Staff report

SALISBURY — Eldridge S. Williams, who served a four-year term on the Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education in the 1990s and was a former official with Livingstone College, died Thursday at Novant Health Rowan Regional Medical Center.

He was 66. Williams was the first African-American elected to Seat 6 on the school board, a black-majority seat created as a way to settle a lawsuit with the NAACP.

Williams was elected with no opposition in 1994, but he lost his re-election bid to Dr. Ada Fisher in 1998. Williams filed to run for the school board seat again in 2002, but withdrew before the election.

In October 1996, while he was on the school board, Williams became director of community and government relations for Livingstone College. At the time, it was a new position created by then President Dr. Burnett Joiner.

In May of that same year, Williams, then 48, had graduated from Livingstone College with a sociology degree. He had attended the school without graduating in the 1960s.

Williams also served for a time on the Salisbury Planning Board.

A native of Mobile, Ala., Williams had worked locally for Zimmerman’s, Fieldcrest-Cannon, The Shoe Department, Belk-Harry and L.D. Melton Financial Services. He once was an assistant coordinator for an anti-poverty program in Newark, N.J., and had lived in Denver, Colo., for 10 years, working in retail.

He moved back to Salisbury in 1989. He had been active with Gethsemane Baptist Church, the PTA and Scouting.

Funeral arrangements for Williams are not complete. Noble & Kelsey Funeral Home will be in charge.