It's often said that Williams learned to sketch upside down, while reaching across the table, in order to avoid upsetting potential white clients who might feel uncomfortable sitting next to him.
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In an essay called "I Am a Negro," published in 1937, he wrote that his aim was to amaze those potential clients within a few minutes of meeting them so that they would focus more on his drawing race. This is a subtle distinction but a crucial one. It suggests an architect who had not only come to terms with the fact that he'd always be at a certain remove from his own work but had turned that distance into an advantage—into a kind of parlor trick.
—About Paul Revere Williams, a Black architect who started his career in the 1920s, from
Architect magazine, April 2017