Gordon Williams has built a life around storytelling.
The Cleveland native is a filmmaker whose work has been featured at festivals across the country and beyond. He also works with students at Lamar University’s television station, helping guide the next generation of media professionals. But for Williams, storytelling is about much more than cameras and editing.
“At its heart, it’s about humanity,” he said.
Williams said people often ask questions without really listening.
“You have to walk in with a blank slate. You have to be open. You have to listen,” he said. “There are a lot more commonalities between people. But people are not having the conversations.”
That belief shapes both the stories he tells and the way he teaches.
Deep roots
Williams’ ties to Cleveland run deep. His parents, Elton and Clydie Williams, were both active in the community. His mother was an educator, and his father was a youth coach and public servant.
“My mother was an educator and my dad coached youth baseball, and was very active in the community, so for my sister and I, they were models for us to kind of understand the importance of people and community,” he said.
His family’s history in Cleveland reaches back even further through his late grandmother, Rachel B. Scott, who owned one of the longest-running black businesses in town.
According to Williams, the business included a convenience store, diner, cab stand, apartments and a mechanic’s garage. He said seeing a street later named in his grandmother’s honor while she was still living was especially meaningful.
“That was definitely an honor for her to be able to watch that happen,” he said.
Early curiosity
Williams graduated from Cleveland High School and later attended Lamar University, where he studied broadcasting. While there, he created his own music video entertainment show, “G Sharp,” which helped him land an internship with Black Entertainment Television.
After graduation, he worked briefly at Channel 12 before joining the staff of Lamar University in December 1999.
Over the years, he has helped students learn the basics of radio, television and film production. Though he once thought he wanted no part of education, he now finds mentoring students deeply rewarding.
“It’s been fulfilling in ways that I didn’t expect,” he said.
As a child, Williams said he was always drawn to creativity.
“I was a kid that was memorizing the choreography to music videos and also writing poetry and drawing and watching TV and movies and just kind of wondering how they were made,” he said.
One of his earliest film memories was seeing E.T. at the Texan Theatre in Cleveland, an experience that helped spark his interest in filmmaking.
Stories with depth
Williams said many people do not realize how much work goes into media.
“It’s one of those iceberg careers,” he said. “On the surface, above the water, you can’t see as much. But underneath that water, there is all of the journalism, the writing, being in uncomfortable spaces and having difficult conversations, editing and everything else.”
He is especially passionate about writing and worries it is becoming a lost art. That concern has only grown with the rise of artificial intelligence. Williams recalled a student turning in two versions of a script — one original and one created with AI.
“I was like, no,” he said.
For Williams, good storytelling still requires curiosity and the willingness to look beyond the obvious.
“Stories are everywhere,” he said. “Are you taking the time? Are you looking beyond the surface?”
Drawn to history
Over the years, Williams has worked on a number of films and documentaries, including Surviving Rita. He said his first personal project was a short film called A Dance.
He describes himself this way: “I am a writer by birth, producer by trade and director by necessity.”
In recent years, his work has increasingly focused on history and preservation, especially stories rooted in black communities.
One of the projects he is involved in centers on Texas Freedom Colonies, self-sustaining black communities established after the Civil War. Through that work, he has documented places that reveal how easily history can be neglected or forgotten.
He is also working on a project involving Shankleville, the historic East Texas community in Newton County that was founded by James and Winnie Shankle after emancipation. Williams said stories like that matter because they show how black communities built lives and legacies despite enormous obstacles.
He also believes there may be more history in Cleveland still waiting to be uncovered.
Dancing for joy
Williams’ creativity extends beyond film. He is also known for his love of salsa dancing, something he discovered more than 20 years ago after taking a free lesson in Houston.
That interest eventually led him to host “Salsa at Cotton Creek Winery” for more than a decade, building a dance community that lasted until the pandemic paused gatherings.
Now, he is helping tell that story on film as well.
“Dance is just a surface level,” he said. “It’s really about community.”
Williams also stepped onto the dance floor on Saturday, March 21, for TUFF Kids’ “Dancing With the Stars” fundraiser, where he performed alongside Cynthia Silva of El Amanecer Texas, a sister newspaper owned by Bluebonnet News.
He said dance, like storytelling, creates space for connection, joy and shared experience.
Looking ahead, Williams has several projects in the works, but they all point back to one thing — telling stories that matter.
Whether he’s teaching, filming or even dancing for a cause, he believes stories help people better understand one another.
For him, it’s not just about the past. It’s about connection.
To hear the full interview with Gordon Williams on the Bluebonnet News’ Headlines and Heartlines podcast, click the following link:
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