THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 20, 1996 TAG: 9602200312
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARSHA GILBERT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 36 lines
It was a historic and most memorable event for Cecil J. Williams, budding photojournalist.
He was the only African American at the Jan. 2, 1960, news conference. Just before two security guards could throw him out, Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie entered the room. Sen. Kennedy asked the guards why he was being removed and then instructed the guards to seat him in the front row next to Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.
Williams, a Claflin College student, had no press credentials, but had been a freelance photographer since the age of 9 when he inherited a hand-me-down camera.
At 6 p.m. today and Wednesday at noon in the Mills E. Godwin Jr. Center Ballroom on the Norfolk University campus, Williams, now 56, will give a slide presentation and lecture showcasing historic photos of his career.
Williams photographed Kennedy on that day, as he announced his candidacy for the presidency. He said, this was one of his most memorable experiences from four decades of being a civil rights photojournalist.
In William's photographic autobiography ``Freedom and Justice,'' Williams chronicals the civil rights struggle from the 1940s to the present. Other stories involve persons such as Coretta Scott King protesting in the Charleston Hospital Workers Strike of 1969 and Thurgood Marshall arguing the case of Briggs vs. Elliott - which preceded Brown vs. the Board of Education - and led to school desegregation. by CNB