Former El Paso mayor and civil rights pioneer, Bert Williams, dead at 91

One of the Borderland’s biggest civil rights pioneers has died.

Former Mayor Bert Williams, who drew up El Paso’s first desegregation ordinance, died Thursday after a battle with pneumonia.

Williams was 91.

ABC-7 spoke with El Pasoans who feel indebted to Williams, who back in 1962, a full year before civil rights legislation was passed, took Nolan Richardson to an El Paso restaurant. When they wouldn’t serve his friend, because he’s black, Williams did something about it.

“There I was, one of the leading scorers and I couldn’t go to the movies,” Richardson said, “I couldn’t go to the skating rink, I couldn’t go swimming.”

And during the early 1960’s, Texas Western’s Richardson couldn’t eat in many El Paso restaurants, until his friend Williams, then a City alderman, drew up a desegregation ordinance.

“He was willing to fight for something that he didn’t have to fight for, but he did,” Richardson said. “And behold they got that law changed before the civil rights came in, which is a year ahead of it.”

Former Senator Eliot Shapleigh said El Paso would be a much different place without Williams.

“We had the first civil rights ordinance, we became a very different city from the rest of the South,” Shapleigh said. “UTEP’s great run in the NCAA, all that you could say came from Bert Williams. If we had not done that, we would have been like a city in the old South. We would have been beset by racism. It would have been a very different history.”

In 2009, former City Representative Steve Ortega helped get the new Sun Metro transfer center in Downtown El Paso named after Williams.

“Bert reached out to me back around 2009-2010 when the City was in the middle of the domestic partner debate,” Ortega said. “Really, his story needs to be told. He was a class act and did the right thing at a time when it wasn’t necessarily the popular thing to do and to me that’s a true leader.”

“He should have many things named after him,” Shapleigh said. “He’s a real pioneer in this city. He was a fierce champion for civil rights way before his time.”

Added Richardson: “There’s a lot of people who don’t know who Bert Williams really was or who he is. They’d be amazed and surprised about how he fought for human rights. If it wasn’t for a guy like Bert, I mean, he’s up there with (Martin Luther) King. He’s up there.”

Funeral arrangements for Williams, who was also a world-class fast-pitch softball player, are still pending.

Richardson said if it hadn’t been for Williams, his good friend Don Haskins would never have been able to recruit black players like Jim “Bad News” Barnes and Bobby Joe Hill to play in El Paso during the turbulent 1960’s.