Aubrey Willis Williams (August 23, 1890 – March 5, 1965) was an American social and civil rights activist who headed the National Youth Administration during the New Deal.

His grandfather had been born relatively poor in North Carolina and migrated to Alabama, where he quickly accrued wealth and eventually became the owner of a successful plantation and a large number of slaves.

He earned his way at Maryville College in Tennessee by painting signs, and at the University of Cincinnati by managing a Chautauqua, an early form of adult education.

Hopkins directed the many relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he built into the largest employer in the country.

In World War II he was Roosevelt's chief diplomatic advisor and troubleshooter, and was a key policy maker in the $50 billion Lend Lease program that sent aid to the allies.

During the mid-1930s, the New Deal had already accomplished much good for the vast number of unemployed, for farmers, for Artists and Writers, for Homeowners, Bank Depositors and Investors.

By the spring of 1935 though, 20 percent of the nation’s twenty-two million youngsters remained out of school and either on relief or wandering the country looking for work.

In 1935 he left the service of Congressman Kleberg to become Texas state director of the National Youth Administration, headed by Aubrey Williams.

Speaking before the NYA’s advisory committee on Oct. 27, 1941, a meeting attended by first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Aubrey Williams stated “I must confess to all of you that I am thoroughly frightened,” further declaring, “I think we are fighting with our backs against the wall all over this country.” In the six years since its creation, the NYA had grown into the closest thing the country had ever had to a comprehensive national youth development program, providing millions of young people with jobs and job training, community service work, recreation, remedial education and real-life lessons in the benefits of democracy at a time when democracy was fighting for its life.

Months after the NYA’s advisory committee heard Williams’ warning in the East Room of the White House, the United States Congress cut the agency’s budget and debated killing it altogether.

President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 nominated Williams to run the Rural Electrification Administration, but his history of fighting racial discrimination in federal programs made him a target of Southern senators, who blocked confirmation.

Williams had denied ever being a communist, but his New Deal work and commitment to fighting racism and poverty made him a target for the charge, especially from Southern white supremacists eager to uphold racial oppression by connecting integrationists with communism.

384), written by Taylor Branch: "From his sick bed, dying of Cancer, Aubrey Williams scrawled a “Dear Lyndon” letter to his rambunctious protégé of the New Deal era.