By Je’Don Holloway-Talley | For The Birmingham Times
This is another installment in The Birmingham Times/AL.com/CBS42 joint series, “Beyond the Violence Click here to sign up for the newsletter.
Inside the Crescent Cultural Community Center, on Tuscaloosa Avenue in Birmingham’s West End, teens find a place of education, social enrichment, and quality of life resources, a place where they can be safe as they have fun and even party.
“On Mondays and Wednesdays, we’ve got 120-plus kids with the high school fraternities and sororities coming to practice. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have juvenile kids with ankle monitors who are doing the self-work type thing,” said Anthony “AntSki” Williams, 49, executive director of the Crescent Center. “On the weekends, we might have at minimum 350 kids at a party. We also have an elderly calendar, [and] every month we do something for the elders in the community.”
Williams’ wife, Erin “Malachite” Williams, runs the Crescent Cultural Community Center with executive assistant LaTonya Stearns. They oversee the center and maintain several community partnerships with organizations like BirthWell Partners Community Doula Project, the Jefferson County Family Resource Center, the Opportunity Center, Renew Birmingham, Be Kind Birmingham, and others.
“We’re out here with the homeless, the dope smokers, the crackheads, people with mental health issues, the gang bangers, and the hustlers. … It’s real trench work,” said Anthony Williams. “A lot of people admire us, but most people don’t want to get their hands that dirty. They want to help from a distance, and we deal with it day to day out there in the underbelly of the community.”
Williams can relate to what some of those who visit his center have faced. He grew up in poverty in the Ensley neighborhood in the former Tuxedo Court public housing community, which was known as “The Brickyard.”
“I allowed pain and poverty to shape my decisions,” he said. “I was banging with anybody who would bang before gangs even really came to Birmingham. I went to juvenile [detention] every year [from ages 12 to 17] for stealing cars, robbery, and attempted murder because I was letting poverty shape my choices. … I was just the classic, bad ‘project kid.’”
Among his tough experiences was a seven-year sentence served at several Alabama Department of Corrections facilities. Williams was arrested in 1991, convicted in January 1993, and began his sentence in February 1993. He was released on probation on Sept. 28, 2000.
After being released, he found music was a way to work through his trauma and make sense of the pain, he said: “Music was everything. I’ve got songs that I thought I was writing for the moment, but those songs were my healing.”
One of his songs, “Man Business,” was up for consideration for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Song in 2025 by a producer friend of Willams, a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which is known for the annual televised Grammy Awards ceremony that recognizes achievements in the music industry.
Asked why his programming with the Crescent Center, as well as RESTORE, a juvenile reentry program that offers goal setting and conflict resolution workshops, has been so successful, Williams said it’s because of his ability to relate.
“I think coming from the streets and being able to appeal back to the streets is second nature,” he said.
Since the RESTORE program’s inception in 2023, the number of Jefferson County youth ages 13 to 22 who were charged with murder decreased by 80 percent, and homicide victims in the same age group dropped by 61 percent. In one year, the RESTORE program served 249 youth.
From January to June 2024, 780 children and teens attended RESTORE workshops to talk about accountability, healthy relationships, and how to express their emotions. And 703 services were rendered to participants and their families, including transportation, clothing, food, housing, education, employment, mental health, and medication assistance.
Touching the lives of the youth is his greatest reward, said Williams, 49, who is also a program manager at RESTORE.
“I love God, and I understand that it’s God that turns beasts into servants of men and servants of the community. He turns monsters into servants, and I’m grateful for it all,” he said.
For more information about the Crescent Cultural Community Center, visit its Facebook page (@Crescent Cultural Community Center) or contact Operations Manager Erin “Malachite” Williams at 205-645-8303 or operationscrescentccc@gmail.com. To learn more about the RESTORE program, visit its Facebook page (Jefferson County Family Resource Center) or Anthony “AntSki” Williams at 205-243-2613 or awilliams@jeffcofrc.org.
