As told to FRAN WORRALL
Photograph by BRIAN AUSTIN LEE
Georgia State Representative Al Williams of Midway, who has served in the Georgia General Assembly since 2003, first visited Jekyll Island as a boy in the late 1950s when one of his friends asked him to go on a day trip. The friend’s mother, a schoolteacher, opened the door to a new world for him that day. “I felt an instant connection to the island,” he says. “It was magical, especially the oak trees draped in Spanish moss.”
At the time, Jekyll was segregated. “Black visitors had to turn right at the entrance,” he recalls. A beach at the island’s south end was designated for blacks, and the Dolphin Club and Motor Hotel was their only lodging. Years later, in the 1970s and 1980s, Williams and his family often vacationed at Jekyll, which was by then fully integrated.
Williams still enjoys spending time on the island. And as a member of two of the most powerful house committees in the assembly— appropriations and economic development & tourism—he helps secure Jekyll’s future by enacting legislation that protects the environment, limits development, and funds revitalization projects.
He has long led the charge for preserving the natural beauty of Jekyll, noting that it has avoided the indiscriminate construction that has spoiled many other coastal resorts. He’s also adamant that the island remains a vacation spot for people of all income levels and from all walks of life. “Jekyll is for everyone,” he says. “There’s no place like it in the world.”
