IN WORDS & SONG Mary Williams teaches and inspires with her genre-blending performances by LORI D. R. WIGGINS photography by GABRIEL NELSON
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f you ever share a space with Mary D. Williams, listen. And learn. What you’ll experience is a soul-electrifying blend of traditional gospel songs laced with slave spirituals. They’re woven into sobering, yet often upbeat, lessons about how music both sustained 70 | WALTER
and empowered slaves, energized the Civil Rights Movement and spawned social change. “Music is a part of every era of our lives. Music can be heard when speech cannot,” Williams says. Alternating between sage storyteller and contralto songstress, Williams
shares how slaves spoke, lamented and hoped with each other—and God— through tunes that floated over the fields for hundreds of miles and generations beyond. She shares how the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a black a cappella ensemble, introduced African-American talent to
