California State College at Los Angeles ( now Cal State Los Angeles )
Which school did Walter E. Williams go to from 1964 to 1967?
Walter E . Williams Walter Edward Williams ( March 31 , 1936December 2 , 2020 ) was an American economist , commentator , and academic . Williams was the John M . Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University , as well as a syndicated columnist and author . Known for his classical liberal and libertarian views , Williamss writings frequently appeared in Townhall , WND , and Jewish World Review . Early life and education . Williams was born in Philadelphia on March 31 , 1936 . His family during childhood consisted of his mother , his sister , and him ; Williamss father played no role in raising Williams or his sister . The family initially lived in West Philadelphia , moving to North Philadelphia and the Richard Allen housing projects when Williams was ten years old . His neighbors included a young Bill Cosby . Williams knew many of the individuals that Cosby speaks of from his childhood , including Weird Harold and Fat Albert . After graduating from Benjamin Franklin High School , Williams traveled to California to live with his father and attend Los Angeles City College for one semester . He later returned to Philadelphia and secured a job as a cab driver for the Yellow Cab Company . In 1959 , he was drafted into the military and served as a private in the United States Army . While stationed in the South , Williams waged a one-man battle against Jim Crow from inside the army . He challenged the racial order with provocative statements to his fellow soldiers . This resulted in an overseeing officer filing a court-martial proceeding against Williams . Williams argued his own case and was found not guilty . While considering filing countercharges against the officer who had brought him up for court martial , Williams found himself transferred to Korea . Upon arriving there , Williams marked Caucasian for race on his personnel form . When challenged on this , Williams replied wryly if he had marked Black , he would end up getting all the worst jobs . From Korea , Williams wrote a letter to President John F . Kennedy denouncing the pervasive racism in the American government and military and questioning the actions black Americans should take given the state of affairs , writing : He received a reply from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense , Alfred B . Fitt , a response which he termed the most reasonable response that I received from any official . Following his military service , Williams served as a juvenile group supervisor for the Los Angeles County Probation Department from 1963 to 1967 . Williams also resumed his education , earning a bachelors degree in economics in 1965 from California State College at Los Angeles ( now Cal State Los Angeles ) . He earned both his masters degree and his PhD in economics from the University of California , Los Angeles ( UCLA ) . Williamss doctoral thesis was titled The Low-Income Market Place . Speaking of his early college days , Williams said : I was more than anything a radical . I was more sympathetic to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King , because Malcolm X was more of a radical who was willing to confront discrimination in ways that I thought it should be confronted , including perhaps the use of violence . But I really just wanted to be left alone . I thought some laws , like minimum-wage laws , helped poor people and poor black people and protected workers from exploitation . I thought they were a good thing until I was pressed by professors to look at the evidence . During his time at UCLA , Williams came into contact with economists such as Armen Alchian , James M . Buchanan , and Axel Leijonhufvud who challenged his assumptions . While Williams was attending UCLA , Thomas Sowell arrived on campus in 1969 as a visiting professor . Although he never took a class from Dr . Sowell , the two met and began a friendship that lasted for decades . In the summer of 1972 , Sowell was hired as director of the Urban Institutes Ethnic Minorities Project , which Williams joined shortly thereafter . Correspondence between Sowell and Williams appears in A Man of Letters , a 2007 autobiography authored by Sowell . Academic career . During his doctoral studies , Williams was an instructor in economics at Los Angeles City College from 1967 to 1969 , and at Cal State Los Angeles from 1967 to 1971 . After returning to his native Philadelphia , Williams taught economics at Temple University from 1973 to 1980 . For the 1975–76 academic year , Williams was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University . In 1980 , Williams joined the economics faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax , Virginia . That same year , Williams began writing a syndicated column , A Minority View , for Heritage Features Syndicate , which merged with Creators Syndicate in 1991 . From 1995 to 2001 , Williams chaired the economics department at George Mason . Courses taught by Williams at George Mason include Intermediate Microeconomics for undergraduate students and Microeconomic Theory I for graduate students . Williams continued to teach at George Mason until his death in 2020 . In his nearly fifty year career , Williams wrote hundreds of research articles , book reviews , and commentaries for scholarly journals including American Economic Review , Policy Review , and Journal of Labor Research as well as popular journals including The American Spectator , Newsweek , Reason , and The Wall Street Journal . Williams was awarded an honorary degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín . He served on advisory boards including the Review Board of Economics Studies for the National Science Foundation , Reason Foundation , the National Tax Limitation Committee , and the Hoover Institute . Williams wrote ten books , beginning in 1982 with The State Against Blacks and America : A Minority Viewpoint . He wrote and hosted documentaries for PBS in 1985 . The Good Intentions documentary was based on his book The State Against Blacks . Economic and political views . As an economist , Williams was a proponent of free market economics and opposed socialist systems of government intervention . Williams believed laissez-faire capitalism to be the most moral , most productive system humans have ever devised . In the mid-to-late 1970s , Williams conducted research into the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and on the impact of minimum wage laws on minority employment . His research led him to conclude the governments interventional programs are harmful . Williams was critical of state programs , including minimum wage and affirmative action laws , stating both practices inhibit liberty and are detrimental to the blacks they are intended to help . He published his results in his 1982 book The State Against Blacks , where he argued that laws regulating economic activity are far greater obstacles to economic progress for blacks than racial bigotry and discrimination . Subsequently , Williams spoke on the topic and penned a number of articles detailing his view that increases in the minimum wage price low skill workers out of the market , eliminating their opportunities for employment . Williams believed that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community today . He pointed to the crippling effects of a welfare state and the disintegration of the black family as more pressing concerns . The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldnt do , and that is to destroy the black family . Although in favor of equal access to government institutions such as court houses , city halls , and libraries , Williams opposed anti-discrimination laws directed at the private sector on the grounds that such laws infringe upon the peoples right of freedom of association . Williams viewed gun control laws as a governmental infringement upon the rights of individuals , and argued that they end up endangering the innocent while failing to reduce crime . Williams also made the argument that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not they have the right to sell it . Taking this argument to its conclusion , he supported legalization of selling ones own bodily organs . He argued that government prohibiting the selling of ones bodily organs is an infringement upon ones property rights . Williams praised the views of Thomas DiLorenzo , and wrote a foreword to DiLorenzos anti-Abraham Lincoln book , The Real Lincoln . Williams maintained that the American states are entitled to secede from the union if they wish , as the Confederate states attempted to do during the Civil War , and asserted that the Unions victory in the Civil War allowed the federal government to run amok over states rights , so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today . In reaction to what he viewed as inappropriate racial sensitivity that he saw hurting blacks in higher education , Williams began in the 1970s to offer colleagues a certificate of amnesty and pardon to all white people for Western Civilizations sins against blacks – and thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry . It is still offered to anyone . The certificate can be obtained at his website . Williams was opposed to the Federal Reserve System , arguing that central banks are dangerous . In his autobiography , Williams cited Frederick Bastiat , Ludwig von Mises , Friedrich Hayek , and Milton Friedman as influences that led him to become a libertarian . Williams praised Ayn Rands as one of the best defenses and explanations of capitalism one is likely to read . Aside from authoring his weekly columns , Williams was a frequent guest host for Rush Limbaughs radio program when Limbaugh was away traveling . In 2009 , Greg Ransom , a writer for the Ludwig von Mises Institute , ranked Williams as the third-most important Hayekian Public Intellectual in America , behind only Thomas Sowell and John Stossel . Reason called Williams one of the countrys leading libertarian voices . Personal life and death . Williams lived in Devon , Pennsylvania , since 1973 . He was married to Connie ( née Taylor ) from 1960 until her death in 2007 . They had one daughter , Devyn . When he began teaching at George Mason , he rented a cheap hotel room in Fairfax , Virginia , where he lived from Tuesdays through Thursdays around his teaching schedule . Williams was a cousin of former NBA player Julius Erving . Williams served on the board of directors of Media General , parent company of the Richmond Times-Dispatch , from 2001 until his retirement from the board in 2011 . He was also chairman of the companys audit committee . Williams died in his car on December 2 , 2020 , at age 84 , shortly after teaching a class at George Mason University . His daughter said that he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension . Filmography . - ( 1982 ) , a documentary based on Williamss The State Against Blacks . - Suffer No Fools ( 2015 ) , a biography examining the life and work of Williams .