Alma Stone Williams

Alma Stone Williams was a musician, educator, music scholar, and pioneer in racial integration. Williams attended the 1944 Summer Music Institute. She was the first African-American student to be enrolled at Black Mountain College. Before attending BMC, she was a student at Spelmen College and Atlanta University. Her tuition was covered through the Rosenwald Fund, which also paid her way through Juliard. She was already a music teacher at Fort Valley State College when she applied to BMC. She also obtained a masters in musicology at the University of Maryland where she focused on the works of Brahms.

Williams' account of her time at Black Mountain College is included in the publication Black Mountain College: Sprouted Seeds: an Anthology of Personal Accounts.

Black Mountain College Project

Mary Emma Harris interviewed Alma in 1996 and the transcript is available from Appalachian State University under The Mary Emma Harris and Black Mountain College Project, Inc. Oral History collection.

Topics: Hearing about BMC and sponsorship by Rosenwald Foundation – study at Spelman and teaching at Penn Center on St. Helena Island – BMC and first exposure to creative, intellectual unstructured community and to art – BMC student friends– exposure to international faculty and students – selection of classes – Kolisch Quartet open rehearsals – emphasis on technique as basis for freedom – Saturday night formal concerts – Bernard Rudofsky lectures – college recreation – refugees and awareness of war - summer BMC civil war – BMC work program – BMC influence