Robert F. Williams - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925 – October 15, 1996) was a civil rights

Civil rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

leader, the president of the Monroe, North Carolina

Monroe, North Carolina

Monroe is a city in Union County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 36,397 as of the 2010 census. It is the seat of government of Union County and is also part of the Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC Metropolitan area.-Geography:...

NAACP chapter in the 1950s and early 1960s, and author. At a time when racial tension was high and official abuses were rampant, Williams was a key figure in promoting both integration

Racial integration

Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...

and armed black self-defense in the United States. He and his wife left the United States in 1961 to avoid prosecution for kidnapping. A self-professed Black Nationalist and supporter of liberation, he lived in both Cuba and communist China in self-imposed exile. He was a fugitive from justice for many years after he was falsely accused of kidnapping (The charges were later dropped).

Williams' book Negroes with Guns (1962), published while he was in exile in Cuba, details his experience with violent racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

and his disagreement with the pacifist

Pacifism

Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...

Civil Rights Movement philosophies. It was influential with younger black men, including Huey Newton, who founded the Black Panthers.

Early life

Williams was born in Monroe, North Carolina

Monroe, North Carolina

in 1925 to Emma C. and John L. Williams, a railroad boiler washer. His grandmother, a former slave

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

, gave Williams the rifle with which his grandfather, a Republican campaigner and publisher of the newspaper The People's Voice, had defended himself in the hard years after Reconstruction. At the age of 11, Williams witnessed the beating and dragging of a black woman by the police officer Jesse Helms, Sr. (He was the father of future US Senator

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

Jesse Helms

Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...

.)

As a young man, Williams joined the Great Migration

Great Migration (African American)

The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...

, traveling north for work during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. He witnessed race riots in Detroit in 1943, prompted by labor competition between European immigrants and African Americans. Drafted in 1944, he served for a year and a half in the segregated

Racial segregation

Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...

Army before returning home to Monroe.

Marriage and family

In 1947, Williams married Mabel Robinson, a fellow civil rights activist. They had two children together.

Kissing Case

Williams entered the national civil rights

Civil rights

struggle by working with the NAACP as a community organizer

Community organizing

Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. A core goal of community organizing is to generate durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence...

in Monroe. When in 1958 he defended two young black boys, who were jailed after being accused of kissing a white girl, he became famous around the world. His publicity campaign helped provoke headlines in the global press, which ridiculed North Carolina officials. He was instrumental in shaming the local officials into releasing the boys. The controversy was known as the "Kissing Case

Kissing Case

The Kissing Case is an incident relevant to the African-American Civil Rights Movement.In 1958 in Monroe, North Carolina, two African American children, seven-year-old David "Fuzzy" Simpson and nine-year-old James Hanover Thompson, were arrested for violating the state's Anti-miscegenation laws...

". (The white girl had kissed one of the boys on the cheek.)

Difficulties

On 12 May 1958, the Raleigh Eagle (North Carolina) reported that Nationwide Insurance Company was canceling Williams' collision and comprehensive coverage, effective that day. They first canceled all of his automobile insurance, but decided to reinstate his liability and medical payments coverage, enough for Williams to retain his car license. The company said that Williams' affiliation with the NAACP was not a factor; they noted "that rocks had been thrown at his car and home several times by people driving by his home at night. These incidents just forced us to get off the comprehensive and collision portions of his policy." The newspaper article reported that Williams had said that six months before, a 50-car Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

caravan had swapped gunfire with a group of blacks outside the home of Dr. A. E. Perry, vice president of the local NAACP chapter. The article quotes police chief A. A. Maurey as denying part of that story. He said, "I know there was no shooting," and explained that he had had several police cars accompanying the KKK caravan to watch for possible law violations.

The article quoted Williams: "These things have happened," Williams insisted. "Police try to make it appear that I have been exaggerating and trying to stir up trouble. If police tell me I am in no danger and that they can't confirm these events, why then has my insurance been cancelled?"

Black Armed Guard

The local NAACP was working to integrate

Racial integration

the public swimming pools. They organized peaceful demonstrations, but some drew gunfire. No one was arrested or punished, although law enforcement officers were present.

Williams had already started the Black Armed Guard to defend the local black community from racist activity. At a time when gun ownership was fairly common in the South, KKK membership numbered some 15,000 locally. Black residents fortified their homes with sandbags and trained to use rifles in the event of night raids by the Klan.
In Negroes with Guns (Chap 4), Williams writes: “[R]acist consider themselves superior beings and are not willing to exchange their superior lives for our inferior ones. They are most vicious and violent when they can practice violence with impunity.”

Followers attested to Williams' advocating the use of advanced powerful weaponry rather than more traditional firearms. Williams insisted his position was defensive, as opposed to a declaration of war. He called it "armed self-reliance" in the face of white terrorism

Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

. Threats against Williams' life and his family became more frequent. In 1959, Williams debated the merits of nonviolence

Nonviolence

Nonviolence has two meanings. It can refer, first, to a general philosophy of abstention from violence because of moral or religious principle It can refer to the behaviour of people using nonviolent action Nonviolence has two (closely related) meanings. (1) It can refer, first, to a general...

with Martin Luther King Jr at the NAACP convention. The national NAACP office suspended his local chapter presidency for six months because of his outspoken disagreements with the national leadership. He said his wife would take over his position and he would continue his leadership through her.

Freedom Riders

When CORE

Congress of Racial Equality

The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE was a U.S. civil rights organization that originally played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement...

dispatched "freedom ride

Freedom ride

Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decisions Boynton v. Virginia and Morgan v. Virginia...

rs" from the North to Monroe to campaign in 1961, the local NAACP chapter served as their base. Around this time, a white couple in a town nearby drove through the black section of Monroe after some escalated disputes at the courthouse, but were stopped in the street by an angry crowd. For their safety, they were taken to Williams' home. Williams initially told them that they were free to go, but he soon realized that the crowd would not grant safe passage. He kept the white couple in a house nearby until they were able to safely leave the neighborhood.

North Carolina law enforcement admonished Williams and accused him of having kidnapped

Kidnapping

In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...

the couple. He and his family fled the state with local law enforcement in pursuit. His eventual interstate flight triggered prosecution by the FBI

Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...

.

On August 28, 1961, an FBI Most Wanted warrant was issued in Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009...

, charging Williams with unlawful interstate flight to avoid prosecution for kidnapping. The FBI document lists Williams as a "free lance writer and janitor" and states that (Williams)"...has previously been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and has advocated and threatened violence... considered armed and extremely dangerous." After the appearance of this Wanted poster, signed by the director J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover

John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...

, Williams decided to leave the country.

Flight and return

Williams went to Cuba by way of Canada and then Mexico. He regularly broadcast addresses to Southern blacks on "Radio Free Dixie

Radio Free Dixie

Radio Free Dixie was a radio station started by Robert F. Williams when he was forced in exile to Cuba from Monroe, North Carolina during the American Civil Rights Movement. It broadcast from 1961 to 1965. It broadcast music, news, and commentary from Havana. It played soul music on the AM radio...

", a station he established with assistance from Cuban President Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

and operated from 1962-1965. During the Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...

in 1962, Williams used Radio Free Dixie to urge black soldiers in the U.S. armed forces, who were then preparing for a possible invasion of Cuba to eliminate the Soviet nuclear arsenal, to engage in insurrection against the United States. "While you are armed, remember this is your only chance to be free. . . . This is your only chance to stop your people from being treated worse than dogs. We'll take care of the front, Joe, but from the back, he'll never know what hit him. You dig?"

During this stay, Mabel and Robert Williams published the newspaper, The Crusader. Williams wrote his book, Negroes With Guns, while in Cuba. It had a significant influence on Huey P. Newton

Huey P. Newton

Huey Percy Newton was an American political and urban activist who, along with Bobby Seale, co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.-Early life:...

, founder of the Black Panthers. Despite his absence from the United States, in 1964 Williams was elected president of the US-based Revolutionary Action Movement. .
In 1965 Williams traveled to Hanoi

Hanoi

Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...

, then the capital of North Vietnam. He advocated armed violence against the United States during the Vietnam War, congratulated China on obtaining its own nuclear weapons (which Williams referred to as "The Freedom Bomb"), and sided with the North Vietnamese against the United States.

Some Communist Party USA

Communist Party USA

The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....

members opposed Williams' positions, suggesting they would divide the working class in the U.S. along racial lines. In a May 18, 1964 letter from Havana to his U.S. lawyer, civil rights attorney Conrad Lynn

Conrad Lynn

Conrad Lynn was a Black civil rights lawyer in the United States. He was a member of the African Forum for Socialist Education. He was a member of the Communist Party until 1937. He was the lawyer for militant civil rights activist Robert F Williams during the 1960s, when Williams lived in Cuba,...

, Williams wrote:

...the U.S.C.P. has openly come out against my position on the Negro struggle. In fact, the party has sent special representatives here to sabotage my work on behalf of U.S. Negro liberation. They are pestering the Cubans to remove me from the radio, ban THE CRUSADER and to take a number of other steps in what they call `cutting Williams down to size.'...

The whole thing is due to the fact that I absolutely refuse to take direction from Gus Hall
Gus Hall
Gus Hall, born Arvo Kustaa Hallberg , was a leader and Chairman of the Communist Party USA and its four-time U.S. presidential candidate. As a labor leader, Hall was closely associated with the so-called "Little Steel" Strike of 1937, an effort to unionize the nation's smaller, regional steel...

's idiots...I hope to depart from here, if possible, soon. I am writing you to stand by in case I am turned over to the FBI...

Sincerely,
Rob.

In 1965, Williams and his wife left Cuba to settle in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, where he was well received. They lived comfortably there and he associated with higher functionaries of the Chinese government. In January 1968, Lynn wrote to encourage Williams to return to the US. Williams responded:

The only thing that prevents my acceptance and willingness to make an immediate return is the present lack of adequate financial assurance for a fight against my being railroaded to jail and an effective organization to arouse the people.

I don't think it will be wise to announce my nomination and immediate return unless the kind of money is positively available...

Lynn then wrote Williams in a January 24, 1968 letter that "You are wise in not making a decision to come back until the financial situation is assured." Because no financial backing could be found, no 1968 "Williams for President" campaign was ever launched by Williams' supporters in the United States. By November 1969, Williams apparently had become disillusioned with the U.S. left. As his lawyer, Conrad Lynn, noted in a November 7, 1969 letter to Haywood Burns of the Legal Defense Foundation (that can be found in Lynn's papers at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University):

Williams now clearly takes the position that he has been deserted by the left. How and whether he fits black militant organizations into that category I don't know. Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...

offered him pay to broadcast for them. So far he has refused. But he has not foreclosed making a deal with the government or the far right. He takes the position that he is entitled to make any maneuver to keep from going to jail for kidnapping...

Williams was suspected by the Justice Department of wanting to fill the vacuum of influence left after the assassinations of his friends Malcolm X

Malcolm X

Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...

and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hoover received reports that blacks looked to Williams as a figure similar to John Brown

John Brown (abolitionist)

John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...

. Attempts to contact the U.S. government in order to return were rebuffed consistently. He returned via London, England to Detroit, Michigan

Detroit, Michigan

Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...

in 1969 and was immediately arrested for extradition to North Carolina for trial on the kidnapping charge. Shortly after he returned, the approaching period of détente augured a warming of relations with the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

.

Williams was tried in Monroe, North Carolina in December 1975. The historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall is a prominent historian and public intellectual who focuses on the history of slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Louisiana , and the African Diaspora in the Americas...

chaired his defense committee and a broad range of leftists arrived in town. Attorney William S. Kunstler represented Williams in court. The state of North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

dropped all charges against him almost immediately.

Later years

Williams was given a grant by the Ford Foundation

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

to work at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

Center for Chinese Studies. He wrote While God Lay Sleeping: The Autobiography of Robert F. Williams.

He died from Hodgkin's disease in 1996. At his funeral, Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....

, who started the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama

Montgomery, Alabama

Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...

in 1955, recounted the high regard for Robert F. Williams by those who marched

Selma to Montgomery marches

The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They grew out of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African-Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League...

peacefully with King in Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

Works

Negroes With Guns. 1962; New York, NY, USA; Marzani & Munsell. Reprinted 1998; Wayne State University Press. Chapters 3-5 are free online from the National Humanities Center. Also listed by

Google Books (may have some free previews).

Williams, Robert F. "1957: Swimming Pool Showdown", Southern Exposure, c. Summer 1980; the article appeared in an issue devoted to the Ku Klux Klan.
The Crusader, newsletter, 1959 - ?
"USA: The Potential of a Minority Revolution" [1964] 1965. In Black Protest Thought in the 20th Century. Eds. August Meier et. al. Indianapolis and New York.
Listen Brother!. 1968; New York, NY, USA; World View Publishers. 40 p.
"The Black Scholar Interviews: Robert F Williams". 1970, The Black Scholar.
Williams, Robert F. While God Lay Sleeping: The Autobiography of Robert F. Williams (completed in 1996, unpublished)

Sources

The Afro American (Baltimore, Maryland, USA). "Exile Robert Williams' Wife Returns to US from Africa" , 30 August or 6 September 1969 ; page 22 .
Randolph Boehm and Daniel Lewis, The Black Power Movement, Part 2: The Papers of Robert F Williams . University Publications of America, Bethesda, MD, USA, 2002 . The linked-to document is a guide to a microfilmed version of the Robert F Williams Papers, which are at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Maryland, Ann Arbor. It contains notes on the content of the papers and an introductory essay by Timothy Tyson .
Truman Nelson, People With Strength. The Story of Monroe, N.C. 37 p. N.Y. Committee to Aid the Monroe Defendants, n.d. (1962 or 1963?). Illustrated wraps. With hand drawn map.
Revolutionary Worker, "In Memory of Robert F Williams: A Voice for Armed Self-Defense and Black Liberation" , 17 November 1996. Article also available from Assata Shakur's site.
Greg Thomas, "Spooks, Sex & Socio-Diagnostics", Proudflesh , volume 1.1, October 2002 .
Timothy B Tyson, "Robert Franklin Williams: A Warrior For Freedom, 1925-1996" , Southern Exposure, Winter 1996.
Timothy B Tyson, "Introduction", to Boehm and Lewis, The Papers of Robert F Williams, 2002, cited above.
Robert F Williams, Listen Brother! , 1968, New York, World View Publishers. Opposes Vietnam War. 40 pages.
Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power, a 2004 film

External links

Speech by U.S. Negro Leader Robert Williams, at a rally in Peking on Aug. 8, 1966, protesting the discrimination against African-Americans in the U.S.
Listen, Brother! a pamphlet by Robert F. Williams.
Sahir, Wanda. Growing up Revolutionary: An interview with John Williams, son of Mabel and Robert F. Williams. San Francisco Bay View: National Black Newspaper. May 18, 2005. Retrieved May 23, 2005.
Robert F Williams: Self Respect Self Defense and Self Determination; An Audio Documentary as told by Mabel Williams. Audio CD and 84 page booklet. Produced by Freedom Archives. Distributed by AK Press
AK Press
AK Press is a worker-managed independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. It is collectively owned and operated.-History:...

. Retrieved May 23, 2005.
Robert Williams' appeal to Adlai Stevenson
BlackAcademics radio interview with Mabel Williams about Robert F. Williams life
Series of six video interviews with Robert F. Williams
Learning From Rosa Parks, The Indypendent
Robert Williams bibliography on African American Involvement in the Vietnam War website.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Early life

Marriage and family

Kissing Case

Difficulties

Black Armed Guard

Freedom Riders

Flight and return

Later years

Works

Sources

Further reading

External links