 Williams was a founding member of the John M. Langston Bar Association, a black lawyers' group which was organized in response to the Los Angeles County Bar Association's refusal to admit blacks members.As a lawyer in the 1940s, he was one of several black attorneys who worked with Thurgood Marshall, then head of the legal defense arm of the NAACP, to fight the restrictive covenants that barred African-Americans and other minorities from residence in many parts of Los Angeles and many other American cities.The covenants were declared unconstitutional in 1948.