Historical : "Negroes with Guns" -- Robert F. Williams and black power

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Feb 15, 2006, 16:23

For me, one of the revelations of Black History Month has been the life of Robert Franklin Williams. As colleague and writer Timothy B. Tyson tells us, Williams “was the grandson of slaves, who as an 11-year old in 1936 saw a white policeman, Jesse Helms, Sr., no less, beat an African-American woman to the ground. Williams watched in terror as former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms’ father hit the woman and ‘dragged her off to the nearby jailhouse, her dress up over her head, the same way that a cave man would club and drag his sexual prey.’”

Robert F. Williams was born in 1925 in the small town of Monroe, North Carolina, also the home of the Southeastern Regional Klu Klux Klan. He was reared on his grandma Ellen’s eye-witness accounts of racial troubles and the tales of his grandfather, Sikes, who stumped the state for the Republican Party (Lincoln’s not Bush’s Republicans). This was during Reconstruction, rapidly deteriorating into Deconstruction, as soon as the Union pulled out its troops.

During World War II, Robert Williams headed north for work. He found his first job as a machinist in the auto industry and his first battle in the Detroit Riot of 1943, when white mobs killed dozens of black citizens. Drafted in 1944, Williams served for 18 months, a freedom fighter in a segregated Army, in which he learned how to handle and use arms.

He came home to Monroe in 1947, and married Mabel Robinson, who shared his gut feelings for justice and African-American Freedom. Ironically, it wasn’t until July 26, 1948 that President Truman desegregated the Armed Forces with Executive Order 9981.

Post-war Violence in The South

In the late 1950’s, Monroe was president of the Monroe NAACP, which practiced a brand of non-violent passive resistance. He watched and waited for justice as many black people in his community were denied basic rights, terrorized by the KKK (literally shot at on streets at random). Unfortunately, justice was bald-facedly denied in the courts. Unlike Martin Luther King, Jr., who would come to head up the Southern Leadership Council, he saw no recourse but to call for “armed self-reliance” in the face of unbridled southern white “terrorism.” But this was not a decision made quickly or lightly, but after exhausting all other avenues.

The Swimming Pool Incident

For instance, black children were not allowed in the public swimming pool in town. It was reserved for whites. What’s more, several black children had drowned in swimming holes that obviously had no lifeguards. In 1957, Williams made a modest proposal to the town fathers: open the pool one day a week to black kids. Officials said it would be too expensive, because “they would have to drain and refill the pool each time” black children swam in it. Today, we think that’s a sick answer. Back then, Williams did too. Until he tried again, and took a group of black children to the pool, attempting to reason his way in. What came back were nightly death threats.

Williams then proceeded to organize a picket line and protest in 1961 for swimming pool rights. There were a number of attempts on his life. One day as Williams drove his car, another car drove his into a ditch. A crowd gathered around, shouting, “Kill the niggers.” A white man got out, saying,”Nigger, what did you hit me for?” He had a baseball bat with him, ready to use it on Williams, his car and students. Williams raised a .45 to the window and aimed it directly at the attacker, never saying a word. He started to back the car away. The mob threw stones. He stopped the car, opened the door, and stood behind it holding an Italian carbine.

When a policeman attempted to grab Williams, ordering him to give up his gun for the mob-kill to come, Williams struck him in the face with it, then put the barrel in his face, and told him he would not surrender to a mob. Another policeman who had run around the side of the car, started to draw a revolver. One of Williams’ students, a 17 year-old aimed a .45 directly in the policeman’s face, and warned him to put his gun back in the holster or he’d be killed. The policemen did that, and in the process stepped back and fell in the ditch. And so, despite the mob of three to four thousand, the police decided that discretion was the better part of valor. They dispersed the mob eventually and escorted Williams and friends out of the area. Wise choice.

Kissing Kids Thrown in Jail

When some of Monroe’s black and white children were playing together and got into a “kissing game,” one of the black boys was said to have kissed a white girl, or was it the other way around? The white parents went ballistic, the father armed himself with a shotgun and called the cops who arrested the boys, charged them with rape, and locked them in the jailhouse basement. A few days later a kangaroo court sentenced them, without counsel, to reform school until they were 21. One boy was seven and the other nine.

Williams called in a well-known black civil rights lawyer, Conrad Lynn, from New York to take the case. Meanwhile the boys’ mothers could not see their children for weeks. A white journalist who had traveled from England to cover the story did get permission to see them. She brought the mothers along and took a picture of the emotional reunion.

The story of the case and photo were printed throughout Europe and Asia and an international committee formed to defend young James Hanover and Fuzzy Simpson. There were huge demonstrations in Paris, Rome, Vienna and Rotterdam, climaxing with the U.S. Embassy being stoned. It was an international faux pas for the US government. Consequently, local officials first asked the boys’ mothers to sign a waiver, which included an admission of guilt but guaranteed freedom, to which the mothers said no. Two days later, James and Fuzzy were let go, no conditions, no questions asked.

Woman-Beating and Attempted Rape No Crime

In an even less fortunate incident which touched Williams deeply, Mary Ruth Reed, a young black woman eight months pregnant, was the victim of a fierce beating in conjunction with an attempted rape by a white man, Louis Medlin, an event which was witnessed by many neighbors. After Medlin was arrested, Robert Williams, adhering to NAACP guidelines, counseled the angry black neighbors to let the law handle it. Strangely, Medlin had brought his “attractive” white wife to the trial and asked the jury to compare her to this lowly black victim. Therefore how could he seriously have committed the crime? No problem, the jury decided. Medlin was free. The black women in the courtroom turned to Williams in anger and rage.

His response to media later was that, “I had told them [the black women] that in a civilized society the law is a deterrent against the strong who would take advantage of the weak, but the South is not a civilized society. . . . I said that in the future we would defend our women and children, our homes and ourselves with our arms. That we would meet violence with violence.”

NAACP Balks at Williams

The next day Roy Wilkins, then head of the NAACP called Williams to confirm if he had said that. Williams said, “Yes, and I intend to repeat it over and over on several radio and television programs in the next few days.” And he did. The next day, Wilkins suspended Williams from the NAACP for six months. Fortunately, his wife, Mabel stepped into the position and carried the ball.

KKK Gatherings In Town

What’s more, thousands of KKK members met in Monroe met from time to time. After burning copious crosses, they hopped in their cars, honking horns, shooting off guns, and threatening to kill people. The object again: racial terror.

During that time Williams had personally started organizing armed squads of black people for self-defense. I might add with the blessings of the National Rifle Association. A church group up north raised money for better rifles. Williams traveled later to New York to speak at Malcolm X’s Mosque No. 7 to raise money for arms. And when push came to shove back in Monroe, when the Klan came raging into the black section of Newton one night, they were met by a cordon of armed black men. The Klansmen panicked and fled every which way. And this was the last time they rampaged through Newton.

Yet Williams’ painstaking but effective decision for protective violence, based on what he had seen and lived through made him the “bad example” at the 1959 NAACAP convention. Some 40 speakers disavowed him. He rebutted that he asked for self-defense, not acts of war: “We as men should stand up as men and protect our women and children. I am a man [and] will walk upright as a man should. I will not crawl.”

Support from King, Help from Williams

Williams’ commitment made an impression on no less than Martin Luther King, Jr. King acknowledged that, “When the Negro uses force in self-defense he does not forfeit support -- he may even win it, by the courage and self-respect it reflects.” Deep in his heart, even the sainted King had a clue there was another way to go. Nor do I believe it diminished him. I think the two worked hand in glove.

In fact, as the debate over violence or nonviolence went on in 1961, King called for “Freedom Riders” to organize a nonviolent campaign in Robert Williams’ hometown. But angry white mobs caused that peaceful crusade to degenerate into violence. Williams was called into action to help protect the organizers. He put his black militia into the fray. In fact, a white couple that had been driving through the mayhem was attacked in turn by angry blacks. Not wanting senseless brutality, Williams stepped in and called the mob off, allowing the couple to go to his home for protection. This same couple later called the police and accused Williams of kidnapping them. Disinformation blared across the south. Hundreds of Hoover’s FBI agents were looking for Williams and his family. Like a 20th Century John Brown, the black community hid Williams and his family as they traveled away from North Carolina.

Exile in Cuba

Miraculously, Williams escaped with his family to Cuba, their asylum granted by Fidel Castro. It was in Cuba that Williams wrote his classic book, Negroes With Guns, which inspired Huey Newton to organize the Black Panthers. It inspired as well H. Rapp Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm X and others who felt black people needed to arm for protection. While in Cuba, and with Castro’s assistance, Williams and his wife also wrote and produced Radio Free Dixie for the international airwaves. The radio show provided hope for blacks in the south, until it was finally jammed by the US government. What’s more, Williams never presented himself as a communist, but as an American leader in exile for the liberation of black people. In fact, in his meetings with Che Guevera he expressed his disappointment at how the Communist Party had marginalized the black struggle in America.

Time with Mao in China

In 1963, feeling tension from communists who opposed his methods, Robert Williams wrote to Mao Zedong, leader of China’s revolution, to speak out on the plight of black people in the US. In response, Mao not only issued a declaration of support for the cause of African-American liberation, he invited Williams to China. Thus in 1966, Williams moved with his family to China. Amazingly, he met with Mao and toured China at his side, visiting communes and factories, witnessing the construction of this huge totalitarian state.

Yet once again, Williams, ever his own man, held onto his stance as a militant nationalist and not a communist. He supported struggles around the world, including in Africa and Asia, and Vietnam during the war. He traveled to North Vietnam and met with Ho Chi Minh and broadcasted anti-war messages to black soldiers in South Vietnam. It’s no wonder he is barely mentioned in the panoply of major civil rights leaders. Yet his impact was enormous.

Returning Home

In 1969, given the spirit of détente that Nixon was pursuing, Williams agreed to aid the US with technical advice about China and how it worked, this in return for safe passage home. Additionally, a Ford Foundation grant was provided for Williams to work at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. Though it is a little known fact, Williams played a significant role in the historic opening of diplomatic relations between China and the United States. He often wore the Mao suit, the hat, the pen in pocket, a strip of African colors on his jacket.

Returning home with his family, having realized his deepest dreams and aspirations, Williams continued to work for the cause of civil rights. This time part of his strength was consumed in the struggle against Hodgkin’s disease. He fought it until his death in 1995, managing to complete his landmark memoir, While God Lay Sleeping: The Autobiography of Robert F. Williams. Hundreds of people attended memorial programs for him in Detroit and New York. At his funeral, no less than Rosa Parks summarized the high esteem he was held in by those who marched peacefully with King in Alabama. Williams’ tough, intelligent wife, Mabel, survived him.

Williams’ Relevance for Today

What strikes me first: here is a man whom I as a reasonably aware educated white liberal had never heard of until I saw a documentary of his life a few nights ago on PBS’ Frontline. The next day I went to the net and was amazed at the number of pieces on him. Yet here was a man who was truly the solid fist in the glove of the civil rights movement, which is not to diminish the role of those who pursued passive resistance and non-violence. The tragic sadness of Martin Luther King’s untimely death has already been laid in the bloodied hands of government assassins, as was the case with Malcolm X. In both cases, losing one’s life is a huge price to pay for the freedom of others, which brings a truly costly martyrdom.

Also, what really triggered government fear and hostility towards King was the Poor People’s March that King had planned for Washington in 1968. In 1963, he had shown his power to bring 250,000 poor black people and many others to Washington, DC, and spread their tents on the National Mall lawn. That posed to the powers-that-were an enormous threat. Yet, these poor people came unarmed, peacefully, dutifully. But their sheer numbers, and the potential, for twice or three times as many at the next rally, caused the government trigger to be squeezed and King went down.

Similarly, when Malcolm X returned from Mecca with his vision of international peace for people of all colors and faiths . . . the enormous power for unity and justice generated the enormous fear of government power being jeopardized. And Malcolm was gunned down. Would that either of those men had been able to seek and find asylum in safer parts of the globe. But then they might not have been as effective in America. Again, untimely death and families of widows and orphans were dear prices to pay for their leadership.

What’s more, to watch Coretta Scott King’s funeral just a few days ago, and to see of all people, President Bush, eulogizing her, even as a black, drowned New Orleans bobs in the news six months after Katrina hurts to the bone. As does the painful death of Malcolm’s wife from a fire set by a misguided grandchild. If I were a religious, I’d say, god works in strange ways, truly.

The Survivor and the Victims

Yet miraculously the man who brought the gun to the civil rights battle was not a victim, but a survivor, and led his life in peace until his natural end. There is a double irony here. Williams was not a child of the middle class, an educated professional. He was a child of the poor, grandchild of freed slaves. His civics lessons came mostly as direct witness of racial violence. And like Mao, he learned the hard way, through personal experience, that political power could come from the barrel of a gun.

Apply this lesson to the criminal behavior of government today. Where is the fighting force to protect us from the miscreants? How do they persistently escape judgment, imprisonment, or impeachment? While all the arguments are legitimately, eloquently presented against them, whose job is it to actually put them out of office? Who represents the entire colonized citizenry of America, as Robert Williams represented black America once, with a gun in his hand to ward off the ongoing violence?

Who will enforce the laws of the constitution and prosecute the illegal entry into the Iraq war, the 9-11 “inside job” of the administration and its subsequent declaration of a “War on Terror,” which is a war on all of us? Add to that the attack on Afghanistan to look for the yet-to-be-found Osama bin Laden, a former CIA asset.

Again, who is there to protect us from the illegal voting procedures of three elections? Who will enforce justice for New Orleans and its citizens? Where is the Big Gun who will answer force with force, since all the laws, due process, habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions et al, have been thrown out the courthouse windows, along with many legitimate judges? Who will jail the bribe-takers, the embezzlers, the swindlers?

Who will physically confront this unending corruption and mockery of justice? Robert Franklin Williams, do you hear me? Is the pen really mightier than the sword? Is it right only to turn the other cheek? Or is it, as you once said, time to claim our right to take up arms to protect ourselves against a criminal force, as once America’s forefathers did against King George and the British? A thoughtful Black History Month to you all.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer residing in Manhattan. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.

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