Randall Williams is a writer, editor, publication designer, and book publisher. He has been a writer and editor on magazines and newspapers (among them, the Birmingham News, the Alabama Journal, Southern Exposure, Southern Changes, the LaFayette (Ga.) Gazette, the Thomasville (Ga.) Times-Enterprise, Montgomery!, and the Eclectic Observer) in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina, and is skilled and knowledgeable in all editorial and production aspects of periodicals and books. His articles have been published in more than 200 newspapers and magazines and in several anthologies and literary and historical journals. He is the author, co-author, or editor of fifteen books on Southern history and culture.

For approximately ten years he was associated with the Southern Poverty Law Center, as an employee and board member. At the SPLC, he produced newspapers, magazines, reports, and books and supervised the scripting and filming of an Oscar-nominated documentary movie. He also conducted civil and criminal investigations and assisted staff attorneys in trials and research. In 1980, he became the founding director of the Center's Klanwatch Project, an effort to counteract the then-resurgent activities of the Ku Klux Klan and similar hate groups.

In 1986, Williams resigned from the SPLC to start a business, the Black Belt Communications Group, and a magazine, Montgomery!. In 1989 he sold his interest in the magazine to concentrate on the increasing volume of publication design and production being handled by the Black Belt Communications Group, to launch a weekly newspaper (the Eclectic Observer; sold in 1993), and to publish books under the imprint of the Black Belt Press. In 1996, Black Belt (later River City Publishing) acquired the Washington, D.C.-based imprints of Elliott & Clark Publishing and Starrhill Press. In February 2000, Williams cofounded (with Publisher Suzanne La Rosa) NewSouth, Inc., another book publishing company, where he became editor-in-chief. Williams and La Rosa sold their NewSouth Books imprint in 2022 to the University of Georgia Press. Williams continues to edit some titles for the NSB imprint. As of 2025, Williams has written, edited, designed, and/or published some 900 books, thought to be more than any other general trade book editor and publisher in Alabama history. With La Rosa, he owns the independent NewSouth Bookstore in downtown Montgomery.

In 2006, Williams was selected by the Alabama Department of Archives and History as a
consultant to serve as editor for The Alabama Guide, a book on the State of Alabama
commissioned by Governor Bob Riley, and to create, equip, and hire the staff for a new
publications department for the Department of Archives and History; this part-time
consultancy ran through January 2009.

From 1978 to the early 1990s, he also had a long-standing working relationship with the Southern Regional Council of Atlanta, Ga., for which he served as an editor of Southern Changes magazine and conducted occasional writing and research projects. He was a senior associate producer, interviewer, and writer on the SRC's award-winning Will the Circle Be Unbroken documentary radio series. He was a board executive committee member of the Center for Democratic Renewal (formerly the National Anti-Klan Network) of Atlanta, Georgia, and served that body as a consultant for publishing in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1979, while on a leave from the Southern Poverty Law Center, he served as a staff member of the Institute for Southern Studies in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In the 1980s, he was a board member of the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.

For more than 30 years, he was a member of the board of directors of the Montgomery
Improvement Association (which formed in 1955 to conduct the Montgomery Bus Boycott). He is a former member of the board of the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and a past president and board member of the Publishers Association of the South. He was also a founding member of the Alabama Writers' Forum and served on the organization's board in its early years. He is on the board of the PACERS Rural Community Newspaper Network. 

He is a former member of the City of Montgomery Architectural Review Board, a past president of the Cottage Hill Foundation and the Capri Community Film Society (an organization he founded), a former member of the boards of the Fitzgerald Museum and the E. D. Nixon Foundation, a graduate of Leadership Montgomery, and a charter member of the Friendly Supper Club. In 2006, he was Time magazine's Person of the Year.

Williams was born and raised in Chambers County, Alabama, was graduated there from
LaFayette High School (where he was a National Merit Scholarship Finalist and lettered in three sports). In 1970, he enrolled at Samford University in Birmingham, eventually
becoming editor of the student newspaper. He left four credits short of a degree after a
censorship dispute with the school president, was named to the university’s Journalism
Department Wall of Fame in 2009, was readmitted as a scholarship student in 2010, and finally graduated in 2011.