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Williams,
Armstrong
Profession: Columnists; Talk
show hosts; Authors; Journalists; Nonfiction writers; Broadcasters;
Entertainers; Radio personalities; Television personalities
Date of Birth:
1959
A staunch advocate of
Christian and conservative values, Armstrong Williams has been called
"one of the most recognized conservative voices in America." Williams,
who is African-American, has disseminated his views through his
nationally syndicated radio and television shows (the former since
1992 and the latter since almost as long ago), on which he conducts
interviews with newsmakers and discusses current events--and in
newspapers around the country. Among his core concerns are the reform
of welfare and affirmative-action programs, the restoration of
morality in our society, and what he calls "right living." His radio
program is broadcast to dozens of markets by the National Radio
Network. His television show, called The Right Side with Armstrong
Williams, is carried by a number of television outlets, many of them
featuring Christian and family-oriented programming.
Williams is a syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services,
through which his articles are distributed to more than 75 newspapers
across the country, and a guest columnist for USA Today and Reader's
Digest. In addition, his often highly opinionated articles have
appeared in the Washington Times, the Detroit Free Press, the Boston
Globe, and his hometown paper, the Marion Star-Mullins Enterprise, in
South Carolina. Williams's book, Beyond Blame: How We Can Succeed by
Breaking the Dependency Barrier (1995), encourages readers, especially
young African-American men, to develop strong families and
communities, take personal responsibility for their actions and
circumstances, and embrace spiritual values. Williams's official Web
site states that he has taken "countless provocative stances, buoyed
by conservative ideals and a little swagger" and that his mission has
always been to "provide intelligent and value-oriented commentary on
American culture and politics." In 1996 Vanity Fair voted Williams
into its hall of fame as one of the most influential radio voices in
America, and in 2003 Savoy magazine named him one of the 100 most
important radio talk-show hosts in the country.
Armstrong Williams was born in Marion, South Carolina, on February
5, 1959. His father had four children with his first wife, who died in
childbirth; with his second wife, Williams's mother, he had six more
children. Williams grew up on the family's tobacco farm with his nine
siblings and half-siblings. In a column paying tribute to his mother
on Mother's Day in 1996, Williams wrote, as quoted on the Web site of
the Thomas Road Baptist Church (whose senior pastor is Jerry Falwell),
"My mother . . . raised eight sons. And because of her lessons, each
of us has found his place in the world. . . . I am who I am because of
my mother. Because of her example and strong moral compass, I have
never used one word of profane language, I have never smoked any kind
of cigarette or exposed myself to any illegal drugs, and I have never
tasted any kind of alcoholic beverage, beer or wine, in my 37 years of
living." While growing up Williams helped his father on the farm. In a
2001 column about his father, a Republican, published shortly before
that year's Father's Day, Williams wrote, as posted on townhall.com,
"Certainly it made [my father] proud that I chose to embrace the
values that he taught me: personal responsibility, economic
independence, thrift, a strong work ethic, an essential optimism that
things will work out for the best."
Williams displayed an early gift for public speaking, winning an
orating contest at his high school in 1976. He graduated from South
Carolina State University, in Orangeburg, in 1981. That same year he
moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as an aide to the late
Senator Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican, whom Williams,
while still in high school, had boldly approached during the senator's
public appearance at a Marion restaurant. Impressed by the young man's
confidence, Thurmond offered Williams an internship. (Thurmond, who
died in 2003, was known early in his career for his segregationist
views; he ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform as
the candidate of the States Rights' Democratic Party. Later in his
long career in politics, Thurmond reached out to African-Americans,
hiring blacks to his staff and nominating black candidates for
government positions. Following his death it came to light that at the
age of 22, Thurmond had fathered a child with Carrie Butler, a
16-year-old African-American housekeeper employed by his parents.)
From 1982 to 1986 Williams served as an assistant to Clarence
Thomas, who at that time was the chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and is now a U.S. Supreme Court
associate justice. Williams's other experiences in public service
during the 1980s included stints as a legislative assistant to two
Republicans who represented South Carolina in Congress--Caroll A.
Campbell, who later became governor of the state, and Floyd D.
Spence--and as a presidential appointee in the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. Williams then entered the field of public relations, as a
vice president of governmental and international affairs with B&C
Associates, based in High Point, North Carolina, which describes
itself on the company Web site as the "oldest and most widely
respected African American owned public relations and crisis
management group in the United States." In that capacity Williams
managed such individual and corporate clients as the acclaimed poet
Maya Angelou, the Sara Lee Corp., Kinney Shoes, Shoney Inc. (a
restaurant chain), and the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Giving Foundation.
The course of Williams's career changed suddenly in 1991, during
the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings on Clarence
Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court. Thomas's confirmation had
hit a snag when Anita Hill, a University of Oklahoma law professor,
testified that he had sexually harassed her when she worked as his
assistant at the EEOC in the early 1980s. In defense of Thomas,
Williams published a number of articles that were reprinted in
newspapers around the country, bringing him national attention. In the
following year Williams launched his first radio show, The Right Side
with Armstrong Williams, on WOL-AM (1450 AM) in Washington, D.C., a
station owned by the radio mogul Cathy Hughes. The show was simulcast
to station WOLB-AM (1010 AM) in Baltimore, Maryland, and aired weekly.
It soon attracted growing numbers of listeners and was given a daily
time slot. The often confrontational Williams was known for presenting
to his predominately black audience what he believed were the
perspectives of white Americans and offering observations concerning
stereotypes that African-Americans harbor about whites. "We frequently
say that members of the white majority think about African Americans
in stereotypes," Williams told Jeffrey Yorke for the Washington Post
(February 1, 1994). "We may overlook that black people also stereotype
white people. It works both ways." He welcomed as guests on his
program such well-known and sometimes controversial figures as David
Duke, the former Ku Klux Klansman and onetime Louisiana gubernatorial
candidate; Vice President Dan Quayle; U.S. Senator Bob Dole; the
television interviewer Larry King; Maya Angelou; the television
producer Norman Lear; the presidential candidate Steve Forbes; the
televangelist Robert Schuller; and the conservative politician and
commentator Pat Buchanan. In 1995 The Right Side achieved national
distribution when the program was syndicated by the Talk America Radio
Network, airing from noon to 2 p.m. five days a week. Williams's radio
commentary is now broadcast daily in dozens of markets around the
United States via the National Radio Network (formerly the Langer
Broadcasting Network), a fast-growing radio syndication company based
in Framingham, Massachusetts. Once every two weeks Williams also
contributes a two-minute segment to the National Public Radio (NPR)
program Marketplace, which offers economic, financial, and business
news (or news about other fields of endeavor that affect, or are
affected by, the marketplace) and is heard by millions of listeners
each week.
On his nationally syndicated television show, The Right Side with
Armstrong Williams, Williams conducts interviews with guests and leads
discussions of news events, often concentrating on issues of race and
religion in politics and culture. The show was carried in the 1990s on
the now-defunct National Empowerment Television (also known as
America's Voice), a cable-TV network that specialized in conservative
programming. The Right Side is now carried by a number of television
outlets, including the Christian Television Network; DCTV, in
Washington, D.C.; the Liberty Broadcasting Television Network, which
is affiliated with the Thomas Road Baptist Church and Jerry Falwell
Ministries; WBTW-TV in South Carolina; WTCN WB 15 in Florida;
Arlington Community Television, in Arlington, Virginia; and the Sky
Angel Network, among others. Williams's latest television venture, a
program called On Point with Armstrong Williams, began airing in early
2004 on the African-American-oriented cable network TV One, which is
the product of a partnership between Comcast and the urban radio
network Radio One. Like The Right Side, On Point features interviews
with newsmakers and discussions of current events. A segment from
early March 2004 featured Williams's interview with President George
W. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice. Williams has
also appeared on a number of TV programs besides his own, including
the Oprah Winfrey Show, CNBC Crossfire, Firing Line with William
Buckley, America's Black Forum, the Today Show, the Black
Entertainment Television (BET) Nightly News, BET's Lead Story, and CNN
Showdown.
Williams's first published article, titled "A Pledge of Values,"
appeared in the Marion Star-Mullins Enterprise in about 1988. He has
written one book, Beyond Blame: How We Can Succeed by Breaking the
Dependency Barrier (1995), based on a series of letters that he wrote
to a young black man named Brad, who was raised in a two-parent,
middle-class home and is described as a drug dealer and murderer. In
the letters Williams explored the plight of young African-American
males and the ideas of the American political right and advocated
adopting Christian values, working hard, and assuming personal
responsibility for their actions as the best ways for young blacks to
succeed. In 1996 the book was reprinted with the title Letters to a
Young Victim: Hope and Healing in America's Inner Cities. That year
the Los Angeles Times Syndicate began distributing Williams's articles
in more than 30 U.S. newspapers. Since 2002, when Tribune Media
Services bought that syndicate, Williams's column has been carried by
more than 75 U.S. and overseas newspapers, including the New York
Amsterdam News, the Washington Afro-American, the Washington Times,
USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. Williams's subjects have
included spousal abuse, racial profiling by police, racial and ethnic
attitudes among America's Hispanic population, and ESPN's firing of
Rush Limbaugh in 2003, after he made what were widely seen as racist
comments about the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb. The
topics of Williams's columns from early 2004 have included the Vietnam
War record of U.S. senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a Democratic
presidential hopeful; gay marriage; and the plight of the Palestinian
people.
In 2003 Williams helped organize several meetings between
prominent conservative African-Americans and leaders of the national
Republican Party. The aim of the meetings, he told Ralph Z. Hallow for
the Washington Times (January 13, 2003), was to create a "Republican
Party unified behind a push--unlike anything yet attempted--to recruit
conservative black candidates for office from all over our country."
Williams has often been criticized for encouraging African-Americans
to join the Republican Party. "Many black people cannot understand why
African Americans such as Williams . . . stand behind a party that
embraces members who stood in the way of civil rights and voting
rights legislation, school busing, laws against racial profiling and
hate crimes, and a holiday in remembrance of the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.," Darryl Fears wrote for the Washington Post (January 5,
2003). (Fears reported that according to the Joint Center for
Political and Economic Studies, only 50 of the 9,040 black elected
officials in the U.S. are registered Republicans, while more than
3,700 of that same group have declared themselves Democrats.) Calling
him a "Talking Android," a reference to a black robot used by whites
seeking to curtail black culture in Ishmael Reed's novel Mumbo Jumbo,
staff writers for Africana (June 30, 2003, on-line) presented
Williams, along with Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly (a black
anti-affirmative-action activist), and Thomas Sowell (an economist who
is often described as a black conservative), as a powerful
African-American who shows "uncritical loyalty" to the American
political right and works diligently "against the interests of black
culture." Williams has, however, urged the GOP to do more to improve
the lives of African-Americans. According to Stanley Crouch in the New
York Daily News (June 23, 2003), Williams was instrumental in
persuading congressional Republicans to pass a bill that led to the
refurbishment of the building in Washington, D.C. that was once the
home of the black leader and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In their
attack on Williams, the Africana writers further charged that Williams
"brings together all the familiar black conservative/freelance
moralist tropes--his hardworking father, who turned down all
scholarship offers because he proudly wanted to pay for his own son's
schooling; the insufferability of black Harvard students wallowing in
self-perceived victimhood; the continuing need, nonetheless, to help
the 'truly needy.'"
Williams told Amy Bernstein for U.S. News & World Report (December
26/January 2, 1994) that his critics were often bothered by the fact
that he refused to "blame whites for what's wrong with blacks." He
expanded on that idea in an article he wrote for the Washington Post
(August 20, 1995): "While some people suppose that as a black man I
must be hostile toward 'white' mainstream society, some also think
that being a conservative makes me a toady to 'the power' or a
mindless defender of the 'status quo.' Sometimes the misconceptions
compound one another. People think that as a black American I must be
angry; liberals think I must lack compassion, while conservatives
think I must resent the abuse I take from liberals and other blacks.
None of it is true. I'm not angry, heartless or resentful---toward
mainstream America or toward other black Americans."
Williams co-founded the Graham Williams Group, an international
public-relations firm, with Stedman Graham, who is widely known as
Oprah Winfrey's boyfriend. The company's clients include the
real-estate corporation Century 21, Terry Giles (of Giles
Enterprises), and Maya Angelou. Williams is also a former partner in
Premier Limousine, Garden Grove Toyota, and Onyx Travel. In 2002 he
established the Right Side Productions, which is responsible for
syndicating and distributing his daily television show on cable
outlets across the country. In partnership with the National Radio
Network, the Right Side Productions also syndicates Williams's
biweekly commentaries to radio stations around the nation. He has
hosted on-line chat programs for the Heritage Foundation (on the
organization's Town Hall Web site) and America Online (NetNoir.com).
He sits on the boards of the Childhelp USA charity and the Washington
Afro-American newspaper and is a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
Williams is single.
Suggested Reading: Africana.com;
Armstrong Williams Web site; townhall.com; Washington Post C p7 Feb.
1, 1994, A p5 Jan. 5, 2003
Selected Books: Beyond Blame: How We Can Succeed by Breaking the
Dependency Barrier, 1995 ; Selected Television Shows: The Right Side
with Armstrong Williams; On Point
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