She earned a bachelor’s degree in graphic arts in 1949 and married a classmate, Paul Williams. She went on to attend the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where the faculty included composer John Cage, artist Josef Albers and choreographer Merce Cunningham. When she was 9, one of her paintings was displayed in the Works Progress Administration exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But then I had to tell about the pictures.” “And that was a blessing, for I was a child with a lot to say,” Williams wrote in an autobiographical essay for “Children’s Books and Their Creators.” “When people grew tired of my talking, I drew pictures. She also ensured that her daughters were exposed to art and culture, finding free programs where they could paint, sculpt, dance and act. Her mother agitated for day care, free dentists and summer camps for poor children. Her father carried her on his shoulders to May Day parades and told her stories about the deadly Triangle Shirtwaist fire that sparked workplace reforms. When she bought the chair, she was working as a children’s matron in a movie theater.īoth of Williams’ parents were immersed in radical politics.
Vera’s mother held a variety of jobs to support them. When the family was together again, they moved to New York. He achieved a number of social firsts in the Senate, including the integration of its barbershop. Senate by popular vote, he was also the first Republican senator to call for President Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal. The first African American elected to the U.S. Her mother, Rebecca, sent Vera and her sister, Naomi, to a Jewish orphanage for about a year, until Albert came home. Her father, Albert, often was out of work and disappeared for a long stretch, possibly because he was in jail.
28, 1927, Williams was one of two daughters of Eastern European Jews. She loved making books, and that love just comes out of the pages,” said Williams’ publisher, Virginia Duncan of Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.īorn in Los Angeles on Jan. “Her books were full of exuberance and respect for children. Throughout her work, Williams depicted children of various hues whose parents were sometimes of a different ethnicity or race. “Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart” (2001) was a sometimes wrenching, semi-autobiographical tale about two latchkey sisters whose mother worked long hours because their father was in jail. In many of her books, characters grapple with poverty, absent fathers and other hardships. Williams wrote and/or illustrated 16 books, including “A Chair for My Mother” (1981) and “More, More, More Said the Baby” (1990), both of which earned prestigious Caldecott Honor citations. A Los Angeles native, she was 88 and had ovarian cancer, her son, Merce Williams, said last week.
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