"I had to have a conversation about what it meant, what it meant for them to borrow. And I had to take a little bit of their innocence away. Because you got to protect -- you got to protect your kids. You got to take a little bit of their innocence away to make sure they're doing and saying the right things out there so they're not the next in what's been a long line of victims."
For the 56-year-old Williams, that moment reminded him of similar experiences with racism in his upbringing.
Williams first came to experience racism when he was "8 or 9 years old" and his father, Jerry Williams, sued the city of San Jose, California for the opportunity to be a firefighter. Jerry taught his son Kenny how to use a gun for protection while his family was targeted with death threats and knocks on their door at night that incited fear.
Kenny Williams is the godson of John Carlos, an African-American track athlete who in the 1968 Olympics famously raised his right fist on the medal stand alongside Tommie Smith as a sign of protest. Williams' biological mother was one of the first Black Panthers in Oakland.
For Williams, the fact that racism remains in American more than 50 years later is frustrating.
"I'm 56 years old (and) I still have to worry about what I'm wearing in the morning depending on where I'm going," Williams said. "I still have to get on an elevator and if I don't have my executive clothes, my suit and tie, I still got to see a woman who sees me and backs off the elevator -- in 2020.
"I still have to have the same conversations today that my father had with me, that his father had to have with him, his father had to have with him, be careful about looking a white man in the eye because they don't like that, and you could find yourself in a lot of trouble."
Widespread protests over racial injustice have occurred in America since the death of George Floyd, a black man killed at the hands of police in Minneapolis on May 25.
Williams was shaken as he watched the video of Floyd's death.
"Get off the man's neck," Williams said of his reaction. "Not only that, you look closely, he had his hand in his pocket in a casual kind of way as he applied pressure. We watched a murder right in front of our eyes. We've seen it before. I don't know that we've seen it that casually before, that with total disregard to humanity before. When I hear, 'I can't breathe,' I don't just hear it and see him lying there.
"It has been difficult to breathe for a long time.
Williams called on everyone, notably white individuals, to step up to help end systemic racism.
"Black people alone can not erase racism, no more than black people could have solved slavery on our own," Williams said. "We need white people to do that. It appears to me -- maybe I'm overly optimistic -- but it appears to me that people have seen enough."