America has lost an inarguably great man. Walter Williams, one of the nation’s great economists and public intellectuals, died in the early hours of Wednesday morning after teaching his final class at George Mason University on Tuesday. He was 84.
A self-described “crazy-ass man” and libertarian economist with a black belt in karate, he focused on government’s role in perpetuating racial inequality.
A ferocious defender of free markets and a powerful explainer of the virtues of liberty, Williams brought a personal toughness honed as a Philly cab driver to his work; a contrarianism born of growing up poor in the city’s racially segregated housing projects. But he never allowed himself to be a victim of his circumstances.
A disciple of Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, Williams worked for 40 years at George Mason University, putting his heart and soul into transforming the economics department into a highly respected center of free market scholars. Talking with Robert Chatfield of the Free To Choose Network, Williams said he tried to avoid using anything written within the last 40 years in his economics class. He wanted students to know that Mises, Hayek, and Friedman were right then, and they’re still right today.
A nationally syndicated columnist and author of ten books including his seminal work, “Race and Economics”, a highly acclaimed must-read on the subject, his research was rigorous and his writings bold and unequivocal. His book, The State Against Blacks, was made into the television documentary “Good Intentions” in 1985, with his most recent documentary, “Suffer No Fools” debuting in 2015. He was one of the few economists who knew how to engage with the public.
A libertarian in the truest sense, Williams refused the title as a descriptor, saying “I just do my own thing,” when asked by Reason Magazine in 2011 whether he saw himself as part of the libertarian movement.
In a moving elegy to his best and closest friend of more than half a century, Thomas Sowell wrote, “There was no one I trusted more or whose integrity I respected more. Since he was younger than me, I chose him to be my literary executor, to take control of my books after I was gone. But his death is a reminder that no one really has anything to say about such things.”
Sowell shared a running joke between he and Williams, that there was a time when the entire black conservative community would have only consisted of the two of them, “Walter used to say the two of us should never fly on the same plane otherwise the whole movement will disappear if the plane goes down.”
To misquote slightly a line from Hamlet, “He was a man, Horatio, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.”
Walter Edward Williams, rest in peace.