Robert F. Williams
Encyclopedia
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
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:...

 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 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
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...

 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
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...

 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


Further reading

  • Hill, Lance. Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, by Lance Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2004. History of the Deacons' civil rights activity and organizing in Louisiana and elsewhere. In contrast to the non-violent strategies and tactics of most other civil rights organizations, the Deacons were committed to armed self-defense.
  • Forman, James. The Making of Black Revolutionaries University of Washington Press (1997)
  • Tyson, Timothy B. Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power. 416 pages. University of North Carolina Press (February 1, 2001). ISBN 0-8078-4923-5.
  • The Robert F. Williams papers are housed at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. http://bentley.umich.edu/

External links

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