"OUR RICH BLACK HERITAGE" : FRANCES BARRIER WILLIAMS

Ever since before the American Civil War, Civil Rights and Education have been two of the top priorities for Black People in America. Although Black People have more representation today than they had in the early 1970s[ in the form of Black Senators, House Representatives, City Council Members, Police Jurors, and School Board members ], the fact is that the problems in the areas of Civil Rights and Education still exists similar as they did in the early 1970s. Somehow or another Black People are going to hath to organize, strategize, and plan ways of getting our elected public officials to address these two concerns. If not, we may as well go ahead and accept the second-class citizenship that they been trying to give us for years! Well, this week’s Black Heroine is Frances Barrier Williams. She was a Negro Educator and Civil Rights & Women’s Rights Activist. Frances was born on February 12, 1855 to Anthony and Harriet Barrier. Their family lived in Brockport, New York( an area mostly populated by White People ). Her father owned several profitable businesses and had built a solid real estate portfolio{ in case you didn’t know, since New York had “ALREADY” granted slaves their “FREEDOM” as early as 1827, Negroes were allowed to own Businesses and property }. In 1870, Frances became the first Negro to graduate from Brockport State Normal School[ now Suny-College at Brockport ]. She experienced racism at its worst when she accepted a teaching position in Hannibal , Missouri. Words can’t describe what Frances had to endure and witness when she moved there( this experience is said to have been what got her started in activism and civil rights ). From Missouri, she traveled to Boston, Massachusetts to study piano at the New England Conservatory of Music. While at the Music Conservatory , she once again had an encounter with racism. It seems that many of the Southern White students that attended the Music Conservatory objected to Frances’s presence, and she was pressured to leave! She packed her bags and headed for Washington, D.C.{ a area where many Black Educators were migrating to }. Once she got there, Frances began socialising and making connections with other Black Educators[ it was in Washington, D.C. that she met her future husband, Samuel Laing Williams, they were married in August 1887 ]. To her dismay, when she enrolled in the School of Fine Arts to study portrait painting in Washington, D.C., she once again experienced significant difficulties due to her race. After staying in Washington for about 2 years, the couple moved to Chicago, Illinois. From 1900 up until 1921 when her her husband died, she was an outspoken supporter of Booker T Washington and The National Negro Business League. In 1924, Frances Barrier Williams became the first woman and the first Black American to be named to the Chicago Library Board. Additionally, it is duly noted that Frances was the first Black female to gain membership to the Chicago Woman’s Club . On March 4, 1944, Frances Barrier Williams died after a long illness.She was buried at the Brockport Cemetery on March 14, 1944. In 2014, Suny-College at Brockport named Fannie Barrier Williams Women of Courage Scholarship after her. In 2022, the school renamed their Liberal Arts Building in honor of her, it now being named the Fannie Barrier Williams Liberal Arts Building. The village of Brockport has also designated October 6, 2022 as Fannie Barrier Williams Day.