In 1947, Williams became pastor at Friendship Baptist Church and lectured at more than 20 colleges and universities throughout the South preaching that men should lead their lives through principle and moral awareness.

After completing his formal educations Williams joined the faculty of Morehouse College in 1946 as the chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

[3] While teaching at Morehouse, Williams mentored Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook who later become the president of Dillard University and the first black mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson.

Williams is also credited as mentor and former teacher of Martin Luther King Jr., leader in the Civil Rights Movement.

After the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Reverend John Porter and Williams filed suit against the segregated Atlanta trolley system with and won in 1959.

[6] During the same year Williams became a founding member and a vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC).

Although during the initial years of operation, leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Williams encountered repression from white organization, police and the Ku Klux Klan.

Members of the SCLC were harassed, threatened and attacked, yet Williams and others believed the church should continue to include social-political activity.

During the 1960s and 1970s the ASLC pressured the school board and city to end segregation emphasizing boycotts, sit-ins, marches, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, and civil disobedience.

The CRC, under Williams conducted a study that proves the lack of minority hiring and the promotional practices of the city of Atlanta.

Although, Williams was pro-civil disobedience, he, on occasion, lead sermons asserting that the system of society allows for the murder of a man in order to preserve social collectivities.

Samuel Williams delivered a most-notable remarkable sermon on June 30, 1968, to an all white audience at All Saints Episcopal Church.

There, he urged his audience to question what was their responsibility for justice, contending the power of deciding was in their field because they made up the vast majority.

Samuel Woodrow William's legacy was his contribution to the Civil Rights Movement and sermons at Friendship Baptist Church.

Williams was also criticized for supporting white officials in the firing of Eliza Paschall, director of the CRC who was too "pro-black."