Born in Birmingham, Alabama, painter, printmaker, musician, textile artist and designer José Williams earned his BA in printmaking from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and his MS in Visual Design from the Illinois Institute of Design in Chicago. Williams taught art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; Southeast Community College; and the Dante School in Chicago. He ran the AFAM Gallery and served as director of the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago in the early 1970s. His work was featured in numerous group exhibitions through the 1980s at Atlanta University; the South Side Community Art Center, Chicago; AFAM Gallery, Chicago; the ADA Gallery, Richmond; and others. Zorach/Baker pp. 68, 259.
