Avon Williams

Avon N. Williams, Jr. (1921 – 1993) was a Tennessee State Senator from 1972 to 1992. Avon Nyanza Williams, Jr. was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was a 1940 graduate of Johnson C. Smith University, an historically black university located in Charlotte, North Carolina. He subsequently studied law at the Boston University School of Law and was admitted to the Tennessee and Massachusetts bars in 1948. He practiced law in Knoxville from 1949 to 1953, when he moved to Nashville. In Nashville, Williams was a very active member of the NAACP, long serving on its executive board, and active as a civil rights attorney and a key figure in the Nashville-area Civil Rights Movement. Additionally, he was an active alumnus of the Omega Psi Phi...