Marian Quinn Williams

Marian shares a picture of her enslaved great-grandfather whose family, like thousands of other families during the Jim Crow era, migrated to the Tuskegee area for better educational and employment opportunities. While her great-grandfather and grandfather became sharecroppers, her father and the ensuing generations took advantage of elementary schools built around their local Black churches in rural areas.  The children later enrolled in Washington Public School and Tuskegee Institute High School, the middle and high schools for Black Macon County children.

Marian states that she sometimes wonders what her great-grandfather would say if he knew that his great-great-granddaughter, her daughter, is now a professor of veterinary medicine with a surgical patent at Tuskegee University.

Marian’s aunt, Celia B. Chambers, was a plaintiff in Attorney Fred Gray’s Gomillion v Lightfoot gerrymandering case that went all the way to the Supreme Court whose decision outlawed gerrymandering based on race.

Marian has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Tuskegee University.  She decided to remain in Tuskegee to be near her family and enjoyed teaching civics and history in the Macon County school system.