Robert F. Williams, "Black Power," and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle Author(S): Timothy B

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Robert F. Williams, "Black Power," and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle Author(s): Timothy B. Tyson Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Sep., 1998), pp. 540-570 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2567750 . Accessed: 18/11/2011 13:48

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http://www.jstor.org RobertF Williams,"Black Power;' and the Rootsof the African AmericanFreedom Struggle

TimothyB. Tyson

"Thechildhood of Southerners,white and colored,"Lillian Smith wrote in 1949, "hasbeen lived on tremblingearth." For one black boy in Monroe,North Carolina, theearth first shook on a Saturdaymorning in 1936.Standing on thesidewalk on Main Street,Robert Franklin Williams witnessed the batteringof an African Americanwoman by a whitepoliceman. The policeman,Jesse Alexander Helms, an admirerrecalled, "had the sharpest shoe in townand he didn'tmind using it." The policeofficer's son, Sen. Jesse Helms, remembered "Big Jesse" as "a six-foot, two-hundredpound gorilla.When he said, 'Smile,'I smiled."Eleven-year-old RobertWilliams watched in terroras BigJesse flattened the black woman with his fistand then arrested her. Years later, Williams described the scene: Helms "dragged heroff to thenearby jailhouse, her dress up overher head, the same way that a caveman would club and draghis sexual prey." He recalled"her tortured screams as herflesh was ground away from the friction of theconcrete." The memoryof thisviolent spectacle and ofthe laughter of white bystanders haunted Williams. Perhapsthe deferential way that African American men on thestreet responded waseven more deeply troubling. "The emasculated black men hung their heads in shameand hurriedsilently from the cruelly bizarre sight," Williams recalled.1

TimothyB. Tysonis assistantprofessor of Afro-Americanstudies at the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison. I am gratefulto thosewho grantedme interviews,read draftsof thisarticle, or otherwiseassisted in itsprep- aration:Susan Armeny,Amiri Baraka, Julian Bond, David S. Cecelski,William H. Chafe,Alex Charns,Jean Comstock,John Dittmer,Adam Fairclough,James Forman, Kevin Gaines, David Garrow,Raymond Gavins, Glenda ElizabethGilmore, Lawrence Goodwyn, Christina Greene, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, HerbertHill, Gerald Horne, Stephen Kantrowitz,Danielle McGuire,Nellie McKay,Katherine Mellen, LorraineMessinger, Perri Morgan,Syd Nathans, David Nord, CharlesPayne, Richard Ralston, Sidney Rittenberg, Robert Rubin, Kalamu yaSalaam, John Herd Thompson, Martha B. Tyson,M. Hope Tyson,Samuel H. Tyson,Vernon C. Tyson,William L. VanDeburg, Stephen A. Warren,Craig Werner, Patrick Wilkinson, John H. Williams,John L. Williams,Mabel R. Williams,Robert F. Williams,and PeterWood.

LillianSmith, Killers of the Dream (1949; New York,1961), 22; ErnestB. Furguson,Hard Right:The Rise ofjesse Helms (New York,1986), 30, 40; RobertF. Williamsinterview by RobertCarl Cohen, 1968, transcript, pp. 4-5, box 1, RobertCarl Cohen Papers(State Historical Society of Wisconsin,Madison); Crusader, Dec. 1967, p. 3; RobertF. Williamsinterview by Timothy B. Tyson,March 10, 1993,audiotape (in TimothyB. Tyson'spossession).See also RobertF. Williams,"While God LaySleeping: The Autobiographyof RobertF. Williams,"1-4, 1996, ibid. I am gratefulto the Williamsfamily for sharing this manuscript and otherfamily documents with me. Withrespect to the "emasculatedblack men," the gender politics at workare glaringand important.On this heavilygendered and sexualizedlanguage, see TimothyB. Tyson,Radio FreeDixie: RobertF Williamsand the Rootsof Black Power(Chapel Hill, forthcoming).

540 The Journalof AmericanHistory September1998 "BlackPower" and theRoots of theFreedom Struggle 541

Knowledgeof suchscenes was as commonplaceas coffeecups in the Souththat had recentlyhelped to electFranklin D. Roosevelt.For the restof his life,Robert Williams,destined to becomeone of the mostinfluential African American radi- cals of his time,repeated this searing story to friends,readers, listeners, reporters, and historians.He preachedit fromstreet corner ladders to eager crowdson SeventhAvenue and 125thStreet in Harlemand to congregantsin MalcolmX's TempleNumber 7. He borewitness to itsbrutality in laborhalls and collegeaudi- toriumsacross the United States.It contributedto the fervorof his widelypub- lisheddebate with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960 and fueledhis hesitantbids for leadershipin the blackfreedom struggle. Its mercilesstruths must have tightened in his fingerson the nightin 1961when he fleda FederalBureau of Investigation (FBI) dragnetwith his wifeand twosmall children, a machinegun slungover one shoulder.Williams revisited the bittermemory on platformsthat he sharedwith Fidel Castro,Ho Chi Minh,and Mao Zedong. He told it overRadio FreeDixie, his regularprogram on Radio Havanafrom 1962 to 1965,and retoldit fromHanoi in broadcastsdirected to AfricanAmerican soldiers in Vietnam.It echoed from transistorradios in Wattsin 1965and fromgigantic speakers in TiananmenSquare in 1966. The childhoodstory opens the pages of his autobiography,"While God Lay Sleeping,"which Williams completed just beforehis death on October 15, 1996. In theanguish of that eleven-year-old, we can finddistilled the bitterhistory thatshaped one of the South'smost dynamic race rebels, and thousandsof other black insurgents.That momentmarked his life,and his lifemarked the African Americanfreedom movement in the United States.2 The lifeof RobertF. Williamsillustrates that "the civilrights movement" and "theBlack Power movement," often portrayed in verydifferent terms, grew out of the samesoil, confronted the same predicaments, and reflectedthe same questfor AfricanAmerican freedom. In fact,virtually all of the elementsthat we associate with"Black Power" were already present in thesmall towns and ruralcommunities of the Southwhere "the civilrights movement" was born.The storyof RobertF. Williamsreveals that independent black political action, black cultural pride, and whatWilliams called "armed self-reliance" operated in theSouth in tensionand in tandemwith legal effortsand nonviolentprotest. Despitehis dramaticcontributions, Williams has thusfar had virtuallyno place in the unfoldingnarrative of the civilrights movement. Until recently, scholars of the movementfocused on the pathbreakinglegal marchof the NationalAssocia- tion forthe Advancementof Colored People (NAACP) and the powerfulmoral visionof Martin Luther KingJr. Dr. Kingand thearmies of nonviolent direct action have attractedthe energiesof able scholars-David J. Garrow,Adam Fairclough, and TaylorBranch among others. These worksopened new worldsof history,but

2 See TimothyB. Tyson,"Radio FreeDixie: RobertF. Williamsand the Rootsof Black Power"(Ph.D. diss., Duke University,1994); MarcellusC. Barksdale,"Robert F. Williamsand the IndigenousCivil RightsMovement in Monroe,North Carolina, 1961'" Journal of Negro History, 69 (Spring1984), 73-89; RobertF. Williams,Negroes withGuns, ed. MarcSchlieffer (New York,1962); and Williams,"While God Lay Sleeping." 542 The Journalof AmericanHistory September1998

4. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ \4

UnidentifiedAfrican American man in frontof a "whiteonly" laundromat, Monroe, North Carolina, 1961.In the South whereRobert F. Williamsgrew up, blackmaids washed the bodies of aged and infirmwhite people, but the uniformsthat they wore could not be laundered in the same machinesthat white people used. Photo,John Herman Williams, Courtesy ofJohn Herman Wzilliams. theirfailures to examinesufficiently the rootsof blackstruggles and the rangeof blackself-assertion have created what Charles M. Paynecalls "a historymore theatri- cal than instructive."3 In the lastfew years, a steadilygrowing stack of local and statestudies sensitive to the dynamicrelationship between local and nationalmovements has begun to tell larger,more realistic, and morecomplex stories. John Dittmer's Local People and Payne'sI've Got theLz~ght of Freedom have taken us farbeyond the television camerasand civilrights celebrities to theordinary citizens who made theblack freedom movementand to theroots of that movement in theculture of the rural black South. Both Payneand Dittmeralso presentextensive and persuasiveevidence of the indispensablerole that black self-defenseplayed in sustaininglocal move-

3The bestsuch worksinclude Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The Historyof Brownv. Board of Education and BlackAmerica's Struggle for Equality (New York,1976); David J. Garrow,Bearing the Cross:Martin Luther King,Jr., and the SouthernChristian Leadership Conference (New York,1986); Adam Fairclough,To Redeem the Soul of America:The SouthernChristian Leadership Conference and MartinLuther King, Jr. (Athens, Ga., 1987); TaylorBranch, Parting the Waters:America in the King Years,1954-63 (New York,1988); and Taylor Branch,A Pillarof Fire: America in the King Years,1963-65 (New York,1998). CharlesM. Payne,I've Got the Lightof Freedom:The OrganizingTradition and the MississippiFreedom Struggle (Berkeley, 1995), 418. "BlackPower" and theRoots of theFreedom Struggle 543 ments.Adam Fairclough,in Race and Democracy,his studyof the movementin Louisianaover the long period from 1915 to 1972,challenges his own earlier assump- tion that"the black activismof 1955 to 1965 displayeda unityand momentum thatset it apartfrom what came beforeand whatcame after."David S. Cecelski's profoundstudy of blackschools in HydeCounty, North Carolina, Along Freedom Road, pointsout the"notable continuity between older, more conservative African Americanvoices, which had giventhe building of strong black schools priority over desegregation,and the newer'militant' expressions of blackseparatism and com- munitycontrol."4 The still-newhistoriography of Black Powertouches on such issues,though its chronologytends to beginafter 1965 and itsgeography remains largely urban and northernor western.Ephemeral early works echoed the vacuousmainstream jour- nalismof the period,portraying Black Power as a "new blackmood" or a "radical responseto whiteAmerica" -a blackbacklash to thebetrayals of white liberals and the assaultsof whitereactionaries. The firstmajor breakthrough in the literature, ClayborneCarson's In Struggle,recognized that Black Power "affirmed the legiti- macyof a long-standingtradition of armedself-defense in the ruraldeep South" and thatit reflected"dormant traditions of blackradicalism" in Dixie. Carsonrec- ognizes that Black Power represented"a logical outgrowth"of the freedom movement'sefforts "to instillin the mindsof blackpeople the notionthat they could createa betterworld for themselves." In theseframeworks, however, Black Powerstill represents a tragic departure from the civil rights dream -whether point- less,necessary, unfortunate, or inevitable.5 WilliamL. Van Deburg'slandmark New Day in Babylonhas pointedbeyond despairand disillusionmenttoward Black Power'simportant cultural and psycho- logicalaffirmation. Van Deburg revealsBlack Power as a fundamentalstage in the developmentof African American political consciousness. More decisive for my pur-

4JohnDittmer, Local People: The Strugglefor Civil Rights in Mississippi(Urbana, 1994); Payne,I've Got the Lightof Freedom.For references to armedself-defense among black Mississippians,see Dittmer,Local People, 1, 47, 49, 86, 106, 166-67, 188-93, 215, 238, 254-86, 306-7, 310, 354, 358, 391-98. See also Payne,I've Got theLight of Freedom, 44, 48-51, 54, 59, 61-62, 114,138-39, 159, 168, 176, 202-6, 209, 279-80, 287, 308, 314. For a good local studythat reveals the importanceof armedself-defense in the freedomstruggle, see David R. Colburn,Racial Changeand CommunityCrisis: St. Augustine,Florida, 1877-1980 (New York,1985), 35-36, 54-55, 109, 208-9. Adam Fairclough,Race and Democracy:The CivilRights Struggle in Louisizna,1915-1972 (Athens,Ga., 1995), 1; David S. Cecelski,Along FreedomRoad: Hyde County,North Carolina and the Fate of BlackSchools in theSouth (Chapel Hill, 1994), 10. See also WilliamH. Chafe,Civilities and CivilRights: Greens- boro,North Carolina, and the Black StruggleFor Freedom (New York,1979), 173, 237-39. 5 HowardZinn, PostwarAmerica: 1945-1971 (Indianapolis,1973), 208; ThomasWagstaff, Black Power:The RadicalResponse to WhiteAmerica (Beverly Hills, 1969); Robert L. Allen,Black Awakening in CapitalistAmerica: An AnalyticHistory (Garden City, 1969); StokelyCarmichael and CharlesV. Hamilton,Black Power: The Politics ofLiberation in America(New York,1967); TheodoreDraper, The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism (New York, 1969). Harold Cruseignored the rootsof BlackPower, presenting it as "a strategicretreat" that "cover[ed] up a defeatwithout having to explaineither the basic reasonsfor it or the flawsin the originalstrategy." See Harold Cruse, The Crisisof the Negro Intellectual(New York,1967), 544-65, esp. 544, 548. A more recentanalysis acknowledgesthat "the differences in thegoals of the Southerncivil rights movement and the (largely)Northern- and Western-basedblack pride and blackconsciousness movements . .. havebeen overemphasized"and suggests thatMartin Luther King Jr. and MalcolmX shared"the goal of constructinga new sense of self and of blackculture."See RichardKing, Civil Rights and theIdea ofFreedom (Athens, Ga., 1996),5. ClayborneCarson, In Strug- gle: SNCC and the Black Awakeningof the 1960s(Cambridge, Mass., 1981),215, 299. 544 TheJournal of American History September1998 poses hereis Van Deburg'simportant understanding that Black Power's "essential spiritwas theproduct of generations of blackpeople dealingwith powerlessness - and surviving."6 The lifeof Robert F. Williamssuggests that both Black Power and thecivil rights movementhave their roots in whatPatricia Sullivan's important history of race and democracyin theNew Deal-era Southcalls the "traditions of freedom and citizen- ship" that, "born in the crucibleof Reconstruction,sustained communities of resistance."World War II affordedthe blacksoutherners who carriedthose tradi- tionsforward unprecedented political opportunities; many who seized themcame fromfamilies with long traditions of resistanceto whitesupremacy. And thosetra- ditionsare onlyremotely related to nonviolenceas it is conventionallydepicted. In fact,it mightbe arguedthat nonviolent interracialism, rather than Black Power, is theanomaly. A carefulsifting of historical evidence from across the Southreveals the widelyheld distinctionbetween the civilrights movement and BlackPower as largelyan intellectualarchitecture of politicalconvenience.7 The verydrama with which the life of Robert F. Williamsillustrates these points has caused manyscholars to dismisshim as minorand idiosyncraticor simplyto ignorehim altogether."The Williamscase is rememberedby casual studentsof social change,if it is rememberedat all,"the journalistFred Powledge writes, "as a transitoryphenomenon, a mere glitchin the chronologyof those years-the exceptionto the rule."Hugh Pearson,in his studyof Huey Newton,incorrectly creditsWilliams with founding the Deacons ForDefense and Justiceand inaccu- ratelyargues that Williams "planted the first real seeds of militancy in thesouthern civilrights movement," though Pearson rightly notes the decisive influence Williams had on the Black Panthers.He also puts forththe fallacythat black southerners "firsthad to tastemore atrocity at the hands of whiteracists" before they would summonthe courageto defendtheir families. This notion that Williamstook his stand "prematurely,"as MalcolmX claimed,"just a couple of yearsahead of his time,"obscures the extentto whichself-defense was rootedin southernblack culture.8 StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizersknew better

6 WilliamL. Van Deburg,New Day in Babylon:The BlackPower Movement and AmericanCulture, 1965- 1975 (Chicago,1992), 34. Emphasisadded. 7 PatriciaSullivan, Days ofHope: Raceand Democracyin theNew Deal Era (Chapel Hill, 1996),14. On family traditionsof resistance,see Payne,I've Got the Lightof Freedom,207-35, esp. 233. 8 RobertF. Williamsis not mentionedin Branch'sParting the lYatersand Garrow'sBearing the Cross,nor in RobertWeisbrot, Freedom Bound: A Historyof America'sCivil Rights Movement (New York,1990). There areseveral sentences on Williamsin HarvardSitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1980 (New York,1981), 66. Forother portrayals of Williamsas a harbingerof clashesto come, see David LeveringLewis, "The Origins and Causesof the Civil Rights Movement," in TheCivil Rights Movement in America,ed. CharlesEagles (Jackson, 1986), 16; HerbertShapiro, White Violence and BlackResponse: From Reconstruction to Montgomery(Amherst, 1988),455-62; and Cruse,Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 351-401. Fred Powledge, Free at last? The CivilRights Movementand thePeople WhoMade It (New York,1992), 311;Hugh Pearson,The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newtonand the Cost of BlackPower in America(Reading, 1994), 25-28, 35-39. The Deacons ForDefense and Justicewere founded in Louisianaseveral years after Williams left the country.For Malcolm X's statement,see the 1964 radiointerview, "His BestCredentials: On the Airwith Joe Rainey,"in MalcolmX As TheyKnew Him, ed. David Gallen (New York,1992), 164-65. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 545 thanto push nonviolenceon reluctantblack southerners. In 1955 a blackwomen's newsletterpublished inJackson, Mississippi, announced that since "no law enforce- mentbody in ignorantMiss. will protectany Negro who has membershipin the NAACP," "the Negromust protect himself." The editorswarned "the whitehood- lumswho are nowparading around the premises" that the editors were "protected byarmed guard." SNCC's Charles Cobb observed,"In termsof the organizing. . . youdidn't go to the plantations,you didn't go to thesetowns and somehowenter intoa discussionof violenceand nonviolence."When whiteterrorists attacked the home of HartmanTurnbow, a local black farmerand SNCC stalwartin Holmes County,Mississippi, Cobb recalled,Turnbow "pushed his family out the backdoor and grabbedthe rifleoff the wall and startedshooting. And his explanationwas simplythat, 'I wasnot being,'as he said, 'non-nonviolent,I was protecting my wife and family."'Even Bob Moses,who was as deeplyidentified with philosophical nonviolenceas anyonein the freedommovement, acknowledged how muchhis con- victionsviolated the moresamong thoseSNCC soughtto organize."Self-defense is so deeplyengrained in ruralsouthern America," Moses told SNCC volunteersin 1964, "thatwe as a smallgroup can't effectit."9 The tradition,rooted in theunforgettable experiences of slave resistance and Re- constructionmilitancy, had survivedwhat Rayford Whittingham Logan called "the nadir"of AfricanAmerican life. After an 1892triple lynching in Memphis,for example, the black editorIda B. Wells "determinedto sell my life as dearlyas possible,"she wrote;she urgedother black southerners to do thesame. "Whenthe whiteman . . . knowshe runsas greata riskof bitingthe dust everytime his Afro-Americanvictim does," Wells insisted,"he would have a greaterrespect for Afro-Americanlife." When whitemobs raged throughthe streetsof Atlantain 1906,W. E. B. Du Bois hastenedhome to defendhis wifeand family."I bought a Winchesterdouble-barreled shotgun and twodozen roundsof shellsfilled with buckshot,"he wrotelater. "If a whitemob had steppedon thecampus where I lived I would withouthesitation have sprayedtheir guts overthe grass."Even Robert Moton,president of Tuskegee Institute, prepared to defendBooker T. Washington's legacywith shotguns when Tuskegeewas menaced by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.10In the early1930s, rural blacks in Alabama armedthemselves to organize the ShareCroppers' Union. Theirown experiencehad taughtthem, one recalled, that"the only thing going to stopthem from killing you, you got to go shooting." Thirtyyears later, when SNCC organizerscame to LowndesCounty, Alabama, black farmersshowed up formeetings armed; one blacksharecropper told StokelyCar-

9 Eagle Eye:The Woman'sVoice, Aug. 20, 1955,p. 1; Fundhi:The Story of Ella Baker,dir. Joanne Grant (Song- talkPublishing Co., 1980). Forthe statement by Bob Moses,see MaryKing, Freedom Song (New York,1987), 318. 10 RayfordWhittingham Logan, The Betrayalof the Negro,from Rutherford B. Hayes to WoodrowWilson (New York, 1997), originallypublished in 1954 as The Negro in AmericanLife and Thought:The Nadir, 1877-1901.For Ida B. Wells'sstatement, see Paula Giddings,When and WhereI Enter: The Impact of Black Womenon Race and Sex in America(New York,1984), 20. On W. E. B. Du Bois'spreparations for self-defense, see Leon Litwack,Trouble in Mind. BlackSoutherners in the Age ofjim Crow(New York,1998), 317. On Robert Moton'spreparation for self-defense, see WalterWhite, A Man Called White(New York,1948), 70. 546 TheJournal of American History September1998 michael:"You turnthe othercheek, and you'llget handed halfwhat you'resit- tingon."" This sensibilitywas not foreignto MartinLuther King Jr. nor to othermembers of his generationof blacksoutherners. Glenn Smiley,who visitedKing's home on behalfof the Fellowshipof Reconciliationin 1956, wroteback that "the place is an arsenal"and thatKing had armedguards. Probably the mostcrucial local ally of SNCC's campaignsin Mississippi,Amzie Moore, "like most politicallyactive Blacksin Mississippi,"Charles Payne writes, "often carried a gun. His home was wellarmed, and at nightthe area around his house may have been thebest-lit spot in Cleveland."NAACP fieldsecretary Medgar Evers was "anythingbut non-violent," the NAACP officialRuby Hurley recalled. In 1953,Evers named his firstchild after the Kenyanguerrilla leader Jomo Kenyatta, Payne observes, and Evers"thought longand hardabout the idea ofNegroes engaging in guerillawarfare in theDelta." Daisy Bates in LittleRock wrote to ThurgoodMarshall in 1959 thatshe and her husband"keep 'Old Betsy'well-oiled and theguards are alwayson thealert." Even in herpublic speeches, Bates bragged of the .32-caliberautomatic she carried.She hailed the motherof ElizabethEckford, the black girlwho had facedthe mobs at CentralHigh alone, forhaving "the courageof HarrietTubman" because Mrs. Eckfordkept her Bible and herpistol side by side. Despite the singulardrama of his politicalcareer, Robert Williams's devotion to "armedself-reliance" remained moreordinary than idiosyncratic. Among the few historians who haveexplored his story,only John Dittmer summons the clarityto note that Williams'smilitary service,his NAACP affiliation,and hiswillingness to defendhome, family, and com- munityby force if necessary made him"typical of the generation of southern blacks who launchedthe civilrights movement in the 1950s." 12

RobertWilliams was bornin 1925 to Emma C. and JohnL. Williams.His father was a railroadboiler washer in Monroe,Union County,North Carolina, a townof sixthousand in theNorth Carolina Piedmont. Women born in slaverystill tended vegetablegardens along the street where young Rob Williamsgrew up. His grandfather,Sikes Williams, born a slavein UnionCounty, had attendedBiddle Institute in nearbyCharlotte after emancipation and became one of Union County'sfirst black schoolteachers.He enlistedas a Republicanactivist during the late nine- teenthcentury and "traveledall overthe countyand the State makingspeeches

II RobinD. G. Kelley,Hammer and Hoe: Communistsin Alabama duringthe GreatDepression (Chapel Hill, 1990), 45, 229. See also Carson,In Struggle,162-64. The rootsof a distinctiveAfro-Christianity were as deep as the bondageunder which that faith was forged, but theroots of nonviolencein the blackSouth were not deep. In a historyof Americannonviolence, not 1 of the 27 entriesprior to the emergenceof MartinLuther King Jr. reflectseither African American or southernorigins. See StaughtonLynd, Nonviolence in America:A Documen- taryHistory (New York,1966). 12 StewartBurns, ed., Daybreakof Freedom:The MontgomeryBus Boycott(Chapel Hill, 1997), 22; Payne, I've Got the Lightof Freedom,44; Dittmer,Local People,49-50; Payne,I've Got the Lightof Freedom,49-51; DaisyBates to ThurgoodMarshall, Aug. 3, 1959,box 2, Daisy BatesPapers (State Historical Society of Wisconsin); Daisy Bates, speech, 1959, box 3, ibid.; JohnDittmer, "Robert Williams," in The Encyclopediaof Southern Culture,ed. CharlesReagan Wilson and WilliamFerris (Chapel Hill, 1989), 231. Emphasisadded. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 547 and solicitingsupport for the Party."Sikes Williams also publisheda smallnews- paper called the People's Voice.13 The "fusion"coalition of blackRepublicans and whitePopulists that he had laboredto build won everystatewide office in 1896. "THE CHAINS OF SERVITUDE ARE BROKEN,"Williams and hiswhite Populist allies in Monroeproclaimed to theirblack constituents that year. "NOW NEVER LICK THE HAND THAT LASHED YOU." Twoyears later, however, white conserva- tivesoverthrew the democraticprocess. "Go to thepolls tomorrow,"the soon-to-be mayor,Alfred Waddell, told the whitecitizens of Wilmington,North Carolina, "and ifyou find the negro out voting,tell him to leavethe polls, and ifhe refuses, killhim." In a campaignof fraud and violenceall acrossthe state in 1898,Red Shirt terroristshelped the partyof whitesupremacy install what the Democraticeditor JosephusDaniels celebratedas "permanentgood governmentby the partyof the whiteman." 14 Robert'sgrandmother, Ellen Isabel Williams, who had livedthrough these struggles,was a dailypresence in his lifeas he grewto manhood;Williams remembered his grandmotheras "mygreatest friend." He recalledthat "she read everything" and thatshe "specializedin history."Perhaps in partbecause Robert so strikingly resembledher handsome late husband,she wouldpoint to theiron printing press rustingin theshed and tellthe young boy stories of thecrusading editor's political exploits.Herself born into slavery,she remindedher grandson that she had been conceivedin the union of her motherwith their owner, Daniel Tomblin.Before she died, EllenWilliams gave young Robert a giftthat symbolized much that slav- eryand thestruggle for liberty had taughther: the ancient rifle that his grandfather had wieldedagainst white terrorists at the turnof the century.15 It wouldnot be long beforeWilliams, gun in hand,found himself facing a new generationof white terrorists.In 1946 twenty-one-year-oldRobert Williams

13 Barksdale,"Robert F. Williamsand the IndigenousCivil RightsMovement in Monroe,North Carolina," 75; H. NelsonWalden, History of Monroeand Union County(Monroe, 1963), 15; S. E. Williams,"Application BlankNo. 15" (in JohnHerman Williams's possession, Detroit, Mich.). A photographof the documentis in my possession.I am gratefulto Mr.Williams for sharing this and otherfamily photographs and documents.Crusader, July18, 1959,p. 2; "Historyof Our FamilyReunion," [1975], Williams Family Collection (in Mabel Williams's possession,Baldwin, Mich.); Williamsinterview by Cohen, transcript,p. 53. Thereare no knowncopies of the People's Voice,but itsexistence and politicsare confirmedby Williams family sources and referencesto it in the local whitenewspaper. See "MonroeHistorical Edition," Monroe Enquirer-Journal, Sept. 1974,p. 4-B. 14 "To the ColoredVoters of Union County,"1896, flier,Black HistoryFile (HeritageRoom, Union County Courthouse,Monroe, N.C.); GlendaElizabeth Gilmore, Gender andjim Crow:Women and thePolitics of White Supremacyin NorthCarolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1996), 110-11.For the statementof Josephus Daniels, seeJ. MorganKousser, The Shapingof SouthernPolitics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishmentof the One- PartySouth (New Haven, 1974),76. On thewhite supremacy campaigns of 1898in NorthCarolina, see Helen G. Edmonds,The Negroand FusionPolitics in NorthCarolina, 1894-1901 (Chapel Hill, 1951); Gilmore,Gender andjim Crow,Eric Anderson, Race and Politicsin NorthCarolina, 1872-1901: The BlackSecond (Baton Rouge, 1981);H. LeonPrather, "We Have Takena City":The WilmingtonRacial Massacre and Coup of 1898 (Rutherford, 1984); and David S. Cecelskiand TimothyB. Tyson,eds., DemocracyBetrayed: The WilmingtonRace Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy(Chapel Hill, 1998). 15 RobertWilliams, "Someday I'm Going Back South,"Daily Worker(Detroit edition), April 9, 1949, p. 7; Crusader,July 18, 1959,p. 2; "Historyof Our FamilyReunion"; Robert F. Williamsinterview by Timothy B. Tyson, Sept. 2, 1996,audiotape (in Tyson'spossession). The crucialrole of Ellen Williamsin the ongoingpolitical life of herfamily underscores the connectionthat Glenda ElizabethGilmore has drawnbetween African American women'sactivism during the late nineteenthand earlytwentieth centuries and the emergingAfrican Ameri- can freedommovement of the 1950sand 1960s.See Gilmore,Gender andJim Crow,224. 548 TheJournal of American History September1998

steppeddown froma segregatedGreyhound in Monroewearing the uniformof his country.Williams had movedto Detroitfour years earlier to workat FordMotor Company.Coming home fromBelle Isle AmusementPark on the eveningof June 11, 1943,he and his brotherbattled white mobs in one of the worstrace riots in United Stateshistory. Williams was draftedin 1944 and enduredthe ironiesof marchingfor freedom in a segregatedarmy. When his government-issueshoe leatherstruck the same pavementwhere ten yearsearlier he had seen Big Jesse Helmsdrag the black woman off to jail, Williamswas no longera frightenedeleven- year-old.Military training had givenblack veterans "some feeling of securityand self-assurance,"he recalled."The Armyindoctrination instilled in us whata virtue it was to fightfor democracy and thatwe werefighting for democracy and uphold- ing the Constitution.But mostof all theytaught us to use arms."Like thousands of otherblack veterans whomJohn Dittmer has characterizedas "theshock troops ofthe modern civil rights movement," Robert Williams did notcome home to pick cotton.16 Anotherreturning black veteran, a friendof Williams'snamed Bennie Mont- gomery,did come home to raisecotton on the farmthat his fatheroperated as a sharecropperfor W. W. Mangum,a whitelandowner near Monroe.Saturday, June 1, 1946, was a regularworkday on the Mangumplace, but Montgomery askedMangum for his wagesat noon, explainingthat he needed to go to Monroe to have his father'scar repaired.Mangum apparentlykicked and slapped the youngveteran, and Montgomerypulled out a pocketknifeand cut his employer's throat.The Ku Klux Klan wantedto lynchthe black sharecropper,but instead state authoritieswhisked Montgomery out of town,tried and convictedhim of murder,and ten monthslater executed him in the gas chamberat CentralPrison in Raleigh.17 State authoritiesshipped the sharecropper'sremains back to Monroe.Robbed of theirlynching, however, members of the local klavernof "theinvisible empire" let it be knownthat Bennie Montgomery's body belonged,not to his family,but to theKu Klux Klan. "Theywas gonna come and takeBennie's body out and drag it up and downthe streets,"J. W. McDow,another African American veteran, recalled. "I ratherdie and go to hell beforeI see thathappen." A groupof former soldiersmet at BookerT. Perry'sbarbershop and deviseda battleplan. When the Klan motorcadepulled up in frontof the HarrisFuneral Home, fortyblack men leveledtheir rifles, taking aim at theline of cars. Not a shotwas fired; the Klansmen simplyweighed their chances and droveaway. Former United StatesArmy Pfc. RobertF. Williamscradled a carbinethat night.So did threemen who would becomekey lieutenants in the "blackmilitia" that Williams organized ten years

16 Williamsinterview by Cohen, transcript,p. 44. On eventsat Belle Isle thatevening, see RobertShogun and Tom Craig,The DetroitRace Riot:A Studyin Violence(New York,1976), 34-35. See also DominicCapeci and MarthaWilkerson, Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943 (Jackson, 1991). Union County, North Caro- lina,Record of Military Discharges, vol. 7, p. 99 (MonroePublic Library, Monroe, N.C.); Dittmer,Local People, 1-9. 17 MonroeEnquirer, June 31, 1946,p. 1; ibid., March31, 1947,p. 1. See also MarcellusC. Barksdale,"The IndigenousCivil RightsMovement and CulturalChange in NorthCarolina, 1945-1965: Weldon, Chapel Hill, and Monroe"(Ph.D. diss.,Duke University,1977), 42-43. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 549

later."That was one of the firstincidents," Williams recalled, "that really started us to understandingthat we had to resist,and thatresistance could be effective if we resistedin groups,and if we resistedwith guns." 18 Williamssoon leftthe South foralmost a decade, workingbriefly at Cadillac MotorCompany in Detroitbefore using his G.I. Bill benefitsto writepoetry and studypsychology at threedifferent black colleges:West VirginiaState College, JohnsonC. SmithCollege, and NorthCarolina Central College for Negroes. "Some- day,"he vowedin a 1949article for the Detroit edition of the Daily Worker,"I would returnseasoned from the fightin the northand moreefficient in the fightfor the liberationof my people." In 1952,Williams wrote an essayfor Paul Robeson'snewspaper, Freedom,in whichhe predictedthat AfricanAmerican college students wouldsoon become"the mostmilitant agitators for democracy in Americatoday. Theyhave nothingto lose and all to gain."At JohnsonC. Smith,Williams met one ofhis literaryheroes, Langston Hughes, who consideredWilliams a promising poetand senthim handwritten poems as an encouragement.In 1953,however, Wil- liams ran out of moneyfor college and reenlistedin the armedforces, this time in the United StatesMarine Corps. 19 "Whereverhe has gone,"an FBI observernoted duringthis period, "Williams has constantlycomplained, both in the Armyand at previousplaces of employ- ment,that he has been discriminatedagainst." The MarineCorps was no different. Objectingbitterly to racialdiscrimination, Williams clashed with his officers, spent muchof his sixteenmonths in the MarineCorps in the brig,and receivedan un- desirabledischarge in 1955. "Subject in a letterto the Presidentof the United Statesexpressed his desireto renouncehis citizenshipand livein a country'which wouldnot let his family starve,"' United States Naval Intelligence reported. His one brightmoment as a Marinecame on May 17, 1954,when he heardthat the United StatesSupreme Court had struckdown school segregation. "At last I feltthat I was a partof Americaand thatI belonged,"he wrote."I wassure that this was the be- ginningof a new era of Americandemocracy."20 Upon his returnto Monroein 1955,Williams joined both the local branchof the NAACP and a mostlywhite Unitarian fellowship. In a Sundaysermon delivered

18 J. W. McDowinterview by Tyson, Sept. 17, 1993,audiotape (in Tyson'spossession); Woodrow Wilson interviewby Marcellus Chandler Barksdale, [1976-19771, audiotape, box 9, Duke Oral HistoryCollection (Perkins Li- brary,Duke University,Durham, N.C.); B. J. Winfieldinterview by Barksdale,[1976-19771, audiotape, ibid.; RobertF. Williamsinterview byJames Mosby, 1970, transcript, Ralph Bunche Oral HistoryCollection (Moorland- SpingarnResearch Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.). 19Williams, "Someday I'm GoingBack South,"Daily Worker(Detroit edition), April 9, 1949,p. 7; RobertF. Williams,"N. CarolinaCollege Youth Calls fora MilitantGeneration:" Freedom, 11 (June 1952), 5; UnitedStates Senate,Committee on theJudiciary, Testimony of Robert F Williams:Hearings before the Committeeto Inves- tigatethe Administration of theInternal Security Act and OtherInternal Security Laws of the Committeeon the Judiciary,91 Cong. 2 sess.,part 1, March25, 1970, exhibitno. 43, pp. 211-12;Williams interview by Cohen, transcript,p. 207. 20 U.S. Naval Intelligence,San Diego, California,Investigation Report, "21 Jan-28Apr 1955 Intermittently," "RobertF. Williams"Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) SubjectFile (in Tyson'spossession). I am gratefulto theWilliams family for sharing the complete file; parts of it areavailable in theRobert F. WilliamsPapers (Bentley HistoricalLibrary, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor).See also SouthernPatriot, 18 (Jan. 1960),3. The statement byWilliams is in VincentHarding, "Introduction," in The Eyeson the PrizeReader, ed. ClayborneCarson et al. (New York,1991), 36. 550 TheJournal of American History September1998

to his fellowUnitarians in 1956,Williams hailed the Montgomery,Alabama, bus boycottand celebratedwhat he called"the patriots of passive revolution." His bitter collisionwith the Marine Corps had notdampened his commitment to equal rights forall underthe United States Constitution and to thoseelements in theAmerican politicaltradition that he believedundergirded black liberation.Invoking "the spiritof Concord,Lexington and ValleyForge," Williams declared from the pulpit that,as he put it, "theliberty bell peals once moreand the Starsand Stripesshall waveforever."21 The atmosphereat the MonroeNAACP was less exuberant.In the wakeof the Brownv. Board of Educationdecision and the triumphat Montgomery,Ku Klux Klan ralliesnear Monroe began to drawcrowds as big as fifteenthousand. Dyna- mite attackson black activistsin the area werecommon and lesseracts of terror routine."The echoof shots and dynamiteblasts," the editors of the freedom movement journal the SouthernPatriot wrote in 1957, "has been almostcontinuous throughoutthe South."The MonroeNAACP dwindledto six members,who then contemplateddisbanding. When the newestmember objected to dissolution,the departingmembership chose him to lead thechapter. "They elected me president," RobertWilliams recalled, "and thenthey all left."22 Findinghimself virtually a one-manNAACP chapter,Williams turned first to the blackveterans with whom he had stoodagainst the Klan thatnight back in 1946. Anotherveteran, the physician Dr. AlbertE. PerryJr.,became vice-president. Find- ing it "necessaryto visithomes and appeal directlyto individuals,"Williams in- formedthe national office, he painstakinglyrecruited from the beauty parlors, pool halls,and streetcorners, building a cadreof sometwo hundred members by 1959. The largestgroup of new recruitswere African American women who workedas domestics.The Monroebranch of the NAACP became"the onlyone of its kindin existence,"the novelistJulian Mayfield, a keysupporter of Williamsin Harlem's blackLeft, wrote in Commentaryin 1961."Its membersand supporters,who are mostlyworkers and displacedfarmers, constitute a well-armedand disciplined fightingunit." The branchbecame "unique in thewhole NAACP becauseof a work- ing classcomposition and a leadershipthat was not middle class,"Williams later wrote."Most important,we had a strongrepresentation of black veteranswho didn'tscare easily."23

21 RobertF. Williams,"Colonel Jim Crow's Last Stand: A SermonDelivered at All Soul's Chapel Unitarian Fellowship,Monroe, North Carolina," March 25, 1956,pp. 1-2, box 3, WilliamsPapers. 22 Forattendance at a Union, SouthCarolina, rally, see CharlestonNews and Courier,Sept. 21, 1956,p. 1-B. Fora reportthat in 1957 "cross-burningsand [Ku Klux Klan] meetingshere attracted thousands," see Monroe Enquirer,March 17, 1958,p. 1. SouthernPatriot, 15 (Jan. 1957), 1; Williamsinterview by Mosby. 23 RobertE Williamsto the NAACP, March11, 1957, box A333, NationalAssociation for the Advancement of ColoredPeople Papers(Manuscript Division, Library of Congress,Washington, D.C.); Williams,Negroes with Guns,ed. Schlieffer,50-51; McDow interview; Winfield interview; Wilson interview; Williams interview by Tyson, March10, 1993;Williams interview by Mosby. Membership reports indicate that the branchgrew from 92 to 121 membersin 1959,but Williams claimed-and therecords of the national office confirm-that the Monroe branch declinedto recordmany memberships "for the purpose of protecting those who join the NAACPwho do notwant theirnames known." See "TotalMembership Received From Branches in NorthCarolina, January 1-October 1, 1959,"box C113,NAACP Papers. Julian Mayfield, "Challenge to NegroLeadership: The Case .ofRobert Williams," Commentary(April 1961),298; Williams,Negroes with Guns, 51. "BlackPower" and theRoots of theFreedom Struggle 551

In responseto the drowningsof severallocal AfricanAmerican children whom segregationhad forcedto swim in isolated farmponds, the Monroe NAACP launcheda campaignto desegregatethe local tax-supportedswimming pool in 1957. HarryGolden, a prominentJewish liberal from nearby Charlotte, observed thatthe specter of interracial sexuality "haunts every mention of the race question" and thoughtit "naive"of Williamsto "experimentwith the crudeemotions of a small Southernagricultural community." Not surprisingly,the Ku Klux Klan blamed the affluentDr. Perryfor the resurgentblack activism and a large,heavily armedKlan motorcadeattacked Dr. Perry'shouse one nightthat summer. Black veteransgreeted the nightriders with sandbag fortificationsand a hail of disci- plinedgunfire. The MonroeBoard of Aldermenimmediately passed an ordinance banningKu Klux Klan motorcades,a measurethey had refusedto considerbefore the gun battle.24 When Williamsand the otherblack veterans organized self-defense networks, blackwomen insisted that the men teachthem to shoot.But forblack men as well as whitemen, the rhetoricof protectingwomen was fraughtwith the politicsof controllingwomen. Williams recalled that the women "had volunteered,and they wantedto fight.But we keptthem out ofmost of it." Nevertheless, African Ameri- can womenwho laboredas domesticsplayed crucial roles as gatherersof intelligence.They also workedthe telephonesand deliveredthe weeklynewsletter, Wil- liams acknowledged.But it was not easyto confinewomen to theseroles. When police arrestedDr. Perryon trumped-upcharges of "criminalabortion on a white woman,"dozens of black citizens,most of themwomen, armed themselves and crowdedinto the police station.Jet magazinereported that the women"surged againstthe doors,fingering their guns and knivesuntil Perrywas produced."In short,black women both deployed and defiedgender stereotypes-demanding of black men, in effect,"Why aren't you protectingus?" -even thoughthey over- turnedsuch stereotypesin theirdaily lives.25 An evenmore vivid local dramadragged Monroe onto the stage of international politicson October28, 1958.Two African American boys, David E. "Fuzzy"Simp- son and JamesHanover Thompson, ages eightand ten,met some whitechildren in a vacantlot. A kissinggame ensuedin whichthe ten-year-oldThompson and an eight-year-oldwhite girl named SissySutton kissed one another.Rarely in his- toryhas an incidentso smallopened a windowso largeinto the lifeof a place and a people. The worldwidecontroversy that stemmed from the "kissingcase" underlined the powerof sexualquestions in racialpolitics and demonstratedboth the

24 CarolinaIsraelite, Jan. 1955,p. 9; ibid.,Jan.-Feb. 1959, p. 2; Norfolk[Virginia] Journal and Guide, Oct. 12,1957, p. 1; "Is NorthCarolina NAACP Leader a MarkedMan?," Jet, Oct. 31, 1957,pp. 10-11;"Parades, Caval- cades,and Caravans"ordinance, Code ofthe Cityof Monroe (Monroe, 1957), 473-75, NorthCarolina Collection (Louis Round WilsonLibrary, University of NorthCarolina, Chapel Hill). 25 Williamsinterview by Mosby; "Is NorthCarolina NAACP Leader a MarkedMan?," 10-11. An expandinglit- eratureon AfricanAmerican women's activism in NorthCarolina helps place theseself-assertions in an ongoing blackwomen's political tradition. See Gilmore,Gender andJim Crow; Laura Edwards, Gendered Strnfe and Con- fusion: ThePolitics of Reconstruction (Urbana, 1997); and ChristinaGreene, "'Our SeparateWays': Women and the BlackFreedom Movement in Durham,North Carolina, 1940s to 1970s"(Ph.D. diss.,Duke University,1997). 552 TheJournal of American History September1998 promiseand theproblems of Cold Warpolitics for the AfricanAmerican freedom struggle.26 Afterthe kissingincident, Sissy Sutton's mother reported, "I was furious.I wouldhave killed Hanover myself if I had thechance." Sissy's father took a shotgun and wentlooking for the two boys.Neighbors reported that a whitemob had roaredup to the Thompsonhome and threatenednot onlyto kill the boysbut to lynchtheir mothers. Later that afternoon, police officers spotted Hanover Thomp- son and FuzzySimpson pulling a redwagon loaded withsoft drink bottles. "Both cops jumped out withtheir guns drawn,"Thompson recalled. "They snatched us up and handcuffedus and threwus in thecar. When we got to the jail, theydrug us out of the car and startedbeating us." The local juvenilecourt judge reported to Gov. LutherH. Hodges thatthe police had detainedthe boys"for their own good, due to local feelingin the case."27 Authoritiesheld the two boys for six days withoutpermitting them to see parents,friends, or attorneys.Passing gunmen fireddozens of shots into the Thompsonhome. Klan terroriststorched crosses on the lawn. Hanover'ssister foundhis dog shotdead in the yard.For many white citizens, the case seemedto resonatewith the sexualfears awakened by the prospectof schooldesegregation. "If [blackchildren] get into our ruralschools and ride the buses withour white children,"one local womanwrote, "the Monroe'kissing' incident is onlya startof whatwe will have."On November4, JudgeJ. HamptonPrice convened what he termed"separate but equal" hearingsfor the white parents and theblack boys. De- nied theright to engagecounsel or to confronttheir accusers, Hanover Thompson and FuzzySimpson were sentenced to MorrisonTraining School for Negroes. If they behavedwell, Judge Price told the boys,they might be releasedbefore they were twenty-one.28 RobertWilliams saw the "kissingcase" as morethan a local expressionof the irrationalsexual lynchpin of whitesupremacy; the bizarreclarity of the case and the strangepolitics of the Cold Warsuggested a largerstrategy. As MartinLuther King Jr.and the SouthernChristian Leadership Conference (SCLC) would do in Birminghamfour years later, Williams and his friendsin Monroeset out to use

26 KellyAlexander to RoyWilkins, "A Reportof Activities of the North Carolina State Conference of Branches in Referenceto theCase of David Simpsonand James H. Thompsonof Monroe,North Carolina," Dec. 26, 1958, box 333A, NAACP Papers.See PatrickJones, "'Communist Front Shouts Kissing Case to the World':The Com- mitteeto CombatRacial Injustice and the Politicsof Race and Genderduring the Cold War"(M.A. thesis,Uni- versityof Wisconsin-Madison,1996). 27 GeorgeWeissman, "The KissingCase," Nation, Jan. 17, 1959,p. 47; GlosterB. Currentto Wilkins,Dec. 23, 1958,box A92, NAACP Papers.See also CharlotteObserver, Jan. 12, 1959,p. 2-A;Durham Carolina Times, Jan. 10, 1959,p. 1; MonroeEnquirer, Nov. 20, 1958,p. 1. See alsoJames Hanover Thompson interview by Tyson, May 13, 1993,audiotape (in Tyson'spossession); andJ. HamptonPrice to LutherH. Hodges,Nov. 26, 1958,box 423, Gov- ernorLuther H. Hodges Papers(North Carolina Division of Archivesand History,Raleigh). 28 Thompsoninterview. See also ChicagoDefender, Jan. 17, 1959,p. 3. Mrs.W. W. Rogersto editor,Charlotte Observer,Feb. 2, 1959,p. 2-B; Winston-SalemJournaland Sentinel, Feb. 8, 1958,p. 1; Writof Habeas Corpus and Petition,Superior Court, Mecklenburg County, N.C., Jan. 6, 1959,Laura Mola Papers(in Tyson'spossession). See also "Transcriptof StatementsMade By AttorneyConrad Lynn During Interview on the 'FrankFord Show,' Radio StationWPEN, Philadelphia,Pennsylvania on June20, 1959,from 12:40 until 1:35 AM,"box A92, NAACP Papers, "Black Power"and the Rootsof the FreedomStruggle 553

3M~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~K

RobertF. Williamsteaches his wife Mabel Williams to use a pistolgiven to himby Fidel Castro. Fourmonths earlier, she held off Monroe police officers with a .12-gauge shotgunwhen they tried to arresther husband. CourtesyofJohn Herman Williams. the internationalpolitics of the Cold Waras a fulcrumto movethe United States governmentto intervene.Determined to makethe "kissing case" a globalmetaphor forthe Americanracial dilemma, they fired off press releases, pestered reporters, houndedthe wire services, and put in motionwhat Time magazine called "a rolling snowball"of worldwidepublicity. 29 This publicitycampaign quickly attracted the supportof the SocialistWorkers party(swP), a Trotskyitegroup attempting to breakwith the AmericanLeft's ten- dencyto subordinaterace to class.Efforts for socialism and blackliberation must meet as equal partners,C. L. R. Jamesand Claude DeBruce had persuadedtheir swP comrades.DeBruce, an AfricanAmerican, saw the need foran independent

29 Thisstrategy appeared the moment that the Cold Wardid. "It is notRussia that threatens the United States so much as Mississippi,"the NationalAssociation for the Advancementof Colored People (NAACP) declaredin a 1947petition to theUnited Nations, "not Stalinand Molotovbut Bilbo and Rankin."See MaryDudziak, "De- segregationas a Cold WarImperative," StanfordLaw Review, 41 (Nov. 1988),95 and n201.In Birmingham,Martin LutherKing Jr. explained his strategicvision: "The United Statesis . . . battlingfor the mindsand the hearts of men in Asia and in Africa,and theyaren't gonna respectthe United Statesof Americaif she deprivesmen and womenof the basicrights of lifebecause of the colorof theirskin." See Branch,Parting the WJaters,791. The Time story(from the internationaledition of the magazine)was reprintedin MonroeEnquirer, Feb. 9, 1959, p. 1. 554 TheJournal of American History September1998

blackpolitical leadership, preferably one withties to theNAACP, thatcould "project a programin the interestof the mass of Negroes."Thus when RobertWilliams emergedfrom the blackSouth in 1958,the swP stoodpoised to assisthim on his own terms.Beginning in 1958,the Militant,the SWP'snewspaper, carried dozens of articlesabout Williamsand Monroe-twenty-fiveon the "kissingcase" alone. Thatcoverage overshadowed their reports on theCuban revolution,the anticolonial uprisingin the Belgian Congo, and all the otherdevelopments in the African Americanfreedom struggle combined. "They knew I wasn'tgoing to join any party,"he recalled,"because I had made thatplain. I wasn'tinterested in them." The reverse,however, was not true.Robert Williams "has some audaciousplans whichI thinkare feasible,"the swP organizerGeorge Weissman wrote. "Indeed, the moreI see of him the moreI thinkhe has the possibilityof becominga real Negro leader."30 With logisticalassistance from the swP, Williamsaddressed audiences at labor halls,liberal churches, and collegeauditoriums across the country.Soon the "kissing case" emblazonedfront pages aroundthe globe,forcing Governor Hodges to hirea team of professorsfrom the Universityof NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill to translatethe tensof thousandsof lettersthat poured into his office.John Shure, head of the UnitedStates Information Agency (USIA) at the Hague, reportedthat he had receivedover twelve thousand letters "even though the responsedoes not appearto havebeen organized." While the White House and theState Department expressedalarm at the damage to United Statesforeign relations, Williams had a readyanswer. "It is asininefor colored people to eventhink of sparingthe U.S. StateDepartment embarrassment abroad," he replied."If the U.S. governmentis so concernedabout itsimage abroad, then let it createa societythat will stand up underworld scrutiny."31 GovernorHodges soon launched a publicrelations campaign of his own, aiming, as an aide urged the governor,to "givethe NAACP a tasteof its own medicine . . .[and] place the whole Confederacyin yourdebt." The aide suggestedto the governorthat "by hitting directly at the communistconnection, we mightbe able to convincepeople of the insincerityof these protests."The FederalBureau of Investigationinformed Governor Hodges that "RobertWilliams has been under investigationfor a considerableperiod of time"and that"you would have access to thisinformation if you desire."The ensuingsmear campaign asserted that the entireaffair had been "a Communist-directedfront," that the familiesof the boys were "shiftlessand irresponsible,"and that HanoverThompson's mother had "a reputationfor using her daughters in prostitution."The USIA and theState Depart- ment broadcastthese chargesaround the world,winning few minds and fewer

30Claude DeBruce,"On theNegro Question," swP DiscussionBulletin (July 1956), 1-5, box 1,Socialist Work- ers PartyPapers (State HistoricalSociety of Wisconsin);Jones, "'Communist Front Shouts Kissing Case to the World,"'44; Williamsinterview by Cohen, transcript,pp. 562-63; GeorgeWeissman to Carl Braden,Feb. 19, 1959, box 1, Committeeto Combat Racial InjusticePapers (State HistoricalSociety of Wisconsin). 31 RobertE. Giles to WilliamC. Friday,Feb. 6, 1959,box 423, Hodges Papers.John Shure's comments are ex- cerptedin BasilL. Whitenerto Hodges,March 2, 1959,ibid. ForWilliams's remarks, see Crusader,Aug. 1962,p. 4. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 555 hearts.Three and a halfmonths after Hanover and Sissyhad kissedeach other, GovernorHodges, under enormous political pressure, announced that "the home conditionshave improvedto the extentthat the boyscan be givenconditional release."32 "The kissingcase," the activistlawyer Conrad Lynnobserved years later, "was the case thatgot [Williams]in nationaland internationalattention." The case not onlyfurnished Williams with a networkof seasoned activists in theAmerican Left but witha growingnumber of supportersamong black nationalistsin Harlem. Audley"Queen Mother"Moore, an importantfigure in bothCommunist and black nationalistcircles in Harlemfrom the 1920sto the 1970s,organized support for Williams. He became a regularvisitor to Louis Michaux'sNational Memorial AfricanBookstore on SeventhAvenue off 125th Street, where Michaux welcomed Williamsto thepodium the store provided for the legendary Harlem street speakers ofthe day. 33The mostimportant of Williams's contacts among the Harlem nation- alistswas MalcolmX, ministerat the Nationof Islam'sTemple no. 7. "Everytime I used to go to New Yorkhe wouldinvite me to speak,"Williams recalled. Malcolm would tell his congregation"that 'our brotheris herefrom North Carolina, and he is the onlyfighting man thatwe have got,and we have got to help him so he can staydown there,"' Williams recounted. Williams found ready support among Harlemintellectuals, including Julian Mayfield, John Henrik Clarke, John Oliver Killens,and otherliterary and politicalfigures. "They all sawsomething in Monroe thatdid not actuallyexist - an immediatelyrevolutionary situation," Harold Cruse observed.Later, in an unpublishedautobiography, Julian Mayfield disclosed that "a famousblack writer made contactwith gangsters in NewJersey and boughtme twosub-machine guns which I tookto Monroe."Williams was not the best-known blackleader in the United States,but he mayhave been the best armed.34 The "kissingcase" recruitednew allies forWilliams, but it launchedhim on a

32 JohnBriggs to Bill Sharpe,Feb. 23, 1959,box 423, HodgesPapers; Sharpe to Hodges,Feb. 12, 1959,ibid.; Hodgesto Sharpe,Feb. 19, 1959,ibid; 0. L. Richardsonto Hodges,n.d., ibid; ChesterDavis, "CommunistFront Shouts'Kissing Case' to the World,"Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel,Feb. 8, 1959,p. 1; MonroeEnquirer, Feb. 16, 1959,p. 1. 33 Conrad Lynninterview, [1975], transcript,pp. 4-5, Ralph Bunche Oral HistoryCollection; Muhammed Ahmed,"Queen MotherMoore," in Encyclopediaof the American Left, ed. MariJo Buhle,Paul Buhle,and Dan Georgakas(Urbana, 1992), 486-87. Otherspeakers who used the bookstore'sstreetfront podium includedMal- colmX, AdamClayton PowellJr., Carlos Cooks, James Rupert Lawson, and Edward"Porkchop" Davis. See Kleytus Smithand Abiola Sinclair,The Harlem Cultural/Political Movements, 1960-1970 (New York,1975), 46. See also RosemariMeali, Fidel and MalcolmX. Memoriesof a Meeting(Melbourne, 1993), 29. 34 Williamsinterview by Cohen, transcript, pp. 382-83. The FederalBureau of Investigation found the alliance alarming;J. EdgarHoover warned his Charlotte,North Carolina, office about Williams's"recent activities in connectionwith the Nation of Islam at New York"and orderedthat a filebe openedon thatconnection. See Director to Special Agentin Charge,Charlotte, June 18, 1959,"Robert F. Williams"FBI SubjectFile. Cruse,Crisis of the NegroIntellectual, 358-59; Julian Mayfield, "Tales From The Lido,"[1975?], draft autobiography, Julian Mayfield Papers(Schomburg Center for Research in BlackCulture, New YorkPublic Library, New York,N.Y.). I am grateful to KevinGaines for sharing these materials. Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) is a "famousblack writer" who ad- miredWilliams greatly and in 1959-1960not onlyhad "rejectedMartin Luther King's philosophy" but also had concludeda poemwith the line, "Will themachinegunners step forward?" See AmiriBaraka, The Autobiography of LeJoiJones(Chicago, 1997), 237. In an interviewBaraka neither confirmed nor denied havingsupplied the machineguns. AmiriBaraka interview by Tyson, April 9, 1998,notes (in Tyson'spossession). An anonymousbut reliablesource interview confirms that he did. 556 TheJournal of American History September1998

collisioncourse with the NAACP hierarchy.Since the Scottsborotrials of the 1930s, the NAACP had steadfastlyshunned so-called sex cases and politicalalliances that mightleave the organization open to red-baiting.Should the NAACP "everget iden- tifiedwith communism," Kelly Alexander, head of theNorth Carolina Conference of Branches,told a reporter,"the Ku Klux Klan and the WhiteCouncils will pick up thecharge that we are 'reds'and use it as a club to beat us to death."Differences over strategybecame bitter;Alexander complained to the national officethat Williams"has completelyturned his backon the one organizationthat is respon- sible forhim beingin the spotlighttoday," while Williams griped that Alexander "soundsmore like a Tomthan ever." Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the national organization,began to referto Williamsin privateas "Lancelotof Monroe."35 Justas the "kissingcase" headlinesfaded in thespring of 1959,two news stories fromother parts of the South grippedblack America.One was the lynchingof MackCharles Parker, accused of rapinga whitewoman in Mississippi.When Mis- sissippiNAACP fieldsecretary Medgar Evers heard that Parkerhad been dragged fromhis cell and murderedby a mob, he told his wife,"I'd liketo get a gun and startshooting." The otherwas the terrifying ordeal of four young black college stu- dentsat FloridaAgricultural and MechanicalUniversity. Their double date after a college dance was interruptedby fourwhite men withguns and knives.The drunkenassailants who had vowed,as one of themtestified in courtlater, "to go out and get some niggerpussy," forced the two eighteen-year-oldblack men to kneelat gunpointwhile they undressed the twowomen and decidedaloud which one theywould kidnap and thengang-rape. In thewake of these highly publicized outrages,Wilkins conceded in a lettermarked "NOT FOR PUBLICATION" that "I knowthe thought of violence has been muchin theminds of Negroes." By early May,Wilkins admitted, the NAACP foundit "harderand harderto keep feelings fromboiling over in some of our branches."36 Righton theheels of the Parker lynching and theterrors in Tallahassee,two press- ing local mattersbrought Robert Williams and a crowdof black womento the Union Countycourthouse. B. F. Shaw,a whiterailroad engineer, was chargedwith attackingan AfricanAmerican maid at the Hotel Monroe.Another inflammatory case wasslated for trial the same day.Lewis Medlin, a whitemechanic, was accused ofhaving beaten and sexuallyassaulted Mary Ruth Reid, a pregnantblack woman, in the presenceof her fivechildren. According to Williams,Reid's brothersand

35 Dan T. Carter,Scottsboro: A Tragedyof the American South (Baton Rouge, 1969). See alsoJamesGoodman, Storiesof Scottsboro (New York,1994). Davis, "Communist Front Shouts 'Kissing Case' to theWorld," 1; Alexander to Wilkins,"Report of Activitiesof the NorthCarolina State Conference of Branchesin Referenceto the Case of David Simpsonand JamesH. Thompsonof Monroe,North Carolina"; Williams to Weissman,Dec. 17, 1958, box 1, Committeeto Combat Racial InjusticePapers; Wilkins to P. L. Prattis,"Personal, Not ForPublication," May 28, 1959,p. 1, box A333, NAACP Papers. 36 HowardSmead, BloodJustice: The Lynching of Mack CharlesParker (New York,1986); Mrs.Medgar Evers withWilliam Peters, For Us, theLiving (New York,1970), 194; RoyWilkins, "Report of the Secretaryto theBoard of Directorsfor the Monthof April 1959,"box A333, NAACPPapers. See also WashingtonPost, May 3, 1959,p. 4; Durham CarolinaTimes, May 23, 1959,p. 1; New YorkTimes, May 7, 1959,p. 22; PittsburghCourier, June 20, 1959, p. 3; and CharlotteObserver, May 3, 1959,p. 1. Wilkinsto Prattis,"Personal, Not ForPublication"; RoyWilkins, Standing Fast: The Autobiographyof Roy Wilkins(New York,1982), 265. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 557

severalof the black women of theMonroe NAACP had urgedthat the new machine guns be triedout on Medlinbefore his trial."I told themthat this matter would be handledthrough the law and the NAACP wouldhelp," Williams recalled, "that we would be as bad as the whitepeople if we resortedto violence."37 The proceedingsagainst the twowhite men compelledWilliams to reconsider hisassessment. The judge droppedthe charges against Shaw although he had failed evento appearin court.During the brieftrial of Medlin,his attorneyargued that he had been "drunkand havinga littlefun" at the timeof the assault.Further, Medlin was married, his lawyertold the jury,"to a lovelywhite woman . . . the pure flowerof life . . . do you think he would have leftthis pure flowerfor that?" He gesturedtoward Mary Ruth Reid, who began to cryuncontrollably. Lewis Medlin wasacquitted in minutes.Robert Williams recalled that "the [black] women in the courtroommade suchan outcry,the judge had to send Medlinout the reardoor." The womenthen turned on Williamsand bitterlyshamed him forfailing to see to theirprotection.38 At thisburning moment of anger and humiliation,Williams turned to wireser- vicereporters and declaredthat it wastime to "meetviolence with violence." Black citizensunable to enlistthe supportof the courtsmust defend themselves. "Since thefederal government will not stop lynching, and sincethe so-calledcourts lynch our people legally,"he declared,"if it's necessaryto stop lynchingwith lynching, thenwe mustresort to thatmethod." The nextday, however, Williams disavowed thereference to lynching."I do notmean thatNegroes should go out and attempt to get revengefor mistreatments or injustice,"he said, "but it is clearthat there is no Fourteenthor FifteenthAmendment nor court protection of Negroes'rights here,and Negroeshave to defendthemselves on the spot whenthey are attacked by whites."39 Bannerheadlines flagged these words as symbolsof "a new militancyamong youngNegroes of the South."Enemies of theNAACP blamedthis "bloodthirsty re- mark"squarely on thenational office. "High officials of the organization may speak in cultivatedaccents and dresslike Wall Streetlawyers," Thomas Waringof the CharlestonNews and Couriercharged, "but theyare engagedin a revolutionary enterprise."That verymorning, when he read the words"meet violencewith violence"in a UnitedPress International (uPI) dispatch,Roy Wilkins telephoned RobertWilliams to informhim thathe had been removedfrom his post as president of the Monroe NAACP.40 That summerof 1959, the fiftiethanniversary convention of the NAACP pre-

3' MonroeEnquirer, Jan. 26, 1959,p. 1; ibid., March9, 1959,p. 1; New YorkPost, Jan. 27, 1959,p. 4; ibid., May 7, 1959,p. 1; ibid., Nov. 11,1959, p. 1; Crusader,April 1963, p. 4; Durham CarolinaTimes, Feb. 7, 1959, p. 2; ibid.,Jan. 31, 1959, p. 1. 38 Williamsinterview by Mosby;Southern Patriot, 18 (Jan. 1960), 3; MonroeEnquirer, May 7, 1959, p. 1; Jones,"'Communist Front Shouts Kissing Case to the World,"'127; Williamsinterview by Mosby. 39 "Rec'dvia phonefrom UPi -May 6, 1959,"box A333, NAACPPapers. See also New YorkTimes, May 7, 1959, p. 22. "RoyWilkins, Executive Secretary, Complainant, Against Robert F Williams,Respondent, Brief For Respon- dent,"1-2, box A333, NAACP Papers. 40 New YorkTimes, May 7, 1959,p. 22; Jackson[Mississippi] State-Times, p. 1; Charleston[South Carolina] News and Courier,May 7, 1959,p. 1; Wilkinsto Williams,telegram, May 6, 1959, box A333, NAACP Papers. 558 TheJournal of American History September1998 senteda highlypublic show trial whose central issue was whetherthe nationalor- ganizationwould ratifyWilkins's suspension of RobertWilliams. The national officeprinted a pamphlet,The SingleIssue in theRobert Williams Case, and dis- tributedit to all delegates.As part of the coordinatedeffort to crushWilliams, ThurgoodMarshall visited the New Yorkoffices of the FBI on June4, 1959, and urgedagents to investigateWilliams "in connectionwith [Marshall's] efforts to combat communistattempts to infiltratethe NAACP," an FBI memorandumstated. Wilkinstwisted every available arm. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller,in an unmistakable referenceto thewhisper campaign to discreditWilliams, took the podium to con- gratulatethe NAACP for"rejecting retaliation against terror" and "repulsingthe threatof communismto invadeyour ranks." Daisy Bates,the pistol-packinghero- ine ofLittle Rock, agreed to denounceWilliams for advocating self-defense -after the nationaloffice consented to buysix hundred dollars a monthin "advertising" fromher newspaper. "The nationaloffice not onlycontrolled the platform,"Louis Lomaxwrote, but "theysubjected the Williamsforces to a heavybombardment fromthe NAACP's big guns."Forty speakers, including Bates, King, Jackie Robin- son, and dozens of distinguishedlawyers, rose one afterthe otherto denounce Williams.But whenthe burly ex-Marine from Monroe finally strode down the aisle to speak,he was neitherintimidated nor penitent.41 "Thereis no FourteenthAmendment in thissocial jungle called Dixie," Williams declared."There is no equal protectionunder the law."He had been angry,they all knew,trials had besethim, but neverhad he intendedto advocateacts of war. Surelyno one believedthat. But if the blackmen of Poplarville,Mississippi, had banded togetherto guardthe jail thenight that Mack Parker was lynched, he said, thatwould not have hurt the cause ofjustice. If theyoung black men who escorted the co-edwho was rapedin Tallahasseehad been able to defendher, Williams re- mindedthem, such actionwould have been legal and justified"even if it meant that theythemselves or the whiterapists were killed." "Please," he besoughtthe assembly,"I askyou not to comecrawling to thesewhites on yourhands and knees and makeme a sacrificiallamb."42 And therethe pleading stopped. Perhapsthe spiritof his grandfather,Sikes Williams,the formerslave who had foughtfor interracial democracy and wielded a rifleagainst white terrorists, rose up withinhim. Perhaps he heardwithin himself the voiceof his grandmother,who had entrustedthat rifle to youngRobert. "We as men shouldstand up as men and protectour womenand children,"Williams declared."I am a man and I will walk uprightas a man should. I WILL NOT CRAWL."In a controversythat the Durham Carolina Times called "the biggest civil rightsstory of the year,"the NAACP conventionvoted to uphold the suspensionof

41 The SingleIssue in the RobertWilliams Case, pamphlet,box 2, Committeeto Combat Racial Injustice Papers.Special Agent in Charge,New York,to Director,telegram, June 5, 1959,"Thurgood Marshall" FBI Subject File (J. EdgarHoover FBI Building,Washington, D.C.). My thanksto Alex Charnsfor sharing these documents obtainedunder the Freedom of InformationAct. New YorkTimes, July 14, 1959,p. 1; Batesto Wilkins,July 23, 1959, box 1, Bates Papers;Louis Lomax, The NegroRevolt (New York,1962), 112-14. 42 Crusader,July 25, 1959,p. 1. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 559

RobertWilliams. The day afterDaisy Bates had urgedthe assemblyto censure RobertWilliams for his vowto defendhis home and family,she wiredthe attorney generalof the UnitedStates to complainabout dynamiteattacks on herhome in LittleRock: "We havebeen compelled to employprivate guards," she said. Williams wroteto Batessoon afterward:"I am sorryto hear thatthe whiteracists have de- cided to stepup theircampaign against you. It is obviousthat if you are to remain in Little Rock you will have to resortto the method I was suspended for advocating."43 Againstthis backdrop of whitelawlessness and politicalstalemate in 1959 and early1960, Robert Williams moved to strengthenthe local movementin Monroe and to reachout to a nationalaudience. Though Williams underlined the fact that "bothsides in thefreedom movement are bi-racial,"his emergingphilosophy rein- vigoratedmany elements of the blacknationalist tradition whose forceful reemer- gencein themid-1960s would become known as BlackPower. His militantmessage was neitherracially separatist nor rigidlyideological. Williams stressed black eco- nomicadvancement, black pride, black culture, independent black political action, and whathe referredto as "armedself-reliance." He connectedthe southernfree- dom strugglewith the anticolonialism of emerging Third World nations, especially in Africa.In the late 1950s,when other integrationists focused on lunchcounters and voterregistration, Williams insisted on addressingpersistent black poverty: "We mustconsider that in Montgomery,where Negroes are ridingin the frontof buses,"he said, "thereare also Negroeswho are starving."His approachwas practical, eclectic,and improvisational.There must be "flexibilityin the freedom struggle,"he argued,and tacticsmust emerge from the confrontation itself. At the coreof his appeal, however,stood his callsfor absolute racial equality under a fully enforcedUnited States Constitution, backed by an unyieldingresistance to white supremacy.44 In pursuitof thisuncompromising vision of interracialdemocracy, Robert Wil- liams becamean editorand publisherlike his grandfatherbefore him. Twoweeks afterthe 1959NAACP convention, FBI agentsreported toJ. Edgar Hoover that black childrenwere "selling a newsletterknown as The Crusaderon thestreets of Monroe." Its titlehonored the late CyrilV. Briggs,Harlem organizer of the left-wing African BlackBrotherhood, whose newspaper of the same name had issueda "Declaration of Waron the Ku Klux Klan" in 1921.The Crusader'sself-proclaimed mission was "ADVANCING THE CAUSE OF RACE PRIDE AND FREEDOM." Soon sample

43 PittsburghCourier, July 25, 1959,p. 1; Crusader,July 25, 1959,p. 1; DurhamCarolina Times, Jan. 5, 1960, p. 1. With respectto the obviousgender politics at workhere, see note 1 above.Daisy Bates,The Long Shadow of LittleRock: A Memoir(New York,1962), 162; Williamsto Bates, Aug. 19, 1959, box 2, Bates Papers. 44 AndrewMyers, "When ViolenceMet Violence: Facts and Imagesof RobertF. Williamsand the BlackFree- dom Strugglein Monroe,North Carolina" (M.A. thesis,University of Virginia,1993), 44-45; Williams,Negroes withGuns, ed. Schlieffer,40. Foran attackon Williamsas insufficientlyideological, see Cruse,Crisis of the Negro Intellectual,358-59, 382-401.It is timeto reconsiderthe provisional and eclectichomegrown radicalism that black southernersdeveloped in thelate 1950sand early1960s. See, forexample, Clayborne Carson, "Rethinking African- AmericanPolitical Thought in the Post-RevolutionaryEra," in The Makingof MartinLuther King and the Civil RightsMovement, ed. BrianWard and TonyBadger (New York,1997), 115-27; and, for a historicalaccount, Payne, I've Got the Lightof Freedom. 560 TheJournal of American History September1998

mailingsyielded severalthousand subscribers across the country.Shortly after Williamsbegan to spreadhis confrontational appeals in the Crusader,the first pub- lishedbiography of MartinLuther King Jr. appeared, written by a memberof the SouthernChristian Leadership Conference's board of directors.The book was entitledCrusader without Violence. Whether the titlewas intendedas a directre- joinderto Williamsor not, it situatedthe book withina livelyand important discussion.45 "The greatdebate in theintegration movement in recentmonths," Anne Braden of the SouthernConference Educational Fund wrotein late 1959, "has been the questionof violencevs. nonviolenceas instrumentsof change."Harry Boyte, soon to be MartinLuther King Jr.'s first white aide, observedthat "the idea of striking back ... meetsa steadyresponse among the downtrodden, grass roots of the south- ernNegro population." For several years, Boyte argued, Robert Williams "has suc- ceeded in reachingthese grass roots," exercising "great influence in Union County and beyondbecause of his militant position and refusalto submitto intimidation." Williams"poses a realthreat to morepeaceful and non-violentmethods of solving our problems."The FBI, too, remaineduneasy about Williams'sexpanding range of contacts.Hoover's files, agents reported,"reflect numerous instances where groupsin varioussections of the countryhave proclaimed and demonstratedtheir sympathieswith Williams and have senthim money."46 Not merelythe FBI but also the mostinfluential advocates of nonviolencefelt compelledto deal withRobert Williams's growing reputation. In a seriesof public debates in New YorkCity, Williams faced A. J. Muste,Bayard Rustin, David Dellinger,and others."Nonviolence is a powerfulweapon in the struggleagainst social evil,"Williams conceded. "It representsthe ultimatestep in revolution againstintolerable oppression, a typeof struggle wherein man maymake war without debasinghimself." The problem,according to Williams,was thatthe success of nonviolencedepended on the adversary;rattlesnakes, he noted,were immune to moralappeals, as werewhite terrorists in the South. "When Hitler'styranny threatenedthe world,"he argued,"we did not hearmuch about how immoralit is to meetviolence with violence." Williams "drew a largeaudience to his debate withthe pacifists," George Weissman of the swP wroteto CarlBraden in Louisville, "and handled himselfquite well."47

45 "FromCharlotte SAC To Director,"July 31, 1959,"Robert F. Williams"FBI SubjectFile. ForCyril V. Briggs's 1921"Declaration of War on the Ku Klux Klan,"see Shapiro,White Violence and BlackResponse, 208-9, 495n. Williamstold RobertA. Hill that"many years ago [he had] heardof CyrilV. Briggsand his Crusader"and that he had adoptedthe name in honorof Briggs. See CyrilBriggs, The Crusader,Cyril V Briggs,Editor, ed. RobertA. Hill (New York,1987), xlviii.L. D. Reddick,Crusader without Violence: A Biographyof MartinLuther King, Jr.(New York,1959). 46 SouthernPatriot, 18 (Jan. 1960), 3; HarryBoyte, "Education and the UnfinishedBusiness of Democracy," draft,n.d., box 26, BoyteFamily Papers (Perkins Library). Groups cited include chapters of the NAACP and the Congressof Racial Equality, the Nation of Islam, and theFair Play For Cuba Committee.See "Directorto Charlotte SAC," Sept. 18, 1961,"Robert F. Williams"FBI SubjectFile. 47 Weissmanto Braden,Oct. 20, 1959,box 49, Carl and AnneBraden Papers (State Historical Society of Wis- consin).See also Crusader,Oct. 3, 1959, p. 6. Thereare reportsof debatesat New York'sCommunity Church, Oct. 1, 1959,and theLibertarian Center, Oct. 23, 1959,in memo,Oct. 17, 1961,"Robert F. Williams"FBI Subject File. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 561

A widelyreprinted debate in thepages ofLiberation magazine pitted Williams againstDr. MartinLuther King Jr. Again careful to endorseKing's methods wher- everthey proved feasible, Williams advocated "armed self-reliance," explaining that among well-armedwhite vigilantes,"there is open defianceto law and order throughoutthe Southtoday." Where law had brokendown, he said, it was neces- saryand rightto defendhome and family."Nonviolence is a verypotent weapon when the opponentis civilized,but nonviolenceis no repellentfor a sadist," Williamsnoted. "Nowherein the annalsof historydoes the recordshow a people deliveredfrom bondage by patiencealone."48 Dr. King concededthat white violence and whiteintransigeance had brought the movementto "a stageof profoundcrisis." African Americans were frustrated, he said, and the "currentcalls for violence" reflected "a confused,anger-motivated driveto strikeback violently."The SupremeCourt's 1954 mandateand eventhe triumphat Montgomeryhad yieldedsmall tokens, elaborate evasions, and wide- spreadterror. Only three responses presented themselves. One couldpractice "pure nonviolence,"King said, but thispath "could not readilyattract large masses, for it requiresextraordinary discipline and courage."A positionthat encompassed legitimateself-defense was more practical.King pointed out that "all societies, fromthe mostprimitive to the mostcultured and civilized,accept [self-defense] as moraland legal.The principleof self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed,has neverbeen condemned,even by Gandhi." Here was where King thepoli- ticiansensed his constituency."When the Negrouses forcein self-defense,"King continued,"he does not forfeitsupport -he mayeven win it, bythe courageand self-respectit reflects."This widelyaccepted position was, of course,precisely Williams'sview-which was King's problem.49 The thirdand mostunacceptable position, King argued,was "the advocacyof violenceas a tool of advancement,organized as in warfare,deliberately and con- sciously."Here, then, was the pale beyondwhich King soughtto casthis adversary. "Mr.Robert Williams would have us believethat there is no collectiveor practical alternative,"King insisted."He arguesthat we mustbe cringingand submissive or takeup arms."Essentially, Dr. King had inventedhis own RobertWilliams, a black Geronimoplotting military strikes against the white man, and he then respondedto thatRobert Williams. Lacking theological training and combativein his manner,Williams made himselfvulnerable to thiscaricature. But the philo- sophicalposition from which King centeredhis own argument- preferringnon- violencebut endorsing"the principle of self-defense,even involving weapons and bloodshed"-was preciselythe place whereWilliams had takenhis stand.50 The King-Williamsdebate resonated throughout the movement as Williamsbe-

48 RobertF. Williams,"Can NegroesAfford to Be Pacifists?,"Liberation, 4 (Sept. 1959),4-7; MartinLuther KingJr., "The Social Organizationof Nonviolence,"ibid. (Oct. 1959), 5-6. Williamsand King appearside by side,with an excellentcommentary by Anne Braden, in SouthernPatriot, 18 (Jan. 1960), 3. Abbreviatedversions may be foundin Carsonet al., eds., The Eyeson the PrizeReader (New York,1991), 110-13. 49 King, "Social Organizationof Nonviolence,"5-6. 50 Ibid. 562 TheJournal of American History September1998 gan "to symbolizethe alternativeto both tacticalnonviolence and nonviolenceas a wayof life,"as JamesForman of SNCC wrotein his memoir,The Making of Black Revolutionaries.King and Williams"were supposed to presenttwo opposed views," accordingto Forman,but "in my analysis,they did not seem to be at cross- purposes."Julian Bond, thena studentactivist in Atlanta(in 1998 he becamethe head of the NAACP), recallsreading the debate and "believingthat Williams got the betterof it" and "thatWilliams was not the figureKing and othersdepicted." Bond, Forman,and mostSNCC activistsconsidered nonviolence purely a tactical stance.Nonviolence as tacticsoffered a wayto avoid "being wiped out,"SNCC's TimothyJenkins reflected, but "ifyou had thecapacity at anygiven time to defend yourselfsuccessfully with violence, there were a numberof people who werepre- paredto use it at all times."W. E. B. Du Bois weighedin witha commentary,also entitled"Crusader without Violence," in whichhe discouragedapplause for King's critiqueof Robert Williams. In Montgomery,he wrote,King had "stoodfirm without surrender,"but Du Bois consideredit "a verygrave question as to whetheror not theslavery and degradationof Negroesin Americahas not been unnecessarily prolongedby the submissionto evil."51 Morethan the persuasive skills of their elders, the bold actionsof African Ameri- can collegestudents set thesephilosophical debates aside and gavethe battalions of nonviolencetheir brief but compellinghistorical moment. On February1, 1960, fourstudents from North Carolina Agricultural and TechnicalCollege walked into Woolworth'sin Greensboro,sat downat a segregatedlunch counter, and askedto be served.Within two months,the sit-inshad spreadto fifty-fourcommunities acrossnine statesof the old Confederacy,infusing the freedommovement with freshtroops and newtactics. "Only in 1960,when black students entered the fray in largenumbers, did a broadassault on segregationbecome possible," Adam Fair- clough points out. "Young people made up the initialphalanx, the entering wedge."King flewto Durham,North Carolina, on February16 to encouragethe studentswith a speech,telling them that their protest was "destinedto be one of the glowingepics of our time."He returnedto Atlantathe followingday. "While otherswere pioneering innovative methods of nonviolentdirect action," Fairclough observes,"King seemedstrangely ambivalent about embracingthe new tacticsby personalexample. Although fulsome in his praiseof the lunchcounter protests, forexample, he showedlittle interest to lead a sit-inhimself."52 On March1, by contrast,Robert Williams followed a dozen blackyouths into Gamble's Drug Store in downtownMonroe and was the only personarrested. Marcheddown the streetin handcuffs,a shotgun-totingguard on eitherside of him, Williamsspoofed himself as "the dangerousstool-sitter bandit" and vowed thathe had "neverfelt prouder in mylife." Young insurgents in Monroemounted

51 JamesForman, The Makingof Black Revolutionaries(1972; Seattle,1997), 158-59; JulianBond to Tim- othyB. Tyson,Sept. 5, 1997 (in Tyson'spossession); Fundhi; W. E. B. Du Bois, "Crusaderwithout Violence," National Guardian,Nov. 9, 1959. 52 Chafe,Civilities and CivilRights, 71-72; Fairclough,To Redeem the Soul ofAmerica,54-55; Garrow,Bear- ing the Cross,128; Branch,Parting the Waters,276; Fairclough,To Redeemthe Soul of America,57-58. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 563

an aggressivecampaign of sit-ins that displayed its own unique style."The Negroes remainedin each store only a shorttime," the CharlotteObserver reported, "usuallyuntil management closed the counters."Under courtorders to abide by the law or face imprisonment,Williams defied the judge and marchedwith his youngtroops. "We're using hit-and-runtactics," Williams told reporters."They neverknow when we're coming or whenwe're going to leave. That waywe hope to wearthem down," he said, managingto sound likea platoonleader even while participatingin a passiveresistance campaign. "They were alwaysdoing some- thing,"the managerof Jones Drug Storerecalled. "It's a wondersomebody didn't kill him."It was no mysteryto Williams;the main differencebetween sit-ins in Monroeand elsewherewas that "not a singledemonstrator was even spat upon during our sit-ins,"Williams claimed.53 The uneasypeace in Monroewould soon be broken,in largemeasure by follow- ersof Dr. King.In 1961,Rev. Paul Brooks,an activistin theNashville student move- mentinvestigating for sCLc, andJames Forman, soon to becomepresident of SNCC, came to Monroein the companyof seventeenFreedom Riders fresh out of jail in Jackson,Mississippi. The younginsurgents arrived in Monroeto launch a rather incoherentnonviolent campaign in RobertWilliams's backyard; some participants, includingForman, sought to supportWilliams, who wasunder enormous pressure fromthe Ku Klux Klan; otherswanted to proveWilliams wrong. One of theFree- dom Ridersannounced that he had come to Monroebecause he considered"Mr. RobertF Williamsto be the mostdangerous person in America."Another proclaimed:"If thefight for civil rights is to remainnonviolent, we mustbe successful in Monroe.What happens here will determine the course taken in manyother com- munitiesthroughout the South."54 Williamswelcomed the Freedom Riders warmly but had a similarunderstanding of the stakes."I saw it firstas a challenge,"he recalled,"but I also saw it as an op- portunityto show thatwhat King and themwere preaching was bullshit."Two weeksof picketing at theUnion CountyCourthouse grew progressively more peri- lous forthe FreedomRiders. Crowds of hostilewhite onlookers grew larger and larger.Finally, on Sundayafternoon, August 28, a mob ofseveral thousand furious white people attackedthe approximatelythirty demonstrators, badly injuring manyof them;local police arrestedthe bleedingprotesters. In his classicmemoir, The Making of Black Revolutionaries,James Formanlater called this riot his "momentof death," "a nightmareI shall never forget." To theconsternation of SCLC, thenonviolent crusade swiftly deteriorated into mob violence; throughout the community,white vigilantes attacked black citizensand evenfired fifteen shots into

53 CriminalRecord 75CR9796, March 11, 1960 (Union CountyCourthouse, Monroe, N.C.); CharlotteOb- server,March 9, 1960,p. 1; ibid., March22, 1960,p. 7-A; Crusader,May 14, 1960,pp. 1-2; W. R. Maytelephone interviewby Tyson, May 26, 1994,notes (in Tyson'spossession); Williams, Negroes with Guns, ed. Schlieffer,68. 54 Crusader,Aug. 21, 1961,p. 3; JamesForman telephone interview by Tyson,Jan. 17, 1997, audiotape (in Tyson'spossession). "We have been friendswith Mr. Williams,"Joseph McDonald, a FreedomRider from New York,told reporters, "but we haveno realconnection with him, because he believesin thedefensive violence tech- nique. That is to say,he would defendhis home."See RaleighNews and Observer,Aug. 29, 1961,p. 1. 564 TheJournal of American History September1998 thehome of the former mayorJ. Ray Shute, a whitemoderate who had befriended Williams.55 At the heightof thisviolent chaos, a whitemarried couple, for reasons that are unclear,entered the blackcommunity and drovestraight into an angryblack mob millingnear Robert Williams's house. "Therewas hundredsof niggersthere," the whitewoman stated, "and theywere armed, they were ready for war." Black resi- dents,under the impressionthat the demonstratorsdowntown were being beaten and perhapsslaughtered, threatened to kill the whitecouple. Williams,though busypreparing to defendhis home,rescued the twowhites from the mob and led theminto his house,where they remained for about twohours. White authorities latercharged Williams and severalother people withkidnapping, although the whitecouple met twopolice officerson theirway home and did not reporttheir allegedabduction. The womanlater conceded that "at the time, I wasn'teven think- ing about being kidnapped. . . the papers,the publicityand all thatstuff was what broughtin that kidnappingmess." During a long nightof racial terror, Williamsslung a machinegun overhis shoulderand walkedseveral miles with his wifeand twosmall sons to whereJulian Mayfield waited with a car."I didn'twant thoseracist dogs to have the satisfactionof legallylynching me," he explainedto Dr. Perry.56 The Williamsfamily fled first to New YorkCity, then Canada, thenon to Cuba to escapethe hordes of FBI agentswho combedthe countrysidein searchof them. Supportersof Williams gloried in the escape.Some blackresidents of Monroestill maintainthat Fidel Castrosent helicopters for Williams. Others tell of how he got away in a hearseowned by a black funeraldirector from Charlotte. An agent assignedto searchfor Williams locally reported his frustrationsto FBI director Hoover:"Subject has become somethingof a 'JohnBrown' to Negroesaround Monroeand theywill do anythingfor him."57 The FBI dragnetnever snared Williams, but it did not takeHoover long to hear fromhim. Every Friday night from eleven to midnighton Radio Havana,Williams hostedRadio FreeDixie, a programthat from 1961 to 1964 could be heardas far awayas New Yorkand Los Angeles.KPFA Radio in Berkeleyand WBAIin New York

55 Williamsinterview by Mosby; Forman, Making of Black Revolutionarizes, 193-98; HarryG. Boyteto Truman Nelson, Aug. 23, 1962, box 26, BoyteFamily Papers. 56 Mabel Stegallinterview by Algernon Watt, c. 1962,audiotape (in Tyson'spossession). In interviewsin 1961, Stegallconfirmed that Williams had triedto preventharm to herand herhusband and thathe had not detained them.See MonroeEnquirer, Aug. 31, 1961,p. 1; RaleighNews and Observer,Aug. 29, 1961,p. 1. Investigative recordsgenerally confirm Williams's accounts of these events. See WalterAnderson, State Bureau of Investigation, to Hugh Cannon,Office of the Governor,Sept. 14, 1961,box 111,Governor Terry Sanford Papers (North Carolina Divisionof Archivesand History).An investigatorfor the nationaloffice of the NAACP,no admirerof Williams, wrotethat "the charges of kidnapping against the so-called Monroe defendants are probably without genuine sub- stance."John Morsell to CloreWarne, March 15, 1963, box A279, NAACPPapers. See also Boyteto Nelson,Aug. 23, 1962,box 26, BoyteFamily Papers. The chargeswere later dropped. Robert F. Williamsto "Doc," n.d., box 1, WilliamsPapers. 57 The escape fromMonroe has been shroudedin mystery.Williams was reluctantto speak on thispoint, explainingthat he had pledged to protectthe manypeople who had helped his family.But he confirmedthe outlinesof this story for me in an untapedinterview, Sept. 2, 1996.Julian Mayfield, whom Williams had protected byhis secrecy,tells the storyin Mayfield,"Tales From The Lido,"Mayfield Papers. Special Agent in Charge,Char- lotte,to Director,teletype, Aug. 30, 1961,"Robert F. Williams"FBI SubjectFile. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 565

Cityoccasionally rebroadcast the show, and bootlegtapes of the program circulated in Wattsand Harlem.An activistin Wattswrote to Williamsin 1962,"I am letting myother nationalist friends make copies [of the tapes] and tellingeach of them to let someonemake a copyof theirs."During the early1960s folk revival, Pete Seegerperformed the "Ballad of Monroe"all overthe country-"Robert Williams was a leader,a giantof a man,"the leftisttroubadour sang. FromCuba, Williams continuedto edit the Crusader,which was distributedvia Canada and sometimes Mexico,for a circulationthat eventually grew to fortythousand. 58 In 1962,his book Negroeswith Guns, published from Cuba, becamethe singlemost important in- tellectualinfluence on Huey P. Newton,soon to foundthe BlackPanther Party in Oakland, California.A play based on Negroeswith Guns, FrankGreenwood's If WeMust Live, ran in Wattsfrom July to Decemberof 1965 to eagercrowds and enthusiasticreviews. Copies of the Crusadertraveled down the Mississippiback roadswith Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizers: "this leaflet is beingdistributed by SNCC and COFO workersamong U.S. Negroes,"the Missis- sippi StateSovereignty Commission complained in the springof 1964. Laterthat year,when SNCC began to veeraway from nonviolence, members cited Williams approvinglyin the fierceinternal debates.59 As blackactivists began to rejecteven the tacticalpretense of nonviolence,the influenceof RobertWilliams continued to spread.By spring1962 "the example of the NorthCarolina militant," August Meier and ElliottRudwick observe, had "had a profoundeffect" within the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). "Armed self- defenseis a factof lifein blackcommunities - northand south- despitethe pro- nouncementsof the 'leadership,"' a NorthCarolina activist wrote to Williams.Long beforeStokely Carmichael and Willie Ricksled the chantsof "BlackPower" that rivetednational media attentionin the summerof 1966,most elements invoked by thatambiguous slogan were already in place. "Yourdoctrine of self-defenseset the stagefor the acceptanceof the Deacons For Defenseand Justice,"Lawrence

58 Williamsinterview by Cohen, transcript, pp. 622-23; SpecialAgent in Charge,Charlotte, to DirectorJune6, 1963, p. 7, "RobertF. Williams"FBI SubjectFile; RobertPerkins to Williams,Dec. 15, 1962, box 1, Williams Papers;Kay Greaves,KPFA Radio, to Williams,Aug. 19, 1963,ibid. The WilliamsPapers hold hundredsof letters fromlisteners, many of themin Los Angelesand some as faraway as the stateof Washington,and taped copies of the broadcasts.On Pete Seeger's"Ballad of Monroe,"see "Bill" to Williams,April 29, 1962,ibid.; and Gary Green to Williams,n.d., ibid. 59 Committeeon theJudiciary, Testimony of Robert F Williams,part 1, Feb. 16, 1970,p. 39. On distribution ofthe Crusader, see Williamsinterview by Cohen, transcript, pp. 623-24; and WilliamsPapers. Authors who range frombitter critics to uncriticaladmirers of Huey P. Newtonnonetheless agree that Williams influenced him. See David Horowitz,Destructive Generation: Second Thoughtsabout the Sixties(New York,1989), 146; Pearson, Shadowof the Panther, 28; and GilbertMoore, A SpecialRage (New York,1971), 4. On theplay If WeMust Live, seeLos Angeles People's World, July 3, 1965,p. 3; and FrankGreenwood to Williams,Dec. 1, 1965,box 1,Williams Papers.The Crusaderwas popularin Watts,though it is absurdto blame Williamsfor the Wattsriot as many right-wingobservers did. GeraldHorne, Fire This Time: The WoattsUprising andthe 1960s(Charlottesville, 1995), 265, 268. Forthe complaintby the MississippiState SovereigntyCommission, see observationattached to copy of Crusader,box 135,Johnson Family Papers (Manuscript Collections, University of Southern Mississippi, Hatties- burg).My thanks to ElizabethA. Corrisfor locating these materials for me. On use of the Crusaderby members of the StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee, see "SupplementalCorrelation Summary," April 19, 1969, "RobertF. Williams"FBI SubjectFile; and DannyLyons, Memories of the Southern Civi/Rights Movement (Chapel Hill, 1992), 147. 566 The Journalof AmericanHistory September1998

A gleefulRobert F. Williams smokes a cigarin celebration of his safe passage to Havana,Cuba, after escapingfrom a massive Federal. Bureau of Investigation (FBI) dragnetin 1961. CourtesyofJohn Herman Williams.

Henrytold Williams in thespring of 1966."As quiet as it is beingkept, the Black manis swingingaway from King and adoptingyour tit-for-tat philosophy."60 Williams'sinfluence was not limited to theSouth. "As I am certainyou realize," RichardGibson, editor of Now! magazine in New York, wrote to Williams in 1965, "Malcolm'sremoval from the scenemakes you the seniorspokesman for Afro- Americanmilitants." Life magazine reported in 1966that Williams's "picture is prominentlydisplayed in extremisthaunts in the big cityghettos." Clayborne Carsonnames Williams as oneof two central influences -the other being Malcolm X- on the1966 formation ofthe Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, lithemost widely known black militant political organization of thelate 1960s."

60 AugustMeier and ElliottRudwick, CORE: A Studyin the Civil RightsMovement, 1942-1968 (Urbana, 1975),202-4; ClydeAppleton to Williams,Sept. 20, 1965,box 1,Williams Papers; Slater King to Williams,Nov. 10, 1963, ibid.; LawrenceHenry to Williams,March 31, 1966, ibid. "BlackPower" and theRoots of the Freedom Struggle 567

The CentralIntelligence Agency (CIA) exaggeratedconsiderably in 1969 byreport- ingthat Williams "has long been theideological leader of the Black Panther Party." It is closerto saythat the Pantherswere "a logicaldevelopment" from the philos- ophyof Williams, as ReginaldMajor asserted in his 1971book, A PantherIs a Black Cat. Accordingto Williams,he "talkedto BobbySeale and Mrs.[Kathleen] Cleaver by telephonewhen [he] was in Africa"in 1968,and the leadership"asked me to becomeForeign Minister of the Panthers."At thatmoment, Williams had already been namedpresident-in-exile oftwo of themost influential revolutionary nationalist groups:the RevolutionaryAction Movement, which the CIA believedto be "the mostdangerous of all the BlackPower organizations," and the Detroit-based Republic of New Africa,an influentialgroup with hundredsof membersthat soughtto establishan independentblack republic in Mississippi,Louisiana, Ala- bama, Georgia,and South Carolina."Despite his overseasactivities," the CIA re- portedin 1969, "Williamshas managedto becom[e]an outstandingfigure, pos- sibly the outstandingfigure, in the black extremistmovement in the United States."61 Eventhough he becamefriends with Che Guevaraand FidelCastro himself, Wil- liams grewuneasy in Cuba; he yearnedto returnhome. As the Sovietstrings on the Cuban revolutionshortened, Williams resisted pressure to makehis own pol- iticsconform to the Sovietline. As earlyas 1962,when Williams had been in Cuba forless thana year,an FBI informantstated that Williams had "stubbedhis toes" with Cuban Communiststhrough his "criticismof [the] CommunistParty for barringNegroes from leadership" and that he "may not be able to regainhis footing.""I am underconstant attack by the [UnitedStates Communist Party]," Williamswrote to a friendin themid-1960s. "They are trying to cutoff my facilities here in Cuba. One would thinkI am Hitler and Wall Streetcombined." The Stalinistswere "getting worse than the crackersin Monroe,"Williams complained in 1964. "Thingsare about to the stagewhen I had to leave Monroein a hurry." Williamspersuaded Castro to let him travelto NorthVietnam in 1964,where he swappedHarlem stories with Ho Chi Minhand wroteantiwar propaganda aimed at AfricanAmerican soldiers. In 1965 the Williamsfamily relocated to Beijing,

61 RichardGibson to Williams,March 5, 1965, box 1, WilliamsPapers; Russell Sackett, "Plotting a War on Whitey,"Life, June 10, 1966,p. 100; ClayborneCarson, "The BlackPanther Party," in Encyclopediaof the Ameri- can Left,ed. Buhle,Buhle, and Georgakas,96; CentralIntelligence Agency Report, "Robert Franklin Williams," Aug. 28, 1969,"Robert F. Williams"FBI SubjectFile; ReginaldMajor, A PantherIs a Black Cat (New York,1971), 63-64. Realizingthe influence Williams wielded and thathe wouldsoon arrivein theUnited States, Masai Hewitt and otherPanther leaders contacted Williams and askedhim not to attack"white racism per se" but insteadto "denounce[Maulana Ron] Karenga and theother Cultural Nationalists as reactionariesand racists.""Only middle- classpeople who can affordto buyexpensive air tickets'"they suggested, "have been able to visityou." Upon his return,the Panthersinformed him, he would see that"the enemyis the capitalistsystem which uses racismto perpetuateitself" by dividingblack and whiteworkers. Williams must not "dividethe workingclass." "I don't knowwhat white proletariat they have found to unitewith," Williams told Robert Cohen skeptically."If theycan produceone, I will be glad to join themin unitingwith it." See RobertCarl Cohen to Williams,April 13, 1969, box 1, CohenPapers; Williams to Cohen,April 26, 1969,ibid. CentralIntelligence Agency Report, "Revolutionary ActionMovement'" Aug. 8, 1968, "RobertF Williams"FBI SubjectFile; Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon, 144-49. The CentralIntelligence Agency claim is probablyan exaggeration.See CentralIntelligence Agency Report,"Robert Franklin Williams." 568 The Journalof AmericanHistory September1998

MaoZedong autographs Robert F. Williams's copy of the red book (Quotationsfrom Chairman Mao), Beijing,China, 1966. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportsindicated that Williams was"lionized and fetedby top Peking leaders." Williams enjoyed long talks with Mao, ZhouEnlai, and otherChinese leaders. CourtesyofJohn Herman Williams. whereWilliams was "lionizedand fetedby top Pekingleaders," according to CIA intelligencereports. The Williamsfamily dined withMao Zedong and movedin thehighest circles of the Chinesegovernment for three years. Like the BlackPower movementitself, as Williamsgot farther away from his roots in theSouth, he some- timesdrifted into apocalyptic fantasies; his 1967essay, "The Potentialof a Minority Revolution,"for example, depicted black saboteurs and guerrillaenclaves bringing downthe UnitedStates government. Though Williams had been one of the best organizersin the blackfreedom movement, his isolationfrom any local constitu- encymade himvulnerable to thesame frustrations and delusionsthat plagued the restof the movementin the last halfof the 1960s.62

62 A. B. Eddyto Mr.Evans, memo, May 14, 1962,"Robert F. Williams"FBI SubjectFile; Williamsto "Harry," n.d., box 1, WilliamsPapers; Williams to JulianMayfield, c. 1964, ibid.; SidneyRittenberg, "Recollections of RobertWilliams," May 4, 1997,typescript (in Tyson'spossession). See also Williamsinterview by Cohen, transcript, p. 312. A printedand illustratedversion of Williams's broadcasts to AfricanAmerican soldiers, "Listen, Brother," maybe foundin theWilliams Papers. I haveno evidenceon theveracity of Ho Chi Minh'sstories of his connection to Harlemand theGarvey movement, but theNorth Vietnamese leader did tellthose stories to Williams.Ritten- berg,"Recollections of RobertWilliams," 3; Crusader,Sept.-Oct. 1967, p. 1. "BlackPower" and the Rootsof the FreedomStruggle 569

Robertand MabelWilliams, Baldwin, Michigan, September 2, 1996.Williams completed his memoirs, "While God Lay Sleeping-The Autobiographyof RobertF. Williams,"a fewdays before this picturewas taken.He died a fewweeks later, surrounded by his family. Photo,John Herman Williams, Courtesy of John Herman Williams.

In the late 1960s,when the Nixon administrationmoved toward opening dip- lomaticrelations with China, Williams bartered his almostexclusive knowledge of the Chinesegovernment for safe passage home and a FordFoundation sponsored post at the Centerfor Chinese Studies at theUniversity of Michigan.Not thatthe entirefederal apparatus was happyto welcomehim home: the InternalSecurity Divisionof the Department of Justice observed that "Williams could be theperson to fillthe role of nationalleader of the blackextremists. We shouldoffset attempts by him to assumesuch a position. Williams,however, wrote to a friendthat "a lot of people are goingto be surprisedafter my arrival not to findme fightingfor leadershipthe way many others are doing. Returningto familyties and local activ- 570 TheJournal of American History September1998

ism,Robert Williams spent the last twenty-seven years of his life in thesmall, trout- fishingvillage of Baldwinin westernMichigan and died on October15, 1996.63

A weekafter his death,Rosa Parksclimbed slowly into a churchpulpit in Monroe, NorthCarolina. Beneath her lay the body of Robert F. Williams,clad in a graysuit givento him byMao Zedong and drapedwith a black,red, and greenPan-African flag. Parkstold the congregationthat she and thosewho marchedwith Martin LutherKing Jr. in Alabama had alwaysadmired Robert Williams "for his courage and his commitmentto freedom.The workthat he did shouldgo downin history and neverbe forgotten."64Her presencein thatpulpit, nearly inexplicable when placed in the traditionalnarrative of "thecivil rights movement," demonstrates in almostpoetic fashionthat historians should reexaminethe relationshipbetween "civilrights" and "BlackPower." Our visionof the African American freedom move- mentbetween 1945 and 1965 as characterizedsolely and inevitablyby nonviolent civilrights protest obscures the fullcomplexity of racialpolitics. It idealizesblack history,downplays the oppressionof Jim Crow society, and evenunderstates the achievementsof African American resistance. Worse still, our cinematiccivil rights movementblurs the racialdilemmas that follow us into the twenty-firstcentury. The lifeof RobertWilliams underlines many aspects of the ongoingblack freedom struggle- the decisiveracial significance of WorldWar II, the impactof the Cold War on the blackfreedom struggle, the centralityof questionsof sexuality and genderin racialpolitics, and the historicalpresence of a revolutionaryCarib- bean. But foremostit testifiesto the extentto which,throughout World War II and the postwaryears, there existedamong AfricanAmericans a currentof militancy a currentthat included the willingness to defendhome and community by force.This facetof AfricanAmerican life lived in tensionand in tandemwith the compellingmoral example of nonviolentdirect action. No doubt thosewho began to chant"Black Power" in the mid-1960sfelt that slogan with an urgency specificto theirimmediate circumstances. But then,as now,many aspects of its meaningendure as legaciesfrom earlier African American struggles. Above the deskwhere Williams completed his memoirs just before his death, there still hangs an ancientrifle - a gift,he said, fromhis grandmother.

63 Rittenberg,"Recollections of RobertWilliams," 3. See also Williams,"While God LaySleeping," 237-319. J. WalterYeagley, assistant attorney general, internal security division, to Will R. Wilson,assistant attorney general, CriminalDivision, Aug. 8, 1969, Departmentof Justice Memorandum, "Robert F. Williams"FBI Subject File. See also Myers,"When ViolenceMet Violence,"73-74; Williamsto Cohen, April26, 1969,box 1, Cohen Papers. 64 Rosa Parks,eulogy for Robert Williams, Nov. 22, 1996,Central Methodist Church, Monroe, N.C., written notesof TimothyB. Tyson(in Tyson'spossession); videotape, Williams Family Collection.