Celebrating Black History Month: Archie Williams went from Olympic gold medalist to weather officer in the Air Force

For some, achieving athletic greatness at the Olympic Games would be considered arguably their greatest accomplishment. But for Archie Williams, it was one of many signature achievements that would span the realm of science, athletics and military service.

Born in Oakland, California, on May 1, 1915, Williams' future successes would be foreshadowed by his childhood activities, such as running track events at his neighborhood park and exploring a fascination with airplanes.

As a student at the University of California Berkeley (Cal), Williams studied mechanical engineering, while also competing as a prolific track and field athlete.

Williams made history before even graduating college. After setting the world record in the 400-meter sprint at the 1936 NCAA championships in Chicago with a blistering time of 46.1 seconds, he later took home the gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the same event.

Williams’ triumph came at a time when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany were using the games to showcase Aryan athletes.

While Williams made an early name for himself on the ground as an extraordinary athlete, his future would see him soar to new heights.

Williams studied mechanical engineering as part of his fascination with aviation, according to an oral history produced in 1992 by Gabrielle Morris for the Oral History Center at Cal’s Bancroft Library.

A self-described “airplane nut,” he grew up crafting model airplanes and even won a prize in the former Oakland Tribune’s model airplane contest. At Cal, he enrolled in the student Civilian Pilot Training Program, which began in 1939, as a pre-World War II program to build a private corps of pilots, according to Williams, who recalled that he was the only black student in the program at the time.

Following his graduation in 1939, Williams was unable to get an engineering job due to professional limits placed on blacks, the New York Times reported.

Instead, Williams developed his aviation skills with the Oakland Flying Service by performing maintenance on planes before eventually flying them.

In 1943, with a wealth of piloting experience under his belt, he headed to the Deep South to work for the Army Air Corps at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama where he helped train the first group of black pilots in the military's history.

Prior to 1940, African-Americans had been barred from flying for the U.S. military, according to the Tuskegee Airman, Inc. Organization.

Tuskegee was a prime spot to host this aviation training because its year-round climate was conducive to flying.

Williams earned about $200 per month while working at Tuskegee, one of the only locations that would employ black instructors. It was substantially less than the $400-$500 white instructors made elsewhere, he told Morris.

According to the oral history, Williams was too old to become a flying cadet in at the time, so he chose to become a weather cadet. After spending a year studying meteorology at the University of California, Los Angeles, he returned to Tuskegee.

“While I was there, I had three jobs. I was a weather officer. I was drawing weather maps, making weather forecasts, and teaching intro to flying," Williams was quoted as saying.

Williams recalled to Morris what his flying routine would entail.

“We would get up in the morning. Since you had training and weather, you would jump in that plane and check the weather. I used to go up and fly around and see how the weather was, call back and say, 'It's okay to fly.' [laughter] A couple of times we got up there and had to fly away to Birmingham; the weather was so bad we had to spend the night in Birmingham. But it was fun. It was great because I was doing what I liked to do,” he said.

Williams said the Tuskegee Airmen he trained became part of the “Fighting 99^th Squadron,” and were eventually deployed to North Africa and Italy to fight in the war. However, he did not accompany them as instructors typically did not participate in combat, he explained.

It was the successes of these African-American pilots that would help pave the way for an end to segregation in the military, when President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, which stated, "There shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed forces without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin."

His military career did not end in the Army and neither did his passion to learn. By 1950, he earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

Unlike in World War II, Williams was sent overseas to Korea and Japan to serve during the Korean War, according to a separate oral history produced by the LA84 Foundation titled “An Olympian's oral history.” Part of his combat duties included flying missions over North Korea.

After living in Japan for two years, he eventually returned to the U.S. In total, he spent 22 years in the Air Force, living in New York, Alaska and eventually back in California, where he would retire as lieutenant colonel.

As Williams told Morris: “I was meteorological officer of their weather center. I had a real good job doing weather forecasting, working for the Fifth Air Force in the Air Force headquarters. Then when I left there, I came back to the 26th Air Division, stationed in New York. It has control of all the air defense on the East Coast. It's a command post; I worked in there. I did the weather for the fighters and the staff.”

Following his retirement, Williams transitioned to a new career.

Williams enjoyed teaching, so in 1965, he obtained a teaching credential through the University of California Riverside and got a job at Sir Francis Drake High School in Marin County.

He even spent time coaching young track and field athletes at the school, but it wasn’t his main interest.

“I wasn't serious about the sports because my main concern was teaching mathematics and later on computer science. I was just interested in it and I had some ideas on how to get the job done,” Williams said in the LA84 Foundation oral history. "I worked quite a bit with the less-endowed kids, or in some cases, kids who were handicapped or slow learners. I really enjoyed that and it's a really good feeling to see success; not only to see them succeed, but to see them recognize the benefit of success."

Williams suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 78 in 1993, leaving behind his wife, Vesta, and two sons, Carlos and Archie Jr.

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