Williams, 65, said that he will be taking on more duties as the current president of the Union of Black Episcopalians (UBE). He was elected to the post in July.

His goals for UBE include increasing membership, securing a financial base for the organization "and preaching a message to America that the struggle for civil rights is not over."

Williams came to the cathedral after being elected in December 1999. He was rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, New York. Williams succeeded Petero Sabune. They followed the deanship of the late Dillard Robinson, the first African American to serve as a dean of an Episcopal Cathedral in the United States.

Trinity and St. Philip’s, located in downtown Newark's Military Park, has a long history. While Anglicans worshipped in Newark from the late 1600s, the city’s relationship with what is now the Episcopal Church has roots in a theological and agricultural dispute. On a fall Sunday in 1733, Newark native Josiah Ogden harvested his wheat to save it from drenching rains, thus violating a prohibition against working on Sundays. First Presbyterian Church of Newark disciplined him, and he left the congregation. Ogden reportedly connected with Anglican missionaries and helped found a church.

That group in 1742 laid the cornerstone to the building in Military Park, defying and infuriating the Puritan religious establishment. Parts of that first church building are incorporated in the current cathedral (the nave was damaged by British troops during the Revolution and was torn down and rebuilt in 1810).