He moved to New York City as a teenager and secured work as call boy for the theatrical impresario Oscar Hammerstein.

[8] In 1927, Williams was working for the First National Studio, going on location to Topaz, Arizona to shoot footage for a film called The River.

[9] In 1929, Williams was hired by producer Al Christie to create the dialogue for a series of two-reel comedy films with all-black casts.

The films, which played on racial stereotypes and used grammatically tortured dialogue, included The Framing of the Shrew, The Lady Fare, Melancholy Dame, (first Paramount all African-American cast "talkie"),[3] Music Hath Charms, and Oft in the Silly Night.

He was also hired to cast African-Americans for Gloria Swanson's Queen Kelly (1928) and produced the talkie short film Hot Biskits, which he wrote and directed, in the same year.

[11] Due to the pressures of the depression coupled with the lowering demand for black short films, Williams and Christie separated ways.

Due to an uneven and uninteresting plot the film was seen as a dud and was unable to garner the social acknowledgment that Williams had hoped it would receive.

(1943), Go Down Death (1944), Of One Blood (1944), Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. (1946), The Girl in Room 20 (1946), Beale Street Mama (1947) and Juke Joint (1947).

[23] Following the production of Juke Joint, Williams relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he joined Amos T. Hall in founding the American Business and Industrial College.

[25] Gosden and Correll conducted an extensive national talent search to cast the television version of Amos 'n Andy.

News of the search reached Tulsa, where Williams was sought out by a local radio station that was aware of his previous work in race films.

In August 1953, after the program had recently left the air, there were plans to turn it into a vaudeville act with Williams, Moore and Childress reprising their television roles.

The program was eventually pulled from release in 1966, under pressure from civil rights groups that stated it offered a negatively distorted view of African American life.

[27] Williams, along with television show cast members Tim Moore, Alvin Childress, and Lillian Randolph and her choir, began a US tour as "The TV Stars of Amos 'n' Andy" in 1956.

[27] Williams, Moore, Childress and Johnny Lee, performed a one-night show in Windsor, Ontario in 1957, apparently without any legal action being taken.

[35][36][37] His last credited role was as a hospital orderly in the 1962 Italian horror production ''L'Orribile Segreto del Dottor Hitchcock.

[38] After his failed attempts to find success in the film industry once again, Williams decided to fully retire and began to live off of his pension that he was receiving from his time with the US Military.

[12] Williams died of a kidney ailment on December 13, 1969, at the Sawtelle Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles, California.

[39] At the time of his death, news coverage focused solely on his work as a television actor, since few white filmgoers knew of his race films.

The New York Times obituary for Williams cited Amos 'n Andy but made no mention of his work as a film director.

[41] When friends and family from Vidalia, Louisiana were interviewed for a local newspaper article in 2001, he was remembered as a happy person, who was always singing or whistling and telling jokes.

Richard Corliss, writing in Time magazine, stated: "Aesthetically, much of Williams' work vacillates between inert and abysmal.

The rural comedy of Juke Joint is logy, as if the heat had gotten to the movie; even the musical scenes, featuring North Texas jazzman Red Calhoun, move at the turtle tempo of Hollywood's favorite black of the period, Stepin Fetchit.

And there were technical gaffes galore: in a late-night scene in Dirty Gertie, actress Francine Everett clicks on a bedside lamp and the screen actually darkens for a moment before full lights finally come up.