Nathaniel H. Williams Jr

This is Nathaniel H. Williams, Jr. (1922-1979). Williams was the second African American Scouting professional for the Middle Tennessee Council, hired by Ward Akers to run the Napier Division in November 1949.

Active since at least 1936, Williams had grown up in Scouting. He served as a scribe for Troop 66 as a youth and participated in the Napier Division’s annual Field Day at Tennessee A & I State College (today’s TSU). He was in the program for at least five years before becoming an Assistant Scoutmaster. He graduated from Pearl High School and went on to graduate from Fisk University with a Master’s degree. The Field Executive position was his first professional job. He was 27 years old.

Williams’ experience with the professional side of Scouting was both very similar and very different from Charles Cooper’s. Like Cooper, Williams filled the Napier Division’s calendar with events, like the Field Day, Youth Week, and summer camp. What was different though was an emphasis on growth. The Council under Akers focused a great deal on building more units and securing more Scouts, setting goals and pressuring professionals to reach those goals. When Williams took the helm, the Napier Division had been losing Scouts for four years. He was charged with turning the ship around and he did. By 1952, Williams could report almost 1000 boys enrolled, a record.

Williams’ also faced a larger changing world. Council President Charles Parish began a slow organizational integration of the Napier Division into the Middle Tennessee Council. It was still segregated, but treated more like a district. Camp Burton was abandoned and the name began moving around the mid-state area. But the stresses of the job seemed to catch up with him and Williams left Scouting in October 1954, eventually running the Nashville Urban League. He remained active on the Executive Committee of the Council and passed away in 1979 at 56 years old.

Staff photographer John Morgan, _Nashville Banner_, March 2, 1951, pg. 19: “N. H. Williams [left] awards Life badges to three boys at annual night court of honor—Morris E. Gardner, troop 70; Charles Dowell, troop 230; William Buckley, troop 230.”

That was the plan…

The 1994 Capital Development Campaign brought lots of changes to camp, but some of the plans did not work out quite as anticipated. When the campaign built a new waterfront at Camp Craig on the back of Duck Head, the old–and unsafe–waterfront on the river’s main channel was closed.

But this was only part of the plan. Craig’s leadership understood that moving the waterfront meant ALL of Camp Craig would need to flip. Instead of a two loop system, Craig would need to be more like Stahlman with the dining hall at one end and the waterfront on the other end. To that end a whole new road was carved on the backside of camp to connect to the waterfront. The Friday Night campfire was moved to the new road and the two program shelters for the Activity Yard were built in this area as well, anticipating that the AY–along with the entire lower loop (sites 2-7)–would all move to the new road.

The Activity Yard eventually moved from its location across from the cabin to the new road (nicknamed “Parker’s Highway” for program director Kerry Parker), but it struggled. The original idea was to put the AY on the slope between the Chapel and the field of Duck Head. As it turned out, the slope was just too great and did not make for a good site. Thus, after trying to make it work in 2003 and 2004 (as seen here), the AY moved off the hill and down onto Duck Head proper. The lower loop never budged.

The trail to Wilderness Survival Merit Badge at the “new” AY, located on Parker’s Highway, just below the Chapel, 2004. Photo by Grady Eades