Though she was born in St. Louis, Missouri, Velesha P.Williams has spent most of her life in Mississippi. She moved to Jackson when she was 12 years old. An alumna of Jackson State University, Williams earned both a Bachelor of Science degree in 1983 and a Master of Art degree in Criminology and Justice Services in 1996.
Williams retired as the Director of the Metro Jackson Community Prevention Coalition, a unit within the Office of Community Engagement at Jackson State in June 2016. During her time at JSU, she served as principal investigator for several federal and state programs, which generated $10 million in grant funding for the university.
Williams is also a veteran. Prior to her tenure at JSU, she served in the U.S Army as a commissioned officer. During her time in the Army, Williams served as a Company Commander at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland, and as the acting inspector general at Red River Army Depot in Texarkana, Texas.
Williams and her husband, Bennett, returned to Mississippi in 1991. Since, they have remained as residents of Madison County. They have two children – Felicia R. Williams Ellis and son Bennett J. Williams II – and one grandson, Kobe.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.