Kaitlyn Greenidge, Freedom Williams

Description

Longtime Brooklyn resident; Great-great-grandson of Rufus L. Perry Freedom Williams was born in Brooklyn in 1966. His paternal grandmother was the granddaughter of Rufus L. Perry, Sr. (1834-1895), a prominent preacher, historian and political activist who lived and worked in Weeksville. Rufus Perry, Sr. escaped from slavery in Smith County, Tennessee. He was enslaved by the Overton family, on the Overton plantation: one of the wealthiest families in the state. Perry, Sr., managed to flee slavery by escaping through Canada: in his autobiography, he describes eluding a black slave catcher that was sent after him. He eventually settled in Brooklyn. Rufus Perry Sr.’s son, Rufus Perry, Jr., was also an author, and eventually an ambassador to Haiti. He was Brooklyn’s first black District Attorney. Freedom’s grandmother married Fredrick Williams, a wealthy black man who based in Flushing, Queens, but originally from St. Kitts. Freedom’s maternal grandfather, Oscar Perkins, was a merchant seaman. While traveling through London, he met Sarah Ann Parsons, and eventually relocated with her to Brooklyn. Freedom’s father attended Boys High School and his mother went to Girls High School, which is how they met. Freedom lived in Brooklyn until he was six, when his family moved to Cambria Heights, Queens. It was in Queens that he began to be a part of the early hip-hop scene in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He remembers being introduced to the scene through his involvement with the Nation of Islam. He recalls that when he...

Record Contributed By

Weeksville Heritage Center