Jennie C. Williams (Parks)

Maternal grandmother of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and wife of activist Rev. A. D. Williams. Jennie Celeste Parks Williams was born in Atlanta in April 1873. One of 13 children, her father, William Parks, supported the family by working as a carpenter. At the age of fifteen, Jennie began taking classes at Spelman Seminary. She left Spelman in 1892 before completing her degree. On October 29, 1899, she married A. D. Williams the pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. Deeply pious, Williams was a model wife for a minister. The couple had one child, Alberta Christine Williams (the mother of Martin Luther King, Jr.).Williams moved into the King home when her husband died in 1931. As grandmother she displayed the same level of devotion that she demonstrated as a wife and as the "First Lady" of Ebenezer Church. Williams had a close relationship with her soon to be famous grandson Martin Luther King, Jr. Jennie Celeste Parks Williams died in Atlanta of a heart attack on May 18, 1941. Grief-stricken by the death of his beloved grandmother a young Martin Luther King, Jr, reacted by jumping from the second-floor window of his house. He was uninjured, but according to his father, "cried off and on for several days afterward, and was unable to sleep at night."

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jan 10 2018, 1:07:56 UTC