Family

Series 3: Personal correspondence contains hand-written and typed letters on plain, personal, or letterhead stationery, note cards, greeting cards, and envelopes. Scattered throughout the collection are telegrams, postcards, Mass cards and personal notes. Some business papers and documents relating to family and performance matters are located in this series. However, most correspondence relating to Williams’ businesses, performance and recording are in Series 4: Business papers and Series 6: Performance and personal appearance files.


Ranging in content from love letters to thank you notes from grade school children, Williams’s daily life, beliefs, and attitudes are revealed through the words of those who replied to her writings or responded to her music. The abundance or paucity of saved correspondence reflects the vicissitudes of Williams’s life, resulting in pockets of underrepresented time spans.


Subseries 3.1 contains hand-written letters on personalized stationery, standard paper and note cards, greeting cards and telegrams to Mary Lou Williams from her family. Documents, business correspondence, and receipts pertaining to Williams’ sister Grace Mickles and family are included. Family members include Williams’ two husbands, saxophonist John Williams and trumpet player Harold “Shorty” Baker. The subseries includes correspondence from Williams’ sisters Mamie Floyd, Geraldine Garnett, Grace Mickles, Dorothy Rollins and brothers Howard and Jerry Burley, his wife Renee, half-brother Willis Scruggs, nephews, most notably Robert Mickles, and nieces Karen Rollins and Helen Floyd, among other relatives. Family birth and baptismal certificates and life insurance policies are in Series 5: Personal Papers and Unique Items. When extant, letters from Williams are filed under the recipient’s name. Ranging in content from love letters to details concerning the welfare and education of Williams’s nephew Robert Mickles, this correspondence details Williams’ personal and financial involvement with her family members.
Subseries 3.2 contains Williams’s correspondence with friends. Williams’s life centered around music and religion, as such, some friends may be included in subseries 3.3 and 3.4, respectively. Dizzy and Lorraine Gillespie are significant exceptions and are included here as they were among Williams’s closest friends. Other significant figures include Hazel Scott, Joyce Breach, and Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Koenigswarter’s letters are notable for their creativity.
Subseries 3.3 includes letters, telegrams, greeting cards and other correspondence from musicians, students, and notable figures. Among the major artists contemporary to Williams included in this subseries are Louis Armstrong, Art Blakey, Don Byas, Charlie Christian, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, Herbie Nichols, Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Ben Webster. Other artists from later generations or who would be more directly involved with Williams musically or Williams-related projects include Geri Allen—would briefly serve as executive director of the Mary Lou Williams Foundation (2015-2017)—Honi Gordon—who performed on the Music for Peace/Mary Lou’s Mass recordings—and Hilton Ruiz, Milton Suggs, Ben Thigpen, and Buster Williams. Notable figures include Leonard Feather, Norman Granz, John Hammond, Barry Ulanov, and President Jimmy Carter. The Correspondence with the Office of President Carter involved Williams’s appearance at the 1978 White House Jazz Festival. Williams was a dedicated educator. Most correspondence with students is largely by individual letters at the end of the subseries.
Subseries 3.4 includes hand-written and typed letters, note cards, greeting cards, postcards, envelopes, telegrams and prayer cards from religious figures. Williams was a devout Catholic and developed relationships with multiple brothers and sisters. Of particular significance are Peter O’Brien and Mario Hancock. O’Brien’s correspondence with Williams is included in the Peter O’Brien papers (also at the Institute of Jazz Studies). Hancock, whom she met in 1958, was among her closest confidants. They represent a significant portion of the subseries and include Williams’s questions about faith and her concerns for her nephew, Robert Mickles. A seventeen-year friendship with Sister Martha Morris of Cenacle Retreat House—a religious and meditative haven for Williams—is also of note. A significant number of letters from religious figures stationed in Rome or the Vatican are written on aerograms with printed letterhead from Catholic institutions.
Subseries 3.5 contains fan mail and requests for photography, largely from the 1970s. Subseries 3.6 contains greeting cards, organized by the occasion or purpose. All greeting cards sent by persons listed in subseries 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 are included in those subseries in the appropriate folders. Subseries 3.7 includes a variety of correspondence-related material. Of particular interest are address books and addresses book pages, rolodex files, index cards, and scrap paper with similar information. The series also contains a variety of handouts, mailings, and ephemera. Additional pamphlets and handouts are included in series 5: Personal papers, documents, and related items. Also included in series 5 and related to Williams’s personal correspondence is a tranche of photocopies Williams made of outgoing letters. And series 4 contains Williams’s business correspondence.