Katie Ringgold Williams (unk – 1963)
By Kathi Santora
Over 3,000 people attended Katie Ringgold Williams’ funeral in January 1963. Those who couldn’t fit into St. Johns AME Church stood across the street in Lafayette Square, listening to the service by loudspeaker. Twelve ministers from various congregations delivered remarks amid 50 flower arrangements that lined the altar rail.
Why was she held in such high esteem? Ms. Williams, the first African American woman in Maryland to become a licensed mortician, was well-known and well-respected in her southwest Baltimore neighborhood. After passing the mortician licensing exam in March 1920, she went on to build a thriving funeral home business on 321 – 322 N. Schroeder Street that endured for 40 years.
It is believed that Williams worked as a waitress and possibly apprenticed with a neighborhood funeral director before taking the licensing exam. Though other women in the surrounding community served as undertakers, many had inherited the job (and the required license) from their husbands.
She (and her business partner and husband Clarence Williams) probably buried more than 10,000 people from families who lived in the area around her southwest Baltimore funeral establishment. Most of those who attended her own funeral had probably done business with her over those years.
Many of those at her funeral probably also remembered her reputation as a good neighbor. Said one of the attending ministers: “She was a good Christian woman who was a friend to those in need. She fed the hungry, she clothed the naked and she sheltered the homeless.”
Ms. Williams was a founding member of the Funeral Directors and Morticians Association of Maryland. She is buried in the historic Mt. Auburn Cemetery.