She received her education from the Ladies of the Sacred Heart and the Sisters of the Holy Family, second oldest society of African-American Catholic religious in the United States.

Around that time, a bill in the Georgia legislature proposed to forbid white teachers from instructing black children.

It threatened the closure of schools co-founded by Ignatius Lissner in Georgia and staffed by Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception.

In 1915, while working at Trinity College in Washington, DC, Williams learned that Lissner, provincial of the Society of African Missions, needed a religious to found a congregation of black sisters in Savannah.

They taught by day and, to supplement their meagre earnings, ran a laundry business at night and begged along the waterfront on weekends.

[5] In 2014, the order's closing was anticipated, but encouraged by Pope Francis, the sisters extended their outreach to other parts of the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa.