Williams: Standard setter

Native Oklahoman’s life has made a difference for many young people

By Michael Kinney

Norris Williams is an Oklahoman to his core. But he’s not the cowboy hat and Wrangler-wearing, boot-kicking stereotypical Oklahoman that many people envision when the state’s name is mentioned.

Williams was born and raised in Oklahoma City. He attended Paul Lawrence Dunbar Elementary, F. D. Moon Junior High and Frederick Douglass High before going to Wiley College in Texas. Williams has seen the landscape of his home state go through a transformation.

“My whole life is Oklahoma City,” Williams said. “That is why I take pride in the history of this state. My father was born in 1907, which was statehood. You look at the history of this state or the University of Oklahoma, we have made a profound impact on the rest of the country. The people from Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher (the first African-American to attend and graduate from the OU Law School) and the court case to desegregate professional school, to Prentice Gautt and desegregating college football. We were one of the first schools to have a black football player on the team.”

But in his own way, Williams has been a part of several history-making events at OU.

“Any program that is currently at OU that focuses on students of color, he authored it,” said Gus Frank, Williams’ assistant of 20 years. “Anything for the last 30 years for students of color, he has had his hand in. He is the hardest-working, most-dedicated person for the students on campus.”

After college Williams came back to Oklahoma and got a job at Capitol Hill High School. He was the school’s first black coach. It was there he said his future path unfolded for him as the school, city and state continued to grapple with race relations.

“This was a very turbulent time. This was busing,” Williams said. “Here were two entities placed together, white Capitol Hill kids and black students who really didn’t want to be there. And there were numerous clashes. A turning point for me, when this became clear that this was what I was supposed to do, came during one of the big brawls that year. It was brutal. They were fighting in the hallways. One of the local TV people came and interviewed me. The guy was asking me, ‘Which comes first: You being black or you being a teacher?’ I told him I can stop teaching tomorrow and I was still going to be black.”

After that Williams said he got calls from former teachers and people in the community who let him know how proud they were. It set the tone for the direction his life would take. In 1977, he accepted the position of coordinator of black student affairs at OU.

Anthony Francisco, the City of Norman’s finance director, was a student at Capitol Hill during Williams’ tenure. He is not amazed at what Williams has accomplished since then at OU.

“Back then it wouldn’t surprise me that he was doing well at something,” Francisco said. “It might have surprised me it was at OU. That has more to do with OU and not Norris. It took a change in philosophy at OU for Norris’ interests to coincide with them. I think the change at OU was in their decision to support students of color.”

Williams, who won the Norman Human Rights Award in 2001, said it was a challenge to change the mindset at OU when he first arrived.

“The image of the University of Oklahoma at that time in the African-American community throughout the state was very poor,” Williams said. “You could go up to Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Lawton and Muskogee, and coming to OU was not on a lot of students’ minds initially. You have to give people something they want to be part of. The way to do that was organize the community. I had a lot of theories about how to develop a community.”

Since then he has put those ideas into action by creating several programs that have benefited all students of color at OU. They include Tomorrow’s Black Sunshine, Miss Black OU, the Presidents Community Service Program, University Achievement Class, the Diversity Enrichment program, the proposal for Henderson Scholar program, Sooner Tradition Scholarship, the MLK Career Fair and the Black Alumni Society. He also brought Stokely Carmichael, Andrew Young and Dr. Maya Angelou to campus to speak to current students and high school students.

Each of these programs were created with one goal in mind.

“He always felt it was his mission to help students of color to get an education and unlock the door that had not been opened before,” Franks said. “His focus has always been to honor the student. Find out how we can get students who never imagined getting a college education. To get them here and keep them here.”

In the process, supporters say Williams has helped turn the university into a multicultural campus that all groups can claim as their own.

“In 1989, I suggested to the students that we change the name of the Black Student Union to the Henderson/Tolson Cultural Center,” Williams said. “They agreed, because there was nothing named after anyone black at that time. Then came the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Garden, the Prentice Gautt Athletic Center. A lot has changed and I have seen a lot of changes since I have been at OU these 31 years.”

Whenever Williams decides to retire, it will not be the buildings or programs that he leaves behind that will be his legacy. It will be the students he worked with and for at OU that will be his lasting heritage.

“I worked with a lot of students that came back as undergrads,” Williams said. “Based on what they were saying, I had an impact on their life at OU. Now they are within their own families and communities and giving back, which they say I taught them to do. That was deep. That was something that meant a lot to me and meant a lot to them.”