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What Have We Here? with Billy Dee Williams

Author Talk in Recognition of Black History Month

This Black History Month at MLK Library the iconic Billy Dee Williams will discuss his life and new memoir "What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life" at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. 

As part of DC Public Library's Black History Month celebration of "African Americans in the Arts," the iconic Billy Dee Williams will discuss his life and new memoir "What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life" at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Hear Billy Dee Williams reflect on key milestones from early stereotype-busting roles to pop culture phenom status with with Jummy Olabanji, anchor of NBC 4 TODAY. Signed copies of the actor's new memoir “What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life” will be available for purchase after the talk.
 
This event is presented in partnership with the DC Public Library Foundation and the Anacostia Community Museum. Signed copies of the book will be available to purchase from Solid State Books.

BILLY DEE WILLIAMS

Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working with Lotte Lenya in an Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill production where Williams ended up feeding Lenya her lines. He studied painting, first at the High School of Music and Art, with fellow student Diahann Carroll, and then at the National Academy of Fine Art, before setting out to pursue acting with Herbert Berghoff, Stella Adler, and Sidney Poitier.

His first film role was in The Last Angry Man, the great Paul Muni’s final film. It was Muni who gave Billy the advice that sent him soaring as an actor, “You can play any character you want to play no matter who you are, no matter the way you look or the color of your skin.” And Williams writes, “I wanted to be anyone I wanted to be.”

He writes of landing the role of a lifetime: co-starring alongside James Caan in Brian’s Song, the made-for-television movie that was watched by an audience of more than fifty million people. Williams says it was “the kind of interracial love story America needed.”

And when, as the first Black character in the Star Wars universe, he became a true pop culture icon, playing Lando Calrissian in George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back (“What I presented on the screen people didn’t expect to see”). It was a role he reprised in the final film of the original trilogy, The Return of the Jedi, and in the recent sequel The Rise of Skywalker.

A legendary actor, in his own words, on all that has sustained and carried him through a lifetime of dreams and adventure.

JUMMY OLABANJI

A native of Fairfax County, Olabanji has spent most of her life in Virginia, graduating from Westfield High School in Chantilly and Virginia Tech. She earned a Master's degree in Communication and Leadership Studies from Gonzaga University.

Olabanji started her journalism career as an intern for NBC4. She has also worked for stations in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and New York City.

She has been honored for her work with two national Edward R. Murrow Awards for breaking news anchor coverage, two Virginia Associated Press Awards, and eight EMMY Awards.

Olabanji is an advocate for organ donation and sits on the Board of Directors of the National Kidney Foundation. She is also a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, The Links, Incorporated, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. 

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