DeCharlene Williams (1943-2018) came to Seattle with her first husband in 1958. Williams graduated from Seattle Central College, then attended Edward's Beauty School in Seattle, graduating in 1961. After divorcing in 1965, she worked at a beauty salon and other jobs, saving money to buy her own building. As a single woman of color, she was denied loans by numerous banks, eventually succeeding by using an initial instead of her full first name on the application. In 1968 Williams bought a storefront on E. Madison Street in the Central Area and opened De Charlene's Beauty Shop and Boutique, which she operated for 50 years, until her death in 2018. Williams also founded the Central Area Chamber of Commerce in 1983 to support minority business development in the neighborhood, and ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1993 and city council in 1997.
In this photo, mayoral candidate DeCharlene Williams sits in her Central Area beauty shop.
Caption information source: "She was fearless’: DeCharlene Williams, pillar of Seattle’s Central Area, dies at 75, " Seattle Times, retrieved at https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/she-was-fearless-decharlene-williams-pillar-of-seattles-central-area-dies-at-75.
