William J., like his father, became a prominent abolitionist, at one time writing for Frederick Douglass's The North Star.
[6] Watkins is noted as having had a variety of positions, including teacher, newspaper correspondent, minister for the Sharp Street AME Church, founder of a Black Literary Society, and a "self-taught practitioner of medicine.
[1] Watkins' work as a teacher and abolitionist were tied together, holding the conviction that education was essential in the freedom of African Americans.
[7][10] With his work beginning in the 1820s and continuing until the end of his life, his writings appeared in Freedom's Journal, William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, Benjamin Lundy's Genius of Universal Emancipation, and, later in life, Frederick Douglass's The North Star.
[11] Watkins would later become a subscription agent for The Liberator, which helped spread abolitionist ideas within Baltimore.