Samuel Laing Williams

[1][2] Williams may have been the first African American admitted to any GW program when he applied in 1882; he experienced discrimination from his white peers but was said to have eventually won their respect, along with that of the faculty, who awarded him a top law thesis prize.

[3] He then moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked as an adjudicator in the United States Pension Office, and soon after, entered Columbian University Law School.

The two were married at her parents' home in Brockport, New York, on April 20, 1887, celebrated with receptions in Washington, and then moved to Chicago, where they became leaders in the African-American community.

[3] They were friends and associates of black activists representing a range of ideologies, including Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, and with white reformers, including Jane Addams, Mary McDowell, and Philip D. Armour, whom they convinced to fund the founding of Provident Hospital, which had a biracial staff and clientele and a nursing school for African Americans.

[6] He served as Assistant U.S. District Attorney in Chicago during the Roosevelt and Taft administrations, and was one of the best known African-American lawyers in the country and regarded by many as a brilliant orator.