheeler said. “He was like a mentor to me.”

Wheeler said she remembers Dr. William’s devotion to enhancing instruction for students from poor families.

“He was an advocate for poor children,” she said. “That was part of the whole Title I program. He wanted Title I children to have experiences they wouldn’t normally have had.”

Wheeler would cross paths with Dr. Williams later in her career when she served as the executive director of elementary education for Harford County Public Schools and Dr. Williams was a school board member.

“I just remember him being very supportive of me as a person and an educator,” she said. “He would certainly be remembered as a pioneer.”

After leaving the school board, Dr. Williams established several tutorial programs to aid at-risk students. He was a lay leader at the Union United Methodist Church in Havre de Grace for more than 65 years. In 1994, the school system and county government endowed a scholarship in his honor for deserving students entering the field of education. There have been 10 Williams Scholars to date, according to the school system.

Dr. Williams was inducted into the Harford County Public Schools Educators Hall of Farm in 2001. Two years earlier, the editors of The Aegis named him one of Harford County’s most influential people of the 20th century.

Dr. Williams and his late wife, Bernice, a teacher who died in 1988, did not have any children. Survivors include five sisters, Gladys Williams, Mary Williams, Eva Williams and Catherine Burks, all of Aberdeen, Mildred Battle, of Sykesville, and a brother, Dr. Irving Williams, of Rockville.

Funeral services will be held at noon Nov. 21 at Grace United Methodist Church in Aberdeen with a viewing preceding from 10 a.m. to noon. Donations may be made in Dr. Williams memory to Union United Methodist Church restoration, P.O. Box 809, Aberdeen, 21001.

The school board will honor Dr. Williams’ memory during its meeting Monday evening.

Record staff members Rachel Konopacki and Bryna Zumer contributed to this article.

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