Mary D. Williams

Mary D. Williams has traveled to hundreds of colleges and universities, several hundred public schools, hundreds of churches, and libraries, and has provided performance lectures for Civic Education Consortium trainings and Programs for the Humanities & Human Values for public school teachers’ institutes.  Performances for the United States Congress, lecture/performances for Civil Rights symposiums in Montpellier, France, concerts abroad and in the North Carolina State Capital as well as concerts for incarcerated men and women in the State and County penitentiaries.  Mary has given benefit performances for Cancer patients, domestic violence and homeless shelter victims.

Along with colleague Dr. Timothy B. Tyson, Mary taught a college course for over a decade, “The South in Black and White: History, Culture and Politics in the 20th Century South.” Mary is a public educator with a BA in American Studies with a double minor in History and African American Diaspora from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Mary completed her graduate studies with a MA in Folklore from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC.  Mary continues to study North Carolina history, facilitating graduate seminars at Duke and has been doing scholarly explorations of the history and theory of gospel music with Professor Jerma Jackson at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Her knowledge of the music and the culture from which it emerged is not merely layman’s learning and experiential understanding, but is rooted in serious scholarly work.  Mary constantly shares what she has learned with the public. It is her primary goal not to just perform the best traditions of North Carolina, but to dissect their subtleties in an accessible manner for a wide listening and learning audience. 

Professor Craig Werner, musicologist and chair of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, offers “a glimpse into a world where the ideals of democracy and Christianity are something more than empty words.”

Mary has performed and provided her voice to the soundtrack for the Hollywood movie, directed by North Carolina’s own Jeb Stuart, Blood Done Sign My Name” (February 2010). As well as the television movie “The Wronged Man,” a Lifetime movie premiering in November 2009. Mary stars with Mike Wiley in his play “Blood Done Sign My Name,” which opened at Shafer Theatre at Duke University in November 2009,  and “The Fire of Freedom, Abraham Galloway,” Carolina Theatre, 2023.  In addition, a concert featuring Mary was held at The North Carolina State Capitol for the 150th year of the 13th Amendment.  February 2016: Song and Narrative of the Black South, The North Carolina State Capitol.  Mary has been featured on Dick Gordon’s show, “The Story,” on National Public Radio, a program which called upon mind, memory, and singing voice: “When you listen to Mary D. Williams, Professor Werner continues, “you’re hearing the voice of a great singer, but you’re also hearing the voices of the elders and the ancestors.”  Mary has received many prestigious honors and awards and is currently expecting the release of her first book, with Co-Author Timothy B. Tyson, Mahalia Jackson, Move on Up a Little Higher, August 2026. 

Dr. Timothy B. Tyson, author, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, states, “Though her voice is uniquely her own, her music and her message emerge from a chorus, born in the bondage of slavery, that still speaks to our struggles against what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called the “thingification” of human beings.  Her power as a singer and educator comes from the heart and her scholarship, from her commitment to humanity and her belief in the God who drowned Pharaoh’s army and still seeks to let His people go, and from her faith in the blood that has signed all our names.”

Most recently, Mary co-authored Mahalia Jackson, Moving on Up a Little Higher: The Story of an American Civil Rights Pioneer, with Timothy B. Tyson, published August 18, 2026.