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79pp.  Illustrated with tissue-guarded frontis engraving of Williams. 7x4½”, original cloth with gilt lettering on spine. First Edition. 

Williams, born a slave in New York while George Washington was President, was affectionately called “Professor Jim” by the students of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was a custodian for some 50 years.

Williams' menial position at Trinity belied his amazing life – as a sailor during and after the War of 1812 who traveled the world from South America to China, finally settling into his janitorial job in Hartford, where, over 50 years, he witnessed the graduation of 650 young men while serving as preacher in an A.M.E. church he helped found. He came to be so genuinely revered by his college that in 1867, when the students, moved by the oratory of Boston eccentric Daniel Pratt, “nominated” Pratt for the US Presidency with “Professor Jim”, newly-enfranchised by the 14th Amendment, as his Vice Presidential running-mate.