Middle-Grade Review: Unlawful Orders: A Portrait of Dr. James B. Williams, Tuskegee Airman, Surgeon, and Activist by Barbara Binns

Born in 1919, James B. Williams was part of a family with deep ties to both education and Civil Rights. His mother, Clara Belle Williams, attended college even though she was made to sit in the hallway for her classes because she was Black, and his father founded the El Paso, Texas chapter of the NAACP and proposed to Clara Belle on their stationery! In addition to information about Williams’ family background and childhood, there is also information about the involvement of African Americans during the Revolutionary War and WWI, the racial issues of the summer of 1919, and information about Plessy vs. Ferguson and how the effects of that were seen in Williams’ education. Since Williams wanted to be a doctor, Binns frames his studies in a comprehensive overview of how Black students were treated in the 1940s, and continues this treatment when he is assigned to medical corps and sent to Camp Pickett. There is a wealth of information about the treatment of Blacks, and the Freeman Field Mutiny in which Williams was involved that concerned the fact that Black officers were denied admission to officers’ clubs even though these were not supposed to be segregated. The careers of both Benjamin O. Davis senior and junior are discussed at length and serve as good examples of how bad the treatment of Black soldiers by the military was.

Williams’ 477th unit missed being sent to the front lines by just a few weeks, and he continued his medical studies, becoming the first Black surgical resident at a non-Black school, Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. He also studied at McGill. As the Civil Rights movement started making changes in the 1960s, Williams was involved in a variety of organizations. One was the National Medical Association, a group of Black doctors who were denied admission to the American Medical Association. His own children were able to be successful in their own fields because of the constant work that he did toward equity.