Heather A. Williams

Heather A. Williams is a scholar of African American studies and lawyer. She serves as Presidential Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Heather Andrea Williams moved to the United States from Jamaica with her family when she was 11 years old. She attended Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York. in 2002. There she continues her work.

Her book Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery (2012), about ads placed after emancipation to reunify families, was described as "a superbly researched and engaging analysis" by John G. Cox. He also criticized her writing for engaging "only very slightly with extant scholarship".

Works Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 2005) Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)