“Mr. Williams is clearly in love with words, which in his hands become a rolling caravan of images. Occasionally, he stops for rhyming interludes, talking blues, which remind one somewhat of Vachel Lindsay's tympanic incantations. More often, with his gift for local language, Mr. Williams seems closer to the spirit of Mark Twain. If Twain were black and from North Carolina, he might have written like Samm‐Art Williams.”
—Mel Gussow, “Stage: Samm-Art Williams ‘Home,’” The New York Times, December 20, 1979
CHILDHOOD
Although Samm-Art Williams was born in Philadelphia in 1946, his mother, Valdosia Williams, soon moved the two of them to Burgaw, North Carolina. Burgaw is Samm-Art’s home, where he spent his childhood and young adulthood.
It’s a small (in the 1950s approximately 1,700 people) farming town. The public schools Williams attended were still segregated. There was one stop light in town. And Williams’s “mother’s house [was] next to his Uncle Lee’s house which [was] near his grandfather’s house which [was] two miles from his grandfather’s farm,” as Gerald Fraser reported in a 1980 profile of Williams for The New York Times.
As a boy, Williams helped plow his grandfather’s tobacco farm using a mule that Williams insisted hated him. The experiences of his hard work in this “farming and bootlegging” town (his description) gave him the love, support, characters, and stories that would lead to his life in the arts. In his acceptance speech at his induction to the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, Williams said of Burgaw and the surrounding county: “Everyone here is a character. Everyone has a story. You just have to listen.”
Samm-Arts’s mother was a high school English teacher and in charge of the drama group at her school. At an early age, Williams performed in plays for the school and his church. The church and theatre became a vital part of Williams’s life and can be found present in much of his writing. Williams credits his mother with his interest in and love of words. In an in-depth interview in The New York Times in 1980, Williams said:
I always wanted to be a playwright, ever since I was a kid…I used to write poetry when I was in high school. I used to write love poems to my girlfriends and so forth. And I’ve always been a romantic person.
EARLY ADULTHOOD
The six foot six, non-football playing, lover-of-the-soil Williams maintained his love for writing, even when he went off to college to study political science and psychology. Williams graduated from Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland in 1968 and at one point considered becoming a lawyer. But his dream of being a playwright won out.
Not quite ready to take a bite out of the Big Apple (New York City), Williams moved north to Philadelphia. In the 1980 The New York Times interview he reflected on the choice: “I really wasn’t sure whether I wanted to make that big step to New York, which was traumatic to me in the 1960’s.” In Philadelphia, Williams joined the Freedom Theatre’s Acting Workshop. To earn a living, Williams worked a variety of jobs including being a salesman; he wrote in his free time. After five years in Philadelphia, he made his next big move to New York City.
Williams arrived in New York City in 1974. That same year he joined the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). This historic company nurtured and launched the careers of numerous Black American actors, playwrights, and directors including Bill Duke, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson, Phylicia Rashaad, Glynn Turman, and Denzel Washington. Williams quickly became a critically acclaimed fixture within the NEC as an actor and playwright. In addition to working with the NEC, he premiered plays at the Billie Holiday Theatre and Stage 73. Williams's plays cover such disparate topics as boxing, the legacy of Black minstrel performers, and the trauma inflicted on innocent individuals in Nazi Germany.
Although Williams actively wrote for and performed in the theatre, it rarely paid his bills. He pumped gas in Brooklyn for five years and did other odd jobs until he was able to earn a living in the arts. In the Historical Dictionary of African American Theater, Williams recalls this time:
I've never made more than a few hundred dollars from playwrighting before. I don't know if I've left the gas pump yet. I still dream about it. Some people count sheep. I count cars.
By 1980 he had written ten plays, five of which received NEC productions. However, success did not come easily. In the Historical Dictionary of African American Theater Williams says of Home:
It wasn't like a gift—I started writing it in 1976. To be a writer you’ve got to be a tough soul. I’ve got a stack of rejection slips up to my front door. By the time a writer gets a production, he’s so beat that everybody can bask in his success but him. I think I’m lucky in that I got to Broadway young—I'm thirty-four. I feel that God has blessed me. But it was kinda rough.
Although Home’s success brought more recognition to Samm-Art Williams and his work, it was not an automatic key to a successful writing career. In a 1986 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Williams said:
I wish I could just write...I could sit in a room all day long and write for the rest of my life. But I can’t afford it. So I act or tend bar, depending on which comes first…Whenever I leave one (acting) job, I’m always wondering if I’m ever going to work again. Because there are no guarantees. Now if you do television work, that’s different. But no one is beating down my door in television.
Though Hollywood may not have been beating down his door, he had gotten his foot in there. At the time of this Los Angeles Times interview, he had already written for the Emmy® Award-winning 1985 special “Motown Returns to the Apollo.”
LIFE IN HOLLYWOOD
According to the International Movie Database (imdb.com) Williams first wrote for television in 1984 for an anthology series titled American Playhouse. For the next few years, he wrote episodes for several different television series. Frank’s Place was the first television show on which Williams wrote regularly and garnered his second Emmy® nomination. He soon rose to the role of co-producer and just a few years later would become one of the writers and co-executive producers of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, then an executive producer of the television show Martin, starring Martin Lawrence.
Williams brought all his creative knowledge and love for characters, stories, and comedy to his writing for television. As an executive producer he also oversaw and mentored young writers; even those that worked as production assistants with dreams of writing received gentle and kind guidance from Samm-Art (as he preferred to be called). He also continued to write plays.
By the early 2000s, he made the same decision as his lead character in Home, the decision to come home. Samm-Art moved back to Burgaw, North Carolina to care for his ailing mother and to enjoy small-town life.
BACK HOME
In North Carolina, Williams taught workshops and mentored students at several universities throughout the state. And he continued to write. In 2007, the NEC welcomed him back to the theatre by premiering his play The Waiting Room, which ran for two weeks at the 45th Street Theatre.
In a 2007 article in The New York Amsterdam News, Charles E. Rogers summed up the dramatist’s career in a single complimentary sentence:
Now anyone who knows Black theatre, knows that Williams is one of its most celebrated and respected playwrights and that his return to playwriting after a long and successful career in television and film is a momentous occasion.
Williams was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2010, further cementing his legacy as one of the most influential and prolific American writers of his generation. He remained in Burgaw, North Carolina surrounded by farmers, bootleggers, cousins, and friends, and continued to be nurtured and inspired by the richness of the soil and the people of the South until his recent passing on May 13, 2024.
CONNECT AND REFLECT
In Home, Samm-Art Williams writes about Cross Roads, North Carolina, a fictional place based on his hometown of Burgaw. A crossroads can be a metaphor for a point in a character or person’s life when they decide. Have you had any crossroads in your life? If so, what were they and what decision did you make? What do you think the significance of this name for a town might mean? As you watch the play, can you spot all the crossroads Cephus encounters?
WILLIAMS'S CREDITS
Nominations and Awards:
1980 Tony® Award Nomination - Best Play: Home
1980 Drama Desk Award Nomination - Outstanding New Play: Home
1985 Emmy® Award Nomination - Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program: Motown Returns to the Apollo
1988 Emmy® Award Nomination - Outstanding Comedy Series: Frank's Place (as story editor)
Plays:
The Coming (1974), Do unto Others (1974), Welcome to Black River (1974), Kamilia (1975), A Love Play (1976), The Last Caravan (1977), The Frost of Renaissance (1978), Brass Birds Don’t Sing (1978), Home (1979), The Sixteenth Round II (original title, The Pathetique 1980), Friends (1980), contributed to the book of Sophisticated Ladies (1981), Bojangles (book) (1985), Eyes of the American (1985), Cork (1986), Eve on the Trial (1986), Woman from the Town (1986), In My Father’s House (1996), The Dance on Widows’ Row (2000), The Waiting Room (2007), The Montford Point Marine (2011)
Theatre Acting Credits include:
Freedom Theatre, Philadelphia, PA (1968-1973); Negro Ensemble Company, NYC: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide (1974), Liberty Call (1975), Waiting for Mongo (1975), Eden (1976), The Brownsville Raid (1976), Black Body Blues (1978), Nevis Mountain Dew (1978), Old Phantoms (1979), Play from Africa (1979), Big City Blues (1980); Black Jesus (1973)
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