Constance W. Williams

Sociologist Constance W. Williams was born on July 21, 1934 in Lochgelly, West Virginia to Jesse Rosetta Willard and Wilson Howard Willard. She received her B.A. degree in sociology in 1956 from Berea College, her M.S.S.S. degree in 1970 from Boston University, and her Ph.D. degree in sociology in 1989 from the Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare at Brandeis University.

After working as a research assistant at the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies and the Harvard Graduate School of Education in the 1960s, Williams was hired, in 1970, as a social caseworker at the James Jackson Putnam Children’s Center in Roxbury, Massachusetts. In 1972, she joined Boston University’s Metropolitan College and Graduate School of Social Work as an assistant professor and became the founding director of the school’s undergraduate social work program. From 1983 to 1987, Williams worked as the chief policy analyst in Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis’s Office of Human Resources. She then taught at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work from 1987 to 1990 and at Harvard Divinity School in 1989. After receiving her Ph.D. degree, Williams was appointed an associate professor affiliated with the Family and Child Policy Center at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, where she taught until her retirement in 2004. From 1990 to 1995, Williams was an ethnographer for the Comprehensive Child Development Project at the Dimock Community Health Center in Boston; and from 1998 to 2002, she served as senior ethnographer for the Boston component of the study, “Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study.”

Williams is co-author of the books Rent Supplements in Boston: An Evaluation of the Boston Housing Authority Program of Rent Supplements for Large Low-Income Families: 1964-1967 (1968) and Subsidizing the Poor: A Boston Housing Experiment (1972) with Joe Feagin and Charles Tilly. In 1991, she published her book, Black Teenage Mothers: Pregnancy and Childrearing from their Perspective.

Williams has served on numerous boards and held various leadership positions within the National Association of Social Workers, including service as a member of the National Board of Directors, director of the National Center for Social Policy and Practice, and president of the Massachusetts Chapter. She also served on the board of the Council on Social Work Education and as a member of the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project Advisor Board at Brandeis University.

Williams’ many honors and awards include the Greatest Contribution to Social Work Practice Award in 1977 and Greatest Contribution to Social Policy and Change Award in 1993 from the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. She also received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Curry College in 1993 and the Berea College Distinguished Alumna Award in 1996. In 2021, Harvard Divinity School established the Constance W. and Preston N. Williams Scholarship Fund.

Williams resides in Belmont, Massachusetts with her husband, Preston Williams. They have two sons, David Williams and Mark Williams.

Constance W. Williams was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on August 26, 2022.