Dr. Bathrus "Babs" Bailey Williams

Dr. Williams - who liked to be called "Babs" - was born September 1915, into families established for generations in Old Town Alexandria and nearby Fairfax County, Virginia. In 1918, the Bathrus Lincoln Bailey family had moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in search of better employment than was available at time for African Americans in Virginia. In Philadelphia, Babs Williams was enrolled in the city's public school where she proved to be exceptionally intelligent, lively, an outstanding athlete, and a child who truly loved school. At the center of life, however, was her church - Philadelphia's Holy Trinity Baptist Church - where Bathrus Amanda Bailey was baptized, and became active with the Baptist Young People's Union. As a youngster, she sang with local children's choirs, in her own congregation and at Tinley Tern Methodist Church.

Babs graduated from West Philadelphia High School at the age of 14.After several years of employment at resorts in and around Atlantic City New Jersey, earning money for further education albeit in the depths of the Great Depression, Babs, an unusually attractive woman, and excellent singer and dancer, decided to try her hand at show business. She participated in try-outs for the chorus line of Atlantic City's Cotton Club. However, as soon as word of this new adventure got back to Philadelphia, to Deacon and Deaconess Albert and Alice Hall, Bab’s parents promptly drove down to Atlantic City, ordered their daughter off the stage, informed her that singing and dancing in a nightclub chorus line was no proper career for an upstanding Christian, and instructed her that it was time for her to enroll in a nice Baptist college, to develop her other great talents - as an intellectual and potential leader in community service. Babs' parents promised furthermore to advance out of their modest mean the additional funds which she surely would need, in addition to scholarship aid advanced to her by Philadelphia's Holy Trinity Baptist Church.

So it was that, in the fall of 1936, Bathrus Amanda Bailey enrolled in Virginia Union University, in Richmond, Virginia - an institution affiliated with the National Baptist Convention . . . And the rest, so to speak, is remarkable and reasonably well-known history in and beyond the extended Williams family. Babs once more proved to be an excellent student, eventually graduating with honors in 1940, further earning the undergraduate college's Gold Key, awarded to the graduating senior who in her four years of college contributed the most to the university and to the wider community.

Babs began the active phase of her committed life of service while at undergraduate at Virginia Union. She sang in the alto section of, and was an occasional soloist for, the VUU Choir, traveling across the country or concert tours, raising money for Virginia Union. But she also organized a campus chapter of the NAACP, and led protests against, and campaigns to raise funds to pay, the infamous "poll tax" for poor, black citizens in various locales in Virginia. Babs and her stalwarts at VUU in 1939 and 1940 invited students from other campuses, in Virginia and elsewhere, to join in this and similar efforts, and ultimately in the formation of what later came to be known as the National Youth Council of the NAACP. This last was launched with an on-campus national conference in the spring of 1940, featuring NAACP Counsel Thurgood Marshall as the principal speaker, who presented Babs with a congratulatory telegram addressed to her by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

After her marriage in October, 1941, to one of only a handful of African American lawyers admitted to the Bar in Washington, DC, Wesley S Williams, Sr., Babs gave birth to two children - a son, Wesley S. Williams Jr., in November of 1942 (he is now a partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, President and Co-Chairman of the Lockhart Companies of the Eastern Caribbean and Chairman of Azimuth Trust Company also based in the US Virgin Islands), and a daughter, Marialice Bathrus Williams (now Downing) in October of 1945 (an attorney and financial and general business consultant in private practice in Washington, DC, she was formerly the Director for Product Development in the Capital Markets Section of Fannie Mae's Multifamily Division, and Chairperson of the DC Housing Finance Agency).

While raising her children in the 1940s and 1950s, Babs was actively involved in both the protest and fundraising activities of the Women’s Action Committee in Washington, DC, challenging racially segregated public accommodations, as well as unequal allocation of school buildings and other educational resources for the black students' division in public school system of the Nation's Capital. Additionally, in 1950, Babs organized the Barristers' Wives in Washington, DC, and later initiated organization of the National Barristers' Wives, now known as the National Association of Bench and Bar Spouses - organizations focused improving the quality of life and education for African American children nationwide.

All the while, Babs was active in volunteer work in a variety of churches in Washington, DC - heading the vacation Bible school at Canaan Baptist Church, and volunteering at New Bethel Baptist Church, Michigan Park, Christian Church, and, for the last 40 years of her life, Zion Baptist Church, where she served on the Board of Trustees and Board of Church Administration from 1996 until the time of her death. Additionally, from 1945 through the early 1950s, Babs volunteered as a typist a administrative aide to lawyers involved in the civil rights struggles of the day - including in particular, Washington attorneys Charles Hamilton Houston and George E.G. Hayes - and helped organize other volunteer especially wives of other local lawyers to do likewise.

Babs was also active in the political arena. A lifelong Republican, she held leadership positions in the Washington, DC area divisions of presidential campaigns of Governor Thomas A. Dewey, and of General, later President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, serving during the 1950s President of the local area's Virginia White Speel Republican Women’s Club, and attending the Republican National Conventions of 1952, 1956, and 1960, as an Alternate Delegate or accompanying her husband in the capacity. (At the time, Wesley S. Williams, Sr. was Vice Chairman of Republican Party of the District of Columbia.)

As soon as her son reached high school age and her daughter was enrolled in junior high school, Babs resumed her formal education, and earned Masters of Social Work degree at Catholic University of America. This was followed by four additional master of arts or master of science degrees, in the fields of education, counseling, and various aspects psychology, as well as a Ph.D. degree in the then new field of special education - all awarded by Washington, DC's Catholic University. With a total of seven earned degrees, "Dr. Babs" (as she was called by professional colleagues through the years) launched a career of teaching and counseling, with special emphasis on the needs of the handicapped and underprivileged. She held positions on the faculties of Washington, DC’s Taft Junior High School and Roosevelt High School, and of various (schools in Montgomery County, MD, in addition to administrative positions in the field of special education in Montgomery County.

Dr. Bathrus Bailey Williams died on June 21, 2004.