Archie Williams

Archibald Williams is a redirect to this article. For the politician of the same name, see Archibald Hunter Arrington Williams .

Archie Williams (actually Archibald Franklin Williams ; born May 1, 1915 in Oakland , California , † June 24, 1993 in Fairfax , California) was an American sprinter and Olympic champion .

Archie Williams as a soldier (ca.1950)

Williams in Berlin in 1936

Williams had just one great year as an athlete, but achieved more than anyone else in a lifetime. He received his first running training at San Mateo Junior College, now the College of San Mateo . He later moved to Berkeley , studied mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and continued his running training. Before 1936 he had never beaten the 47 seconds over 440 yards , but at the 1936 NCAA championships in Chicago he was in top form and set a world record with 46.1 seconds.

At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin , he was also in top form and won the gold medal in the 400-meter run , ahead of the British Godfrey Brown (silver) and the American James LuValle (bronze).

A complicated injury to the thigh muscle ended his sporting career in 1937, and after graduating in 1939 he took up the profession of pilot on traffic machines as part of the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPT). He was one of 91 African-Americans who received their private pilot's license in the first year of the CPT program. He then worked for a flight service company at Oakland Airport and earned a flight instructor license. From August 1941 he was a civilian instructor at the Tuskegee Army Flying School in Tuskegee (Alabama) . He was denied training as a fighter pilot and participated as a pilot in the Meteorology Aviation Cadet Program of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). In Tuskegee he was in charge of weather forecasting from 1943 in the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. From September 1944 he became a flight instructor for the Tuskegee Airmen.

During the Korean War he was stationed with the 20th Weather Squadron in Nagoya , Japan . Other stations during the Cold War were Long Island and Alaska and most recently March Air Force Base, Riverside County , California, where he left the military on May 31, 1964 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel . He then worked for a year as a teacher in Riverside and moved to Marin County in 1965, teaching math and physics at Sir Francis Drake High School in San Anselmo until the age of 72 .

Williams was a member of the first Afro-American fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha (ΑΦΑ) .

He was married to Vesta Williams and had two sons, Carlos and Archie Jr.

Web links

• Archie Williams in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )