When her elementary school peers were playing outside or watching TV inside, Martha Williams had one thing she could do all day: watch her mother sew.
Williams would observe from all perspectives, and by the time she was in eighth school, she was certain that she wanted to become a seamstress.
You have no idea how much time I spent [observing my mother]. “I never learned how to sew from anyone,” Williams recalled. Observing my family taught me. I would sit across from the [sewing] machine or stand at someone’s elbow and observe.
When her mother bought fabric for her daughter, it stoked the passion even further. A Vogue suit that was featured in the magazine of the same name was created by young Martha.
Williams laughed and remarked, “I’m sure [the suit] had a whole bunch of horrors.” I made a hat to go with the orange wool my mother bought me. You couldn’t tell me anything, and my mother let me to wear it to school.
Since then, Williams has made clothes, costumes, coats, curtains, puppets, and even a mascot for the University of Alabama in Birmingham. In addition to larger works for groups like bridal parties, she also takes on jobs for individual clients. Her most well-known job was working for R&B legend Anita Baker for six months as a seamstress.
Magic City Roots
Williams came to the Magic City for family reasons. In 1972, her mother, Frances, who was born in Birmingham and now resides in Chicago, Illinois, went back to her hometown to care for her father, Bob Williams.
According to a 1982 National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, Mr. Williams had established a reputation as the proprietor of the well-known Little Savoy Cafe, also known as Bob’s Savoy, a restaurant situated in Birmingham’s 4th Avenue Historic District, the epicenter of [the city’s] Black social and commercial activity and professional achievement, from 1908 to 1941. The venue, which had a downstairs bar that was a meeting place for the African American elite and an upstairs restaurant serving chicken and steaks along with dinner specials and short orders, was named after the renowned Savoy Ballroom, a legendary Harlem, New York, hot spot, which Mr. Williams drew inspiration from.
Out-of-town guests, musicians, and Birmingham Black Barons players were among the customers at Bob’s Savoy. In 1958, the company closed due to a fire. Since she was just 4 years old when the theater closed, Martha Williams has no recollection of it.
“My mother got sick,” Martha Williams recalled, adding that she took it very hard when her mother died in 1982. She had attended Talladega College for two years before dropping out.
Williams, 71, claimed that her mother was a wise woman who made choices that benefited her children and her. According to Williams, a mother of four with a growing family at the time, one of those choices gave Martha the opportunity to inherit her mother’s Birmingham home, but things were not going well.
When Williams was in the eleventh grade in Chicago, she gave birth to her first child.
My son, Robert Preston Williams, is 39 years old, and my firstborn is a girl, Robin Harrison. Williams, who now has eight grandkids, added, “I have two more girls: Christal Harvel, 30, and Blessing Williams, 31.”
Addicted
“I think I had a nervous breakdown at one point, but I really didn’t have to worry about anything [financially] because all my bills were paid,” Williams said.
But she had other difficulties.
“I would be exposed to the world of drugs by choosing to try to help friends by letting them stay with me,” she stated. On May 20, 1987, I tried crack cocaine for the first time at my son’s first birthday celebration. The fact that [it] allowed me to stay up late was what drew me to it.
Williams was employed at The Galleria’s Parisian in Hoover, Alabama, at the time. Williams said she could stay up and sew more clothes after getting off the medicine. However, the addiction persisted for ten years.
Williams balanced her employment and her drug use, and many people were unaware of her struggles. Her 10-year journey to overcome her addiction was not without its setbacks.
Williams worked as a bookkeeper at a gas station and later as a seamstress at a luggage and leather repair shop before launching her own business as a seamstress during her addiction.
Anita Baker
A friend of Brenda Hong, the founder of Brenda’s Brown Bosom Buddies and a breast cancer survivor, introduced Williams to R&B artist Anita Baker, with whom she collaborated while battling her addiction. Both the singer and Hong hail from Detroit, Michigan. Following the meeting, Baker invited Williams to accompany her on the road.
Martha is both a tailor and a seamstress, according to Hong. She is imaginative and gifted.
“She was a great designer, and she replicated, [recreated by sewing], a robe for Baker that was based on the style of Hollywood actress Loretta Young, who had a weekly show/drama series called The Loretta Young Show from 1953 to 1961,” Hong said of Williams, who was hired because she filled in when needed.
“It’s just elegance,” Hong recalled. Anita fell in love with it once Martha made it.
Williams was viewed by Hong, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer while working with Baker, as a seamstress who might also serve as a kind of personal assistant.
“Don’t forget, I was in full-blown addiction when I took this job with Baker, but she was a difficult client because she was very demanding,” Williams said when asked about his experience working with Baker.
According to Williams, the singer appreciated her southern hospitality and her direct and honest attitude. After a fire devastated her home, she returned to Birmingham after touring with Baker.
“That fire destroyed a lot of artifacts that I was saving to make an exhibit about my family’s history,” Williams said, referring to her grandfather’s eatery, the Little Savoy Cafe.
She would start using drugs more after this tragedy since she felt like she had let her family down by losing these antiques to the fire.
The Turnaround
She added, “I had been in rehab seven times, and that last time it stuck.” I celebrated July 19, 1996, as my Freedom Day.
She was assisted in her recovery by Pathways, a Birmingham shelter for women and children.
They assigned me to Pathways while I was expecting my youngest child. Williams remembered how she first met Sister Mary Oliver, the director of Pathways at the time, with a box of food that she shared with him.
Williams and Sister Mary’s connection has witnessed many life events, including attending one of Williams’ several operations, changing jobs, or losing loved ones. Williams added, “Sister Mary, who is now 97, always had my back through them all.”
In addition to spending 14 years living in one of the housing units at Pathways in Fairfield, Alabama, Williams went on to serve as residential manager for nine years at Safe Haven, a 10-bed facility for children with mental illnesses and chronic conditions.
The Gift That Keeps Giving
Sewing remained a constant presence throughout. At her church, Agape Missionary Baptist Church, in the East Lake neighborhood of Birmingham, Williams now sews in her office. She also acknowledges that she had instruction from several sewing experts, despite the fact that she initially learned how to sew on her own. Williams remembers Bertha James, a lecturer at Lawson State who is still living, and he attended Lawson State Community College from 2002 to 2005.
I learned from [James] at Lawson State in the basement. “I learned how to correct my wrongs in sewing between what I taught myself and what she straightened out,” said Williams, who now gives back by instructing others in her trade.
She is teaching sewing lessons to sixth- through twelfth-grade kids this summer at the Bessemer Recreation Center, which is situated at 100 14th Street in Bessemer, Alabama.
“We will start off simple to have the best impact that I can because I want to teach what they want to learn,” Williams added.
