EMPLOYING MASCULINITY AS AN AGENT OF SOCIAL CHANGE: AN EXAMINATION OF THE WRITINGS AND TACTICS OF ROBERT F. WILLIAMS

A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

By

Dwight Meyer

December, 2010 Thesis written by: Dwight Robert Meyer B.A., Denison University, 1999 M.A., Kent State University, 2010

Approved by:

______, Julio Pino, Advisor

______, Kenneth J. Bindas, Chair, Department of History

______, John R. D. Stalvey, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

ii Table of Contents

List of Illustrations v

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

2. A snapshot of gender as it applied to the work of Robert Williams, followed by a chapter outline. 16

Chapter 1: Gender in History and the Civil Rights Movement 25

2. The Role of Stereotypes in blocking Understanding of the Other. 32

3. The role of Masculinity in Selecting Tactics 39

Chapter 2: Providing for physical and economic safety; the twin responsibilities of the modern man. 46

2. Is fighting for your country a path to full employment? 60

3. The Dr. Perry Abortion Case: Employment should be based on aptitude rather than Racial Politics. 72

4. How we fight is just as important as the causes that we champion: A Debate on the Tactics of the Civil Rights Movement 80

Chapter 3: Life in Cuba results in a different set of difficulties 95

2. Masculinity and Militancy, From Common Ground to Point of Ideological Conflict 102

3. Is the Race Problem Really a Problem? 114

Chapter 4: Exit to China: A new home and the renewal of the debate on the “proper” role of African American men. 131

2. Home Again: A quieter life, but still active politically 146

iii 3. Conclusion: 153

Works Cited 155

Appendix A 167

Appendix B 168

iv List of Illustrations

Illustration #1 “OH PLEASE MASTER – LET ME GO TO HELL WID YOU.”……...65

Illustration #2 “How colored they look!”………………………………………………141

Illustration #3 “For democracy? Whose democracy?”………………………………...141

v Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Julio Pino for helping me take this project from an odd conversation about “mate, cigars and beards” into a thesis on masculinity and the role that it played in the Civil Rights Movement. These thoughts about some of the outward appearances and habits of Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro were some of the first steps that helped me to shape some my understanding of “masculinity” and “machismo” which led me down a path toward understanding the relationships between gender and revolution. The general strategy of understanding feminist perspectives and the French

Revolution put me on the path to a much richer understanding of some fundamental theories regarding the nature of gender.

Dr. Elizabeth Smith-Pryor helped me understand how black masculinity and most importantly a positive concept of citizen and self shaped the views of Robert F. Williams.

It was her class on the Civil Rights Era and her assignment of Timothy Tyson’s Radio

Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of the Black Power Movement that first introduced me to Williams. At some time during our reading and discussion of the Tyson piece I came to understand that looking at masculinity and Williams in particular would be an excellent focus for my thesis.

vi I also would like to thank Dr. Mary Ann Heiss for her excellent help in putting together the two seminar papers that aided me in focusing and narrowing my topic. The first of those papers helped me to understand Guevara and Guerrilla Warfare which is the intellectual seed where this project started. The second of these seminar papers added some much-needed polish to the third and fourth chapters of this work.

I also would like to thank my wife Lisa Regula Meyer and our 4-year-old son

Kenny. Without the two of you, I would not understand anything of what it is to be a true man living in the world today. I cherish the life that we have made together and the man you both have helped me to become. The three things that I am most proud of during my time as a graduate student would be the family that we have become together, the home that we have made, and maybe finally becoming a historian and writer. I love you both.

vii Introduction

Seemingly fundamental questions such as the definition of citizenship have been redefined at critical points in world history. The struggle for black empowerment that was waged during the Civil Rights Era was essentially an effort to expand the definition of citizen in the United States in such a manner that it would include people of African descent and put them on equal footing with those with European backgrounds. Robert

Williams used masculinist rhetoric to champion the causes of Civil Rights and Human

Rights. He is best known for the work that he did while president of the local NAACP chapter in Monroe, North Carolina. His rhetoric was mostly self-published in his newsletter The Crusader and it was informed by his experiences in the Army as part of a segregated unit at the end of World War II as well as his experience as a member of the

Marine Corps soon after their integration. His military service allowed him to attend some college classes where he studied English and Journalism but was never really able to progress professionally in his chosen profession as a writer. Instead he was a working- class black man, and in the pages of The Crusader he argued that black men were first of all; men, and secondly full citizens of the United States of America.

While these claims seem self evident to some liberal-minded modern historians, this was not the case in the late 1950s and early 1960s in North Carolina. Racism had deep roots in the era of slavery that centered on the ability of white society to transform

1 2

enslaved blacks into commodities to be bought and sold. The definition of enslaved blacks as property with a value in dollars enshrined racism and second class citizenry.1

The long term psychological and economic effects of this process of dehumanization are a sad American legacy.2 Even after emancipation and Reconstruction white supremacists attempted to maintain the status quo from these earlier periods through their ability to monopolize extra-legal violence.

It has been a major difficulty to undo this process and the period of the Civil

Rights Era was a revolution of thought directed at establishing a balance of the American social contract without the need for a violent or bloody revolution. While the humanist ideals of the Declaration of Independence declare that “All men are created equal” the founders wrote the Constitution as a proslavery document.3 Reweaving the social contract has often been accomplished during periods of violent insurrection and revolution. The trick has been to get the desired change while avoiding bloodshed.4

1 This definition of enslaved peoples as property comes from Dred Scott v. Sandford which “was a catalyst for a fundamental alteration of the Constitution through the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, forever changing the nature of American law and race relations.” Paul Finkelman, Dred Scot v. Sandford: a brief history with documents, (Boston: Bedford Books, A Division of St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1997), 2.

2 Slave markets spent much of their time and energy making people appear to be standardized, healthy and free of maladies which preserved the value of people transformed into a marketable commodity. Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1999), 131.

3 Paul Finkelman argues that preserving the property rights of slaveholders quashed any humanist inclinations at achieving true equality and instead the founders “pursued policies that protected slavery.” Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (M. E. Sharp, Inc., 2001), x.

4 While there are interesting parallels to be drawn between the Civil Rights Movement and both the American and French Revolutions, they are not as simplistic as the casual observer might argue. David Brion Davis argued that “liberty and natural rights” are so often used to argue in favor of revolution, and subverting others in slavery or other terms of second class citizenship seems antithetical to the overall goals 3

From the perspective of the “Long Movement” school of the Civil Rights Era; the end of World War II provided a unique opportunity to make strides in the cause of black empowerment. During the course of the war, black newspapers including the Pittsburgh

Courier argued that a “Double-V” or “Double Victory” was possible. The argument ran that blacks who served in the force that helped to defeat Nazi Fascism abroad should enjoy fuller citizenship at home in the full spirit of spreading democracy throughout the world.5 It is important to note that historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall defines the Long Civil

Rights Movement that began “in the liberal and radical milieu of the late 1930s… accelerated during World War II and culminated under the aegis of the New Right.”6

This Historiographical view argues that the response to integration throughout the nation, in both the north and the south are important and thus Hall and others define the larger movement in terms that are much more temporally expansive definition that went into the

1970s even influenced the ascendency of the Reagan and Bush Administrations.7

of such a process, yet slavery continued following the American Revolution. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 1770-1823 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 84-85. The French Revolution was also a notable period in which “politicians were molding public policy concerning life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and constituting criteria for citizenship.” Lisa Beckstrand, Deviant Women of the French Revolution and the Rise of Feminism (Madison and Teaneck: Fairligh Dickinson University Press, 2009), 11. In these works the authors cite a period of radical change which they view as an opportunity that was either grasped or squandered to change how humans define citizenship and rights.

5 James Thompson argued in a Letter to the Editor that the war necessitated an approach in which “we keep defense and victory in the forefront that we don’t lose sight of our fight for true democracy at home.” published in The Pittsburgh Courier Spring 1942, Quoted in Lewis H. Fenderson, “The Negro Press as a Social Instrument,” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 20, no. 2 (Spring 1951), 185.

6 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past," The Journal of American History March 2005 (21 Nov. 2010).

7Ibid. 4

Part of the argument that emphasized that World War II was a key part of the

Long Civil Rights Movement revolved around the idea that if democracy was good for

Europe it was also good for Mississippians. Many returning black veterans embraced this ideal and the fact that black men played many important roles during the war at home in industry and abroad in the war effort leads some historians to cite this moment as such a key portion in the Civil Rights Era. In the current historiographical debate there are two competing schemes that argue for completely different periodizations of the era. The most widely accepted scheme is sometimes referred to as the “Orthodox Civil Rights

Movement,” “the Short Civil Rights Movement,” or the “Juan Williams periodization” after the excellent text Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965.

Throughout the text Juan Williams argues that the Civil Rights Movement started with the landmark court case of Brown v, Board of Education and ended with the passage of the Voting Rights act of 1965.8

In the “Long Movement” historiographical scheme, some historians argue that black participation in World War II was an essential factor that led to the opening of the

Civil Rights Movement and that based on the organization of labor and other factors led

8 Readers of Juan Williams also might infer that from this perspective that violence and the Black Power Movement “fractured the movement’s widespread moral support” or otherwise ended the Civil Rights Movement with their refusal to adhere to nonviolent tactics. Juan Williams, 287. This interpretation is extended by the timeline which reports the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965 alongside the Watts Riots from August 11-16 of 1965, and the assassinations of Medgar Evers, President Kennedy, and Malcolm X. From Juan Williams’s perspective the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was the clear leader of the Civil Rights Movement and the era ended in chaos due to a series of riots and assassinations as the movement lost momentum. Other factors include the inability to maintain political clout to move on issues such as job and housing discrimination. These less tangible issues “whose moral rightness was not as readily apparent” were more difficult to gain widespread support from middle-class northern moderates who were important in achieving the goals of voting rights and greater desegregation. Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965 (Penguin Books: New York, 1987), 287. 5

some historians to push the opening of the era to as far forward as 1942.9 Much of the evidence for the “Long Movement” involves how African American went from fighting

Nazis to fighting for political power in terms of gaining their manhood.10

If the era of slavery stripped black men of their dignity and their definition as a true man, the Civil Rights Era was an effort to return to a patrimonial power structure.11

For working-class men, gaining full employment was a prerequisite for gaining their desired seat of power at the head of their families rather than conforming to what sources in the Department of Labor cited as “reversed roles of husband and wife” common in

African American families of this time period.12 A look at the writings and tactics employed by Robert Williams gives us insight into how a working class man who often

9 This is due to the “Double V” and Wartime Labor Board’s involvement with solving the “crisis of manpower” during World War II. See William J. Collins, “Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production: Fair Employment in World War II Labor Markets,” The American Economic Review Vol. 91, no. 1 (Mar., 2001): 272-286, and Bruce Nelson, “Organized Labor and the Struggle for Black Equality in Mobile during World War II,” The Journal of American History Vol., 80, No. 3 (Dec., 1993): 952-988 for examples of black mobilization in the workforce during the World War II era.

10 Robert Williams is an excellent example of a man who served in World War II and felt the empowerment of participating in wartime industries and then the army. These activities made many feel as if the country was headed in a different direction following the war and this was a clear foundation to further expand civil and political rights.

11 Kenneth M. Stampp makes a compelling argument that while slavery was first and foremost a system of labor, much of the insidious qualities of “the peculiar institution” lay in the manner in which so much of slave ownership revolved around compelling obedience and extracting work from enslaved peoples. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Vintage Books A Division of Random House, Inc. 1989, reprint of 1956), 34, 171. Eugene D. Genovese points out that part of the process of emasculation and dehumanization of enslaved people involved the stripping of a true name and replacement with a joke such as Caesar which blacks often replaced again with “Freedman, Freeland, Justice, Lincoln… Taylor, Mason, Wheeler, Carpenter.” There are many works on the long term separation from ancestral home and disconnection from self identity as well. The important addition that Genovese made to the historiographical record was that he did an excellent job of humanizing enslaved peoples by including their voices from letters including their colloquial dialects in his prose. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage Books A Division of Random House: 1976, reprint of 1972), 444-447.

12 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” in Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics Ed. Gwendolyn Mink and Solinger, Rickie (New York and London: New York University Press, 2003), 228. 6

characterized his personal struggle for expanded rights in terms of his masculinity and used militant language grappled with the question of how best to achieve greater empowerment for African Americans.

It is important to acknowledge that the Civil Rights movement was not the first effort made by African Americans to regain their masculinity. Following the Civil War and Reconstruction blacks were “not equal in education, in economic status, in political influence, in the exercise of civil rights, or in the regard of his fellow citizens.”13 There was not an obvious course of action for either the federal government or private citizens who felt that these inequalities should be addressed. Also it was a far from universal concept that these were issues that could or should be addressed.

The period of 1902-1915 was characterized by an ideological debate between

Booker T. Washington and W.E. B. De Bois. During this time period the “black intelligentsia” were mostly located in the urban north, while “nearly ten million Blacks who lived in the United States in 1910, 73 per cent resided in rural areas.”14 Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama which emphasized training of black men in trades. Washington argued for what he called “gradualism” which would incrementally uplift freedmen from slavery and integrate blacks within the larger society.

De Bois argued the opposite that “exceptional men” who made up the “talented tenth”

13 Hugh Hawkins, Booker T. Washington and His Critics: The Problem of Negro Leadership (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1962), v.

14 U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, The Social and Economic Status of the Black Population in the United States: An Historical View, 1790-1978, Special Studies Series, p. 23, No. 80, 1979; quoted in William A. Edwards “Garveyism: Organizing the Masses or Mass Organization?,” in Garvey His Work and Impact ed. Rupert Lewis and Patrick Bryan (Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc., 1992), 221. 7

could immediately work alongside their white counterparts to bridge the gap in education and employment in such a way that all former slaves could be uplifted. Both Washington and De Bois seemed to agree that there was a gap in the education and economic means of blacks during this period, but they disagreed in how to change this situation. In 1895

Washington spoke before a bi-racial audience at the Atlanta Cotton States and

International Exposition. His main theme was that both black and white men needed to focus on their “own economic betterment” and that lessening antagonism between the races was a key to white men “getting rich.”15

This so called “Atlanta Compromise” made some blacks angry because it proposed that blacks needed to “work and wait” rather than take more direct action. De

Bois charged that there were three “injurious trends” that Washington’s efforts had affected: “the loss of political rights, the erection of caste barriers, and the deflection of funds from academic education leaders to industrial education for the masses.”16 These very different ideologies outline a wildly different mode of operation for black men to conform to. Washington was very conservative by many measures and he carefully wielded his personal power in a constrictive manner that some historians have characterized in negative terms such as the “Tuskegee Machine.”17 De Bois objected to the notion that Washington was bargaining away civil rights in exchange for hopes at

15 Hawkins, vi.

16 Ibid, vii.

17 Louis R. Harlan, “Booker T. Washington and the Politics of Accommodation,” in Booker T. Washington in Perspective ed. Raymod W. Smock (Jackson and London: University of Mississippi, 1988), 166. 8

economic security. At the same time Washington was freezing out other blacks from the negotiating table through his bossism.

To counter these trends, De Bois started the Niagara Movement in 1910, became the editor of The Crisis and formed the National Association for the Advancement of

Colored People. De Bois argued that elite blacks could lead the black masses to expanded civil rights and that Washington’s focus of economic progress was too narrow.

Marcus Garvey in 1914 launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association which sought “to promote the spirit of race pride and love” and to “conduct a world-wide commercial and industrial discourse.”18

The road to reestablishing the concept of black masculinity in the minds of black men following the era of slavery was a difficult task. It was through these various paths that the concepts of civil rights, economic independence and race pride that had a role in changing attitudes of men. While the work of these men made positive strides in that direction, much of the work was left undone until the post World War II era.

During the Civil Rights Movement there were many competing theories of how to best achieve social change. Does change come from elites, or does it start from a grassroots level and work up? It was apparent to many during the era that the period of slavery in America had many disturbing legacies that were largely unchanged despite the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction. To undo the work of Jim Crow laws and years of segregation was a massive undertaking that in the eyes of many is still unfinished.

18 W. E. B. Du Bois, “Marcus Garvey” in W. E. B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses 1920-1963, ed. Dr. Philip S. Foner, with a tribute by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), 11. 9

By investigating a portion of the life of Robert Williams it is possible to better understand some of the strategies and difficulties of the era. Williams is best known for his work as the president of the local branch of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People in Union County North Carolina from 1955-1961.

During this period he led a chapter that successfully integrated the library in the city of

Monroe, advocated for the integrated use of the local swimming pool, and participated in several local lunch counter sit-ins to champion the cause of integration at public restaurants. The city of Monroe is situated in Union County and is only a few miles from the South Carolina state line, which was historically a hotbed of activity for the Ku Klux

Klan. The Klan often framed their rhetoric in terms of masculinity, and thus it was logical that Robert Williams and other blacks in Monroe, especially returning veterans, also framed their empowerment in terms of their masculinity. Further, the proximity of an active chapter of the Klan in the minds of many, necessitated the ability to answer threats of violence with more than just their wits.19

The actions of the Union County NAACP often prompted the KKK to hold rallies, or in some cases white supremacists made great shows of driving armed motorcades through the black section of Monroe while escorted by police cruisers.20 The intent of these armed motorcades was to project masculine power backed by the threat of violence, which was condoned by the local police. In the face of such intimidation,

Robert Williams and others advocated to the black community that while non-violence

19 Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns (Marzani & Munsell 1962; reprint, Chicago: Third World Press, 1973), 50 (page citations are to the reprint edition).

20 Ibid., 43. 10

was certainly a preferred mode of operation, the black community must be prepared to answer “violence with violence” as a method of self-preservation.21 This rhetoric was in line with Williams’s central tenant of “flexible struggle,” which demanded that any possible route to empowerment needed to be explored.

While non-violent direct action preserved the moral high ground of the Civil

Rights Movement, many men felt that it was not a “masculine” tactic as evidenced by the high number of who joined National Rifle Association chartered by Williams rather than the NAACP.22 The capacity for violence has historically been defined as a prerogative of men and groups such as the minutemen, and the Ku Klux Klan did not often shy away from violence. Robert Williams and other Black Nationalists of his day argued at various points that the Civil Rights Movement should not handcuff itself by asserting that nonviolence was the only proper path to greater empowerment. As a result, there was a larger tactical debate between Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Williams concerning the merits of pure nonviolence as a tactic. Part of this argument concerned the idea that pure nonviolent direct action was unmanly, while King argued that nonviolence was the most appropriate manner for men to advocate for wider Civil Rights. At the heart of the

21 Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, part 2, March 24, 1970 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1971), 90.

22 Cohen, 97, 98. Williams estimated that approximately 60 men where active in the NRA which allowed members to purchase military surplus arms at reduced rates. This aided in the forming of the local “Black Guard” that Williams formed as an informal group of men headed by himself and other veterans to help provide protection to the black residents of Monroe. He did not give any information to Cohen concerning how many of these men were also in the NAACP chapter or if there was any members of both organizations other than himself. 11

debate was the rhetorical question of whether dogmatic adherence to nonviolence constituted “begging” for rights in a manner that emasculated proud men.23

Such a debate reveals how much of history is not easily compartmentalized, yet many historians attempt to do so. This desire to organize movements often leads to the construction of dichotomies. While this process is a helpful manner in which to think about the world by drawing comparisons and contrasting one tactical style versus another, it sometimes puts up unintended roadblocks to critical thinking. One of the focuses of the current historiographical thinking is to address an older narrative that had a tendency to draw firm lines between the Civil Rights Movement and situate it as distinctive from the Black Power Movement. This tendency created a false dichotomy between Malcolm X vs. Martin Luther King Jr., and alternatively Militancy vs. Non- violent Direct Action. This is due to the historical situation in which some historical actors argued between “properly masculine courses of action” versus cowardly or

“effeminate” modes of operation. This work seeks to situate itself within the growing historiographical that deemphasizes these differences and instead views them as a continuum of many actions. To some African Americans, nonviolence was the tactic of the “Uncle Tom” who begged for rights while “real men” “demanded” revolutionary change through militant stances.24

There were many conflicting accounts of what that change ought to be, but

Malcolm X declared “Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated

23 Michelle Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (New York: Dial Press, 1979), 37.

24 Ibid. 12

cup of coffee. Revolutions are never fought by turning the other cheek. Revolutions are never based upon love-your-enemy and pray-for-those-who-spitefully-use you. . .

Revolutions are based on bloodshed.”25 Declarations like this make some writers want to cut clear distinctions between practitioners of militant masculinist rhetoric and the tactics of the orthodox Civil Rights Movement. This endeavor to neatly package or characterize the Civil Rights Movement and contrast it to the Black Power Movement ignores the dynamic realities of the time.

Historical actors seldom make conscious decisions to be a part of one movement or another. Robert Williams is an excellent example of the difficulty in such an exercise.

During different periods of his life he approached the difficulties of the era from a variety of perspectives; feeling that a wide array of tactical approaches could serve his needs best. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the other hand, emphasized pure nonviolence, which he based on his Christian ideals as not just the best manner to advocate for expanded rights at the height of his influence but the only valid approach. Williams often employed the tactics of nonviolent direct action as the Union County branch of the

NAACP participated in economic boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins and picketed the public pool all on behalf of fuller integration. While he felt that “a weapon is the last alternative” he also affirmed the belief that the use of a weapon qualified as a viable option to repel the violence of others. Members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations in Union County North Carolina were well aware that “if they

25 Malcolm X, “The Black Revolution,” reprinted in Malcolm X Speaks (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 50. 13

attacked us, that a lot of people were going to get killed… that it wasn’t just going to be black lives anymore, but their lives.”26

Despite these statements, the only crimes that Williams was accused of were trespassing and later kidnapping. The trespassing charge was in conjunction with a peaceful lunch counter sit-in, and the alleged kidnapping involved an incident in which

Williams sheltered white supremacists from an enraged mob. Although Williams took a militant stance and is best know for his militant rhetoric, he was not a perpetrator of violent actions. Still, men like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. responded to this rhetoric with statements such as “There is more power in socially organized masses on the march than there is in guns in the hands of a few desperate men.”27 While there is much historical truism that “organized masses on the march” have been a powerful force for change in the past century, there are some among the African American community who felt that

King himself was somehow unmanly. In defining the aesthetic of “Black Macho,”

African American feminist Michele Wallace described King as “a glaring impossibility - a dream of masculine softness and beauty, an almost feminine man - and they [black men under 35] took his murder as a final warning to rally to the other side.”28

This thesis is an attempt to respond directly to two separate challenges issued by prominent historians. In his conclusion to the first scholarly account of Robert F.

26 Robert F. Williams, interview with Mosby, 107 found in Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams & the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 305.

27 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The Social organization of Non-violence,” reprinted in Robert Williams Negroes with Guns, 14.

28 Wallace, 37. 14

Williams’s life, Timothy Tyson commented: “The story of Robert Williams’s years abroad. . . would make an interesting book in itself. But such a work would be more about the many-sided international complexities of the Cold War than about Williams himself or the African American freedom struggle.29 This statement may be interpreted as a challenge to young scholars to look at the years of Williams’s exile abroad.

Similarly, in her path-breaking article “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical

Analysis” and her larger work Gender and the Politics of History, Joan Wallach Scott provided “above all an invitation to think critically about how the meanings of sexed bodies are produced, deployed and changed” but not a “methodological treatise.”30 Part of the invitation included a pointed challenge to historians to “explore masculinity as a gendered formation of equal importance to femininity.”31

Taken together, it seems Tyson challenged his reader to interpret the actions of

Robert Williams who so often defied categorization. Williams can be thought of as an intersection between the civil rights and the black power movements, or alternately as a bridge between the two. Tyson eloquently described this relationship arguing that “The story of Robert F. Williams illustrates that the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement, often portrayed in very different terms, grew out of the same soil, confronted the same predicaments, and reflected the same quest for African American freedom.”32

29 Tyson, 300.

30 Joan W. Scott, “AHR Forum, Unanswered Questions,” The American Historical Review, vol. 113 No. 5 (December 2008), 1423.

31 Heidi Tinsman, “A Paradigm of Our Own,” The American Historical Review, vol. 113 No. 5 (December 2008), 1371. 15

History is often more complicated than even historians like to admit. The task of defining and categorizing movements does add to our understanding and clarity, but sometime serves as a limiting factor. Robert F. Williams is one such historical actor who did not fit into a neat little box. His employment of a variety of tactics, in multiple geographic locations, led some to ask rhetorically “is he a civil rights advocate, a practitioner of Black Power militancy, a radical revolutionary, a leader of the emerging

New Left, or a pawn of the Cold War?” Robert Williams employed many tactics and could conceivably fit any of the above roles in a history textbook, though so of them only briefly. The major unifying thread throughout these different roles was a strong definition of self as a man and as a citizen of the United States.

32 Tyson, 308. 2. A snapshot of gender as it applied to the work of Robert Williams, followed by a chapter outline.

Although Robert Williams was a physically strong man, he had a clear understanding that violence was not the answer. He continually advocated for expanded rights with a firm concept that a man has a duty to take care of himself, his wife, and his children. Much of this perceived duty came from Williams’s understanding of his roles in society as a man. Although “gender” is often used as a substitute for “woman” in many studies, this is not the case in this instance. There is a general slipperiness to the concept of gender that is “theoretical not linguistic.”33 By this statement Joan Scott addressed the idea of how the concept of gender is ever-evolving and in constant flux due to the requirements of society. This results in a difficulty when looking to historicize the concept as the trick is to provide a snapshot of a temporal moment in which gender operated in a certain frame of reference. Further, there is a very real “need to differentiate Biology from Culture” in how sex can be viewed as a biological fact, while gender is redefined at uneven and seldom predictable intervals. In this way “gender” involves society’s definition of how men should act in order to be perceived as manly, and similarly the variable definition of how women “ought” to act to be perceived as feminine.34

33 Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), xi.

34 Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, xi.

16 17

Robert Williams’s concept of the male gender was informed by his experiences in both the army and the Marine Corps, and by his life in Monroe, North Carolina as a black man. One of the catalysts for this self image was that the Ku Klux Klan so vehemently laid claim to their rights of manhood and to a concept of white supremacy. The really radical claim that Williams made was that the right to threaten violence was not the sole monopoly of white men. If the equal protections guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the federal Constitution applied universally to all male citizens, then the right to self- defense was a universal right to be afforded to all citizens, not just white citizens.35

From a historiographical standpoint, the analysis of “gender” has been a manner of challenging the traditional “white phalocentric history,” that is, the history of white men who have traditionally been viewed as the principal actors of Western, if not all history. My intention is not to devalue the contributions of writers of women’s history, nor is it to co-opt the techniques of gender studies. Instead, the intention is to investigate how Robert Williams used his evolving concept of gender as a pathway for advocacy for expanded rights. In arguing for these rights, Williams joined a masculinist tradition that equated the “goals of gaining economic autonomy, political power, and social status” with the goals of achieving full manhood.36

This work will trace the importance of gender and sexuality as two ideas that shaped Robert Williams’s personal struggle for black empowerment during his time as president of the NAACP of Monroe County, North Carolina. It was especially his

35 Mabel Williams, Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide (San Francisco: Freedom Archives, 2005), 6.

36 Steve Estes, I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 7. 18

understanding of his role as a black man and his definition of masculinity that was formed during this critical period of his life that later became a point of difficulty during his stay in Cuba as a political refugee. Certainly Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and the principal leaders of the Cuban Revolution had a masculinist rhetoric of their own that informed their actions during both the guerrilla insurgency and the ongoing political revolution in which the new Socialist government was installed. While some historians may view these similar ideals as a “golden opportunity” for a figure hailed as the “roots” of Black Power ideology to meet up with a powerful set of militant allies; this thesis seeks to reveal how competing masculinist identities caused far more friction between these historical actors and is the primary reason why Robert Williams left Cuba for China in July 1966.37 In keeping with his concept of “Flexible Struggle,” once Williams was in

China, he again changed his focus, this time to critique black participation in the Vietnam conflict. While Williams seemed to concur with the conventional wisdom that the black family should return to a more patriarchal male centered structure, he disagreed that black participation in the military was a valid path to regaining such a role.

Chapter one of this study will include a brief historical survey of the concepts of gender and revolution. The examples are from a variety of geographical locations and time periods but they provide useful background information that is germane to a study of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements as there are helpful parallels. This will help to situate this thesis within the larger body of historical work. The second chapter will examine the events that followed Robert F. William’s discharge from the U.S.

37 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 2: 109. 19

Marine Corps. During this period, Williams became the president of a dying chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The only member of the chapter who was willing to stay on as an officer was Robert’s long-time friend Dr. Albert Perry.

This second chapter will discuss how Williams built an essentially two man chapter into a vibrant group that fought an ideological battle against segregation in their own unique manner. Central to the tactics of the Union County chapter of the NAACP was their ideas on armed self defense and the concept of Flexible Struggle as it applied to the Jim Crow South between1955 and 1962. During this era Robert Williams chronicled his personal struggle to find and maintain employment in the pages of his newsletter The

Crusader. Williams also followed the progress of a series of court cases involving his friend Dr. Albert Perry. There was a growing sentiment that education and employment would aid black men to gain greater access to rights and full citizenship. Dr. Perry gained employment opportunities for himself as a young man through his hard work to become a physician. As we will see, education and certification did not grant Dr. Perry the unimpeded ability to practice medicine. Robert Williams provided insight to Dr.

Perry’s work and court hearings that demonstrate a competing set of definitions of masculinity in which the community effectively barred Dr. Perry from practicing medicine in North Carolina due to accusations that he might have performed an abortion on a white woman.

As we will see in chapter two, such allegations and the notion that performance of such a procedure was akin to sexual impropriety were enough to disrupt Dr. Perry’s 20

continued employment at a career for which he was eminently qualified to perform.

Williams also felt that racial politics rather than ability to perform were far too often the deciding factor in employment or continued employment for many black men during this era. Without meaningful employment that paid a minimum of a living wage, there were few avenues to fulfill the roles required of true manhood. In this manner employment and manhood are intimately tied to one another as they are the keys to patriarchal power and full citizenship.

This focus on employment for both Williams and Perry comes out of an understanding that gender, power and employment are powerful concepts for working class Americans. This author has come to the conclusion that full employment is tantamount to full citizenship and American concepts of masculinity following a close reading of the path-breaking work of Joan Wallach Scott. The concept that gender is primarily concerned with “relations of power” and the differences between the sexes surrounding that power is a cornerstone of any work of this kind. 38 The situation in the

1950s and 1960s in the United States for many African Americans was that men and women were often in a state of chronic underemployment. On the spectrum of underemployment, women in domestic jobs enjoyed a significantly higher level of pay and an associated level of power that by comparison many black men felt that they were cut out of the traditional breadwinning role. This was especially so in working class black families in which the ability to hold a job, earn money, and provide for a family were all keys to power relations within the family. As such, gaining full employment

38 Scott, 42. 21

became a prerequisite for a “proper” masculine role as full citizen and this concept became the focus of several key struggles of the Civil Rights Movement.39

The third chapter will examine the period of Robert Williams’s exile in Cuba.

During this period it is particularly important to examine how his definition of masculinity differed from the ideology present in the ongoing political and social revolution. Following the failed assault on the Moncada and Bayamo garrison attacks on

July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro articulated the guerrilla insurgency as an ideological battle between his patriotic and masculine revolutionaries against cowardly and brutal conventional forces headed by Fulgencio Batista.40 In conjunction with these important distinctions that Castro drew during his October 16, 1953 defense speech “History will absolve me!” Guevara was able to expand upon these ideas in On Guerrilla Warfare and his short 1965 article “Socialism and Man in Cuba.”41

These sources provide a baseline ideology that clashed with Robert Williams’s

Black Nationalism and articulations of black masculinity. Eventually concerns that such rhetoric from an American expatriate would enrage the U.S. State Department coupled with the cooling of the Cuban Revolution became problematic for Williams. During his period in Cuba, Williams attempted to wage a war of words through the pages of The

39 Estes, 132. Historian Steve Estes points specifically to the Memphis Sanitation strike of 1967 in which black sanitation workers wore placards declaring “I AM A MAN!” Estes also uses examples from the WWII era, the work of Malcolm X and of advocates for Black Power including the Black Panther Party as examples of the importance of masculinist rhetoric to the larger Civil Rights Movement.

40 Antonio Rafael de la Cova, The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), xi.

41 Fidel Castro, History Will Absolve Me! (Habana: Impraso por Cooperativa Obrera de Publicidad, 1960), 7. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” in Che Guevara Reader, ed. David Deutschmann (Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press, 2003), 197-214. 22

Crusader and his “Radio Free Dixie” radio broadcasts. When factions within Cuba became concerned with establishing “Peaceful Coexistence” with the United States; these outlets were first modified and then muted. Williams’s unrelenting diatribes about the presence of racism in the United States and his comparisons to totalitarian regimes were counterproductive to the larger goals of the emerging Cuban government, which appeared to be far more concerned with preserving the Revolution than with opening a new phase of operations.

Such an environment made an uncompromising critic of racist America an unwelcome guest in a Socialist nation that felt that the internal problems of North

America were insignificant in a country such as Cuba that had already “solved” the problem of race. Further, the Socialist viewpoint held that class was far more important to the organization of the world and that while race may be a point of fracture within the

United States, class was far more important on the international stage. Robert Williams countered that white southerners did not feel the classical operators of international socialism, but instead were almost solely concerned with the problem of race. As we will see in chapter three these disagreements led to friction for Williams and precipitated his exit to China.

The forth chapter will investigate Robert Williams’s writings during his time in

China and Vietnam. The most important of these writings focus mainly on the Vietnam

War and Williams became a rather vocal opponent of black participation in this conflict.

Much of his argument stemmed from the notion that the United States role in the

Vietnam War was not concerned with preserving democracy. Instead, Williams came to 23

think of the Vietnamese as seeking their own path to self determination. This was parallel to the path of African Americans who he felt needed to assert a more independent path within America. Black participation in the Vietnam War was contentious from the standpoint of many African American leaders due to the notion that joining the armed forces provided an avenue to fuller employment, but at the cost of being a dangerous field of employment. Williams felt that many black Americans participated in Vietnam due to the fact that the U.S. military actively tricked young black men into oppressing other dark skinned men and women. Williams also argued that travelling 10,000 miles to kill or be killed was not a valid path to citizenship.

The stance that Williams articulated in his 1968 pamphlet “Listen Brothers!” was a direct challenge to the findings of the Moynihan report of 1965, which argued that black participation in Vietnam could provide a manner to reversal of social trends present in the United States.42 While Moynihan asserted that the armed forces presented young black men with an ideal opportunity for full and meaningful employment, Robert

Williams countered that agitating for black empowerment was a far better use of masculine energy than traveling across the globe to become cannon fodder. Williams implored young black men to “Listen Brother!” to his pamphlet, and he would help them understand the rhetorical trickery of the U.S. government which promised anything in an effort to bring democracy to Southeast Asia. This work will end with an analysis of these competing definitions of masculinity in which Robert Williams articulated the viewpoint

42 Robert F. Williams, “Listen, Brothers!” (New York: World Wide Publishers 1968), 2. Gwendolyn Mink and Rickie Solinger, Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics (New York and London: New York University Press, 2003), x. 24

that oppressing other people of color was not a valid pathway from second-class to full citizenship, and was the path of least resistance for emasculated Uncle Toms. Instead, he argued that true men would stand up for themselves and their community rather than fighting in Vietnam.

This final chapter will conclude with a short section which investigates Robert

Williams’s life once he returned from Asia. There is little scholarly examination of this period of the 26 years between his return from abroad and his death in 1996. A look at the correspondence collected at Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan reveals several trends during this seldom discussed portion of Robert Williams’s life. Chapter 1: Gender in History and the Civil Rights Movement

Before turning to the task at hand it is useful to take a brief look at path breaking studies concerning gender and revolution. The works of Lynn Hunt and Lisa Beckstrand have studied attempts to redefine the social contract of France, which provide some interesting parallels and methodologies. In general, social contract theory involves the informal set of conventions that society uses to establish the why the authority of the state is legitimate.43 Political theorist Carol Pateman argued that the social contract originated as a patriarchal and masculine construct that feminists have sought to expand beyond the narrow conventions forged between fathers and sons or husbands and wives. Pateman traced how individuals later expanded the social contract to include a more even hand toward women.44

During the French Revolution, the notion of citizen was notably challenged by a group of women. The two most significant among this group were Olympe de Gouges and Manon Roland, who challenged the prevailing French politicians who sought to remold French society during the period of the Revolution. This pair is often cited as the

43 Carol Pateman, “The Fraternal Social Contract,” in The Masculinity Studies Reader, ed. Rachel Adams and David Savran (Malden: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2002 ), 121.

44 Ibid., 124.

25 26

first feminists, and they literally lost their heads during the time of The Terror due to their

“deviant” beliefs.45

Hunt’s main focus was on the reordering of French society during the Revolution from a patriarchal society with King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as the symbolic father and mother, to a new order that aligned on the basis of fraternal ties.46 This sentiment concerning the importance of fraternal ties for the common Frenchmen during the Revolution was captured by statements such as “there should be no neutral being, there are only brothers or enemies.”47 From this perspective, the king and queen were not brother or sister to the masses and were thus defined as enemies. The redefinition of the royals as enemies of the new order did not happen overnight, but rather was a process with several intermediate steps.

The first step in this process was the “desacrilization” of Louis XVI from pseudo- deity to re-envisioning the king as “good father.” This began even while Louis was seated on the throne, and the process was accomplished in part by artists and writers who depicted the king and queen in an unflattering light. The second step was the further transformation of King Louis XVI to a normal man named Louis Capet. Much of the work was accomplished by a dual assault upon both king and queen from a gendered perspective. The Ancient Regime was a government based on the rule of “the good

45 Lisa Beckstrand, Deviant Women of the French Revolution and the Rise of Feminism (Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), 11.

46 Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 12.

47 Marcel David, Fraternité et Révolution française, 1789-1799 (Paris, 1987), 58; in Hunt, 13. 27

father” while the emerging republic was headed by wise “older brothers.” The trick was to recast the emerging order in a fraternal rather than a patriarchal light.

In a parallel process, the French Revolution pledged “equality and freedom for all” in the ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The question for the “deviant” feminists concerned whether the newly expanding applied only to Frenchmen, or if there would be an associated gain in rights for minority groups and women.48 In her boldest work The Declaration of Rights of Women and Citizen Olympe de Gouges “overtly demanded that women rise up and assert their rights.”49 In doing so, de Gouges at times asserted the universal nature of women, but at others emphasized women’s special status as “different” from men in that they have the biological ability to bear children. In so doing she emphasized both the cultural definitions of what women “ought” to do, which conforms to the notion of gender; as well as the unique biology of women related to their sex.

This was in contrast to many men of the contemporary period who asserted that women’s biology and gender should exclude them from the public sphere of politics.

The point of contention between de Gouges and her male counterparts was the question: did these special biological abilities of women confer inferiority or superiority to men?

Further de Gouges argued that the natural order of the world prefers the sexes in harmony

48 Beckstrand, 15.

49 Ibid., 89. 28

but the tyrannical nature of humans produces gendered hierarchies based on a flawed social construct.50

De Gouges suggested that the new republic be reconstituted as a constitutional monarchy that would escape the “tyrannical abuses of power by the king” just as reordering the social contract so that women were full citizens “would erase the patriarchal abuses of power by husbands and fathers.”51 Such a direct confrontation of the status quo formulations of citizenship was precisely the line of reasoning that led her to be labeled as a “deviant” woman. The label of deviant was earned through de Gouges’ political writing and activism. The label served as a marker that helped her opponents to lump her into a category that obviously was “beyond the pale” of normal behavior and could be dealt with in a summary rather than individual basis. The press emphasized how

“deviant” women were “crazy, sexually deviant, or . . . corrupting future generations.”52

Beckstrand builds a compelling argument that these accusations assisted in building a criminal case against these women despite the lack of evidence and often baseless nature of the claims of sexual deviancy.

These trends from the French Revolution may seem out of place in a study concerning an African American man set in America, Cuba, and China during the Civil

Rights Movement, but the themes and tactics employed by white supremacists and

French Republicans for repelling challenges by African Americans and French women

50 Ibid., 89-90.

51 Ibid., 95.

52 Ibid., 12. 29

are startling in their similarities. Similar to the labeling of French feminists as “crazy” or deviant, Robert Williams felt that following the incident that led to charges of kidnapping the FBI released a wanted poster that inaccurately described him. The FBI’s description included several invented details to paint him, in his words, as a battle scarred “razor fighting nigger.” This image was enhanced through the invention of a series of fictitious scars and the allegation that he “has previously been diagnosed as schizophrenic.”53 This description enhanced the image of a “crazy,” “violent” man and preceded his flight to

Canada and eventually Cuba.54

If the French Revolution was a process of reordering the social structures from a patriarchal society to a new fraternal order; then I would argue that the Civil Rights

Movement was a movement toward a renewal of black patriarchy. So much of the movement was focused on masculinist rhetoric, which is the idea that men are more powerful than women, that they should have control over their own lives and authority over others.55

Economic roles constituted an important part of African American definitions of manhood during the Civil Rights Era, but it is not the only definition that operated during the period. The role of gender has many other facets in this context, and an exploration of these various roles is helpful at this juncture. Robert Williams had a certain definition of self as “man” and “citizen” that shaped his struggle for expanded rights for himself and his community.

53 Negroes With Guns, 92, 38.

54 Further details to follow in chapters 2 and 3.

55 Estes, 7. 30

Gender is the socially constructed definition of what men and women should do based upon their role as a man or woman. It is far more than simple biology but rather has multiple cultural meanings.56 Joan Scott’s simplest definition of gender is “the social organization of sexual difference.”57 Using this definition of gender, it is important to note that there is no fixed meaning for masculinity or femininity but rather an ever- moving target of cultural expectations. In the case of Robert Williams, there were two major competing cultural definitions that southern society expected of him, first he was a man, secondly he was black. These two basic statuses resulted in various competing expectations and roles that served to constrain him. There continued to be a cultural belief that blacks should “know their place” but at the same time there were competing expectations of what a man “ought” to live up to. The 1950s were a time in which the masculinity of black men was often denied and the practice of calling black men “boy” well beyond the time at which they were sexually mature deferred their manhood.58

Just as the “deviant” women of the French Revolution were labeled, so too were the men of Civil Rights Era. “Deviant” women were “crazy, sexually deviant, or . . . corrupting future generations.”59 Once they were labeled as such, it was difficult to have much power politically. Therefore, Manon Roland masked her political writing as under

56 Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, xi.

57 Ibid., 2.

58 Historian Glenda Gilmore writes at length in her opening chapter on the subject of “place” in North Carolina. In this commentary Glenda Gilmore comments on how both women and blacks in the late 19th and early 20th century had a “place” defined by a complex set of parameters which could expand or contract based first on sex and color but also on “energy and ability.” Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender & Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina 1896-1920 (The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 1.

59 Beckstrand, 12. 31

her husband’s name. Much of the subterfuge was needed due to the thought that

“reading, writing and political activism were, more or less, forbidden activities for women.”60

While it was acceptable for black men of the 1960s to be politically active, the general taboos against sexuality were firmly in place. While Roland felt the need to mask her identity as a woman to gain an audience in Revolutionary France, black men often felt a similar need to “cloak their sexuality and mask their manhood for fear of trespassing on the race and gender prerogatives of white men.”61 To fail to do so in some circumstance was to invite death as some young men including Emmett Till found out.62

60 Ibid., 67.

61 Estes, 6.

62 While, there are differing accounts as to the specific actions that led up to the brutal murder of Emmett Till it is clear that he was killed in response to flirting with Carolyn Bryant, a 21 year old white woman. Bryant testified that Till “wolf whistled” and called her “baby” while others stated that he said “Gee. You look like a movie star.” While Emmett Till’s actions may have been unappreciated, they do not in any way excuse his lynching. The trial of his killers resulted in the finding of not guilty due the race based inequality of Southern Justice in 1955 rather than any mitigating circumstances of evidence. The all-white, all-male jury of Mississippians later admitted that they felt that, yes a murder had occurred, but that lynching of a black teenager in redress of sexual impropriety did not constitute a crime. Christine Harold and Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2005: 264. 2. The Role of Stereotypes in blocking Understanding of the Other.

Many white southerners felt that there were three general stereotypes of black

America present in one form or another that were prevalent during this era. The power of these stereotypes comes from an attempt to differentiate African Americans from other

Americans. Edward Said described how the “Other” can be “Orientialized” or otherwise dehumanized in a manner in which “ideas about what ‘we’ do and what ‘they’ cannot do or understand as ‘we’ do” allows for a certain “power moral.” 63 In his classic formulation, Said noted that the British and French prior to World War Two and the

United States after the war marginalized Arabs and practitioners of Islam in the Middle

East. In this dichotomy between the Occident and the Orient, the Occident employs strategies “for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”64

This trick has unfortunately been accomplished many times in history in which a dichotomy is set up in which “us” is envisioned as good, intelligent, wholesome and the

“Other” is contrasted as the polar opposite of this set of ideals.65 Several historians have expanded upon Said to the point that it is widely accepted that this process operates in

63 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Strand, London: Penguin Classic, 2003; reprint of Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1978), 12. Said as a whole is useful to paraphrase, but sometimes difficult to quote directly due to the complex nature of his argument coupled with his use of particular jargon. Despite these factors, the phenomenon that he described is one of the basic methodologies in which groups belittle and dehumanize outsiders, while building solidarity within the in group.

64 Ibid., 3.

65 Ibid., 40.

32 33

many arenas.66 In the case of the modern United States, there are a variety of stereotypes and cultural operators that aid in “Orientalizing” African Americans and historically reducing their status to secondary citizenship.

Some white literary sources of the era incorrectly held that most African

Americans conformed to one of three stereotypes: the Uncle Tom, the Coon or the Buck.

The Uncle Tom was supposedly “devoted to whites, religious, hard working, loyal, trustworthy, patient and restrained.” The Coon was characterized as “happy-go-lucky, a clown, a buffoon, a child, clever and witty but unable to perform the most simple task without guidance.” The image of the Buck, derived from a character from The Birth of a

Nation, was mainly a sexual stereotype of a man who was “brutal, violent, virile, tough, strong- and finds white women especially appealing.”67 These stereotypes were aimed at differentiating black men especially as the metaphorical “Other,” which eased the way for lynch mobs who most often claimed that a young black man showed a disregard for the sexual taboos of American society. The use of labels and stereotyping is not unique to the American landscape. In the case of the French Revolution, the label of “deviant” woman often preceded execution at the guillotine.

66 I first encountered the work of Edward Said in conjunction with secondary sources that used Orientalism as a point of departure. Works such as Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003) and Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2006) both fully acknowledge the influence of Said in their respective introductions; Klein on pages 10-11 and Shibusawa on 10-11. Other works which helped me to understand the “ideology of difference” as Klein described it on page 10 include Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government, Race, Empire, the United States, & the Philippines (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006) and T. Christopher Jespersen, American Images of China, 1931-1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). These works as a whole extend and at times critique Said but they have been instrumental in my understanding of the concepts of “us”, “them” and “the other” from a historical perspective.

67 Wallace, 25. 34

In contrast to the “Buck” the stereotypes of the “Uncle Tom” and the “Coon” were often cited as evidence that race relations in the United States were good and that

African Americans were content or even docile. After attending Winchester school in

Monroe; Robert Williams gained the insight that even black schools spread misinformation such as “although there may have been a few cruel masters, most of the plantation owners were good people, who taught their slaves to read and write, gave them wholesome food and warm lodgings, and never whipped or worked them too hard.”68

Williams felt that these images from his school books rang hollow compared with the accounts from an old woman in his neighborhood who lived during the era of slavery who some neighbors estimated to be approximately 105 years old in the late 1920s.

Williams learned from this woman’s stories that African Americans had only benefited from emancipation and that any attempts to teach him otherwise were the misguided work of apologists who obfuscated the everyday realities of black enslavement.69

The stereotype of “the Buck” was the basis for white supremacist’s “nightmare.”

In building the stereotype of the predatory black man who lusts for white women, white supremacists hoped to gain wider support for the emasculation of black men. This was due to the “racist belief that Negroes who are strong, successful, and masculine must also want to possess a white woman in order to give final sanction to their manhood.”70 This idea is a potent part of the stereotype. In response to these fears white America

68 Robert Carl Cohen, Black Crusader, (Secaucus, N.J.: L. Stuart, 1972), 21.

69Ibid.

70 Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D., “The Confession of Nat Turner and the Dilemma of William Styron,” in William Stryon’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, ed. John Henrik Clarke (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 21. 35

historically used the threat of lynching, a substitute for the Freudian punishment of castration that according to psychoanalytical thinking is one of the major motivational levers for men worldwide. These physical methods of motivation have further been substituted in the modern world and now it is generally accepted that the denial of economic and educational opportunities for blacks serve as a potent metaphorical substitute for these other punishments.71 One critical task of the Civil Rights Movement was an attempt to undo the damage of this metaphorical castration and allow men access to full citizenship and a pathway to the cultural power associated with true manhood.

It is significant that Robert Williams articulated some of his thoughts on the nature of masculine responsibility in the first issue of his newsletter The Crusader, published in 1959. “Manhood flows from the attributes of brotherhood, love for the human race, humility, understanding, flexibility and the courage to seek after justice.”

Williams further argued that “Unless a man has some measure of pride, he is not worthy of the dignity to be called a MAN… A true man will protect his women, children and home.”72 These thoughts on the meaning of masculinity and how the idea of attaining manhood was often equated with gaining freedom or equal rights.

The dual issues of gender and sexuality were often deeply entwined in southern minds in such a manner that it is difficult sometimes to speak of one without the other.

The ultimate horror to white males was the thought of black males and white females engaging in sexual acts, and so the entire spectrum of activities that “might lead to” the

71 Scott, 203.

72 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol 1. No 1, June 26, 1959: 1, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 36

end taboo were also taboo. Conforming to this inexact definition of what constituted sexual impropriety greatly constricted black male gender roles as well. If a man’s actions were interpreted as “too forward” or “over the line,” even if that line was fuzzy and at times incompletely undefined, then other actions like walking in certain parts of town could be dangerous. This was the sort of second-class citizenship that many African

American of the day faced and protested against. The continual status of “other” or in

Said’s terms “Oriental” in the eyes of white supremacists was a very real part of daily life during the Civil Rights Era.

Not only was the concept of gender slippery in everyday situations, there is an ongoing debate within more scholarly circles that continues even today. In every age gender is a subject of continual debate, and the roles that men and women are required by society to fulfill are often in a state of flux; it is useful to note that there are some general themes that are widely echoed. One such theme involves the Darwinian notion that fitness from a biological standpoint involves passing genetic material to the next generation. This idea helps to account for the theme that “Aside from potency, men must seek to provision dependants.”73 Also men must live up to the ideals of “hombría…

[which includes] standing up for yourself as an independent and proud actor, holding your own when challenged,” and especially exhibiting “physical and moral courage.”74

These ideas of masculinity all stem from cultural sources. There are also associated phenomena that are due to the sexuality of men as well. One of the most

73 David Gilmore, Manhood in the Making (Yale University, 1990), 42.

74 Ibid., 44. 37

radical positions on the subject was articulated by Eldridge Cleaver in his 1968 book Soul on Ice, which he wrote while incarcerated before he became the minister of information for the Black Panthers. Cleaver originally came from a position in which he wrote on the subject of his hatred of white women, only to later embrace an ideology that called for blacks to agitate in favor of expanded personal and civil rights. He embraced a stance that since the time of slavery, the most inflammatory image that white America could conjure was of black men courting white women and the possibility of sexual congress between these two parties. Cleaver made a conscious decision that he would challenge this cultural taboo through his self-concept of masculinity. While in prison he recalled:

“Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women. . . I felt I was getting revenge.”75 This notion that literally his biological status as a man could be utilized as an inflammatory weapon of insurrection is grotesque but indicative of his level of rage concerning his second-class status as a black man in the United States.

Even more telling than his words was the fact that Cleaver wrote these words while serving a prison sentence for his crime of rape, perpetrated against black women.

This was all part of his over arching plan “To refine my technique and modus operandi, I started out by practicing on black girls in the ghetto - in the black ghetto where dark and vicious deeds appear not as aberrations or deviations from the norm, but as part of the sufficiency of the Evil of a day.”76 After being granted parole, Cleaver came to despise

75 Eldridge Cleaver, “On Becoming,” in Soul on Ice (New York, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968), 14.

76 Ibid. 38

the crimes that he committed and came to realize that the best manner to regain his self- respect was to write and heal himself. He also came to the grim conclusion that modern urban life in the ghetto and acts like his dehumanize both the victim and the perpetrator; that it is far more difficult to be a good man than a bad. To become a member of the former rather than the latter category should become his life’s work and that “The price of hating human beings is loving oneself less.77

Some of these patterns were part of a backlash against the times of slavery when it was very evident to black men that white male sexuality was a potent weapon. Often white men asserted their authority over black women through sexual relations. Similarly, black men could not stop the sale of either their children or their wives which served to prove to black men that they could not adequately protect his family.78 The historic trends in which white male sexuality was feared and black male sexuality was a great taboo set the stage for the civil rights era in which these issues would become a site of major struggle as the threat of lynching was a very real check against black male sexual impropriety.

77 Ibid., 15-17, 17.

78 Wallace, 19. 3. The role of Masculinity in Selecting Tactics

These various routes to manhood had differing effects on the lives of the participants. Robert Williams is one example of how life in the Marine Corps may have temporarily relieved him of the worries of employment, but overall he seemed to be glad to exit the service when he did. Some aspects of Williams’s life in the Army and Marine

Corps have been covered by Robert Cohen’s Black Crusader and by Timothy Tyson’s

Radio Free Dixie. It is important to acknowledge both of these important works as part of the essential historiography of Robert Williams.

Cohen based Black Crusader on nearly 70 hours of audio taped conversations with Williams in 1970 while the two men were in Tanzania. Williams contracted with

Cohen in order to herald his return to the United States. When Cohen was unable to finish the work in what Williams felt was a timely manner, Williams withdrew his authorization for Cohen to publish the work. Cohen continued to write and revise the work and published it in 1973 without an agreement for royalties to be paid to Robert

Williams. This is similar to the problems that Williams had with other publishers including Marzani over the publishing of Negroes with Guns. Cohen’s notes in the introduction correlate with the contract that Williams presented as evidence during his testimony before a congressional sub-committee that he had in fact intended Black

Crusader as a biography published jointly by Cohen who was a journalist and he was in

39 40

charge of organizing and crafting the narrative in a coherent manner. The presence of the contract and the testimony by Williams help to establish the veracity of the account despite the apparent ahistorical nature of the account from the standpoint that Cohen did not use any secondary sources but instead based the account solely on his interviews with

Williams. One of the goals of this thesis is an attempt to more fully historicize this time period covered by Cohen by adding information from other primary sources.

Tyson’s Radio Free Dixie admirably covers the period of following Robert’s stint in the Marine Corps and the building of a unique chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Union County, North Carolina. This author’s intention is to touch upon this era to help establish an argument that views this period of Williams’s life as important in the formulation of his definition of self as man and citizen, only to have those definitions challenged while he lived in Cuba. It is the conflicting definitions of masculinity that became one of the main sources of friction for

Williams in Cuba. The other main point of contention that Williams had was that the

Socialist line of thinking was that class was an overriding factor and that the political landscape of the United States would be remade only after members of the working class of all races came together to challenge the prevailing imperialist government. Williams completely disagreed with members of the Cuban Communist Party (the PSP) and the members of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA.)

The strength of Tyson’s work is that Radio Free Dixie provides an excellent political history of Robert Williams and the Union County chapter of the NAACP. This study seeks to add to Tyson’s analysis of this period based on a gendered reading of these 41

events. In particular the events following the desegregation of the Marine Corps and the opening years of the Civil Rights Movement redefined the roles that black men were able to operate, and Robert Williams attempted to expand the definition of citizenship to include himself and his cohort of black veterans. From there he attempted to argue that black men where “man enough” and intelligent enough to earn fuller employment, education, and citizenship. Part of this process involved understanding male sexuality in different terms than the south had previously. The two primary points at which male relations to women needed to change involved male relationships with females of the opposing race. In the case of white men, they continued to use their sexuality as a weapon against black women since the era of slavery. Similarly, the greatest fear of white men concerning black men was that they were sexual predators of white women.

The Ku Klux Klan utilized the myth of the black rapist to condone lynching while at the same time white males insisted that black women were insignificant as human beings and not fit for the crime of rape to be considered a crime. This blatant double standard in which white sexuality was acknowledged as an acceptable weapon while black sexuality was the cause of white America’s greatest fears is the reasoning behind Williams’s proclamation that “we must meet violence with violence.” In this case Williams felt that only gender, i.e. man’s role as a man, could protect women against another man’s sexuality.

As essential as this definition of self was to Williams while he was an advocate for Civil Rights in the United States, this definition came into conflict with that of the

New Socialist Man in Cuba. In his defense speech “History Will Absolve Me!” Fidel 42

Castro envisioned his struggle against Fulgencio Batista in the traditions of masculinist rhetoric. Castro attempted to make it clear that the struggle of his revolutionaries was one of true patriotic men and women, that they faced cowardly but brutal and child-like adversaries. In the vernacular of Said, Castro “Orientalized” Batista personally and his government in his rhetoric. Further, Che Guevara articulated an ideal New Socialist

Man; which mostly defines a masculine revolutionary in altruistic terms but the effect in

Cuban society was that an image of a masculine, altruistic, bearded, Latino revolutionary became the ideal. In conjunction with this definition, those who fell outside of this model became labeled as counterrevolutionary or otherwise unacceptable as part of the emerging Cuba.

When Williams broadcast his “Radio Free Dixie” as an unrelenting indictment of racist North America, he identified himself as a strong proponent of Black Nationalism.

This rhetoric did not fall within the scope of the idealized New Socialist Man, and members of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and other factions within Cuba did not feel that this rhetoric was helpful to the ideals of Peaceful

Coexistence. Not only did it fall outside of the Soviet models, it endangered the very existence of Cuba as an independent nation. This was due to the fear that the United

States might send a massive invasion at the drop of a hat to bring Cuba back under control. This was a general pattern that arose following the provisions of the Treaty of

Paris that ended the Spanish American War in 1898 and specified that Cuba was independent but effectively became a protectorate of the United States. 43

Within this context there are important international and transnational trends in which the United States and Cuba had a very contentious relationship. Part of this relationship involved paternalism and exploitation on the part of the United States in the sense that members of the U.S. State Department appeared to crave “stability” within

Cuba and used any political unrest as an excuse to repeatedly invade the island nation.

During the pre-revolutionary period there were also many competing interests that appeared poised to carve up Cuba into a collection of playgrounds that presented

“investment opportunities” for the legitimate American corporations as well as organized crime interests.

Given the array of topics mentioned in the proceeding paragraphs it is useful to define some temporal boundaries for this work. Robert Williams was discharged from the Marine Corps in May 1955. He lived in Monroe, North Carolina from 1955 until July

1961. He arrived in Cuba on September 29, 1961, and left Cuba for China in July 1966.79

Robert Williams arrived in Cuba well after the events of the guerrilla insurrection led by

Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, which ended on January 1, 1959. This places all of Robert’s visits and his period of exile in Cuba firmly within the period of time that followed the guerrilla insurrection, and during the continuing political and social revolution of the Cuban Revolution.

Similarly, the era in which Robert Williams was most active coincided with Juan

Williams’s temporal definition of the American Civil Rights Movement. That is to say that in a widely used text on the Civil Rights Movement, Eyes on the Prize, Juan

79 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, Part 2: 108, 109. 44

Williams defined the Civil Rights Movement as beginning with the Brown v. Board of

Education decision in 1954 and ending with the passage and signing of the Voting Rights

Act on August 6, 1965.80 Historiographically speaking, the Juan Williams temporal definition has been largely adopted as a convenient benchmark, and using this temporal definition places the majority of the events of this thesis squarely within the orthodox

Civil Rights Movement.

For Robert Williams and many that waged the battles of the Civil Rights

Movement, life was not simply a question of gaining more rights. There was also a larger tactical debate in which a variety of factions made it clear that it was not only important concerning which rights were expanded, but also there was a sense that there were preferred methods to employ in that struggle. At the center of the debate for many was the ability for men to provide the patriarchal role for men and for them to feel not only empowered, but also powerful in the manner that rights were gained. In the debate over tactics, Robert Williams adopted an approach that he called “Flexible Struggle” which he described as “we shouldn’t take the attitude that one method alone is the way to liberation.”81 Williams found the approach of men like King to be “too dogmatic” that

King’s flaws were not his general tactics, but his strict adherence to an overly narrow

80 The adoption of this 1954-1965 timeline is a matter of expediency rather than this author’s viewpoint. There are compelling arguments for shifting both the opening of the movement forward, as well as moving the endpoint back. See Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang, “The ‘Long Movement’ as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies,” Journal of Negro History, v. 92 issue 2, 2007, p. 265-288. Cha-Jua and Lang argue that when historians expand the temporal boundaries of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements that they complicate our view of history, but also devalue certain interpretations to the point at which they become virtually meaningless. As most of the events of this thesis take place from the time period take place during these generally accepted temporal boundaries there is little reason to argue for a wider time period despite the author’s general belief that as early as 1944 and as late as 1975 could be argued as valid temporal boundaries of the larger struggle for black empowerment.

81 Mabel Williams, Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide, 9. 45

range of action. Williams’s approach was anything but dogmatic. In one manner of thinking, his approach might be likened to the master poker player. Just as a good poker player will sometimes play a poor hand of cards that they then will use to skillfully bluff opponents, Williams knew that overt displays of power would not necessarily advance his cause. Instead, he showed adaptability and an unwillingness to conform to stereotypes but rather was interested in behaving as he felt a true man should to best take care of himself and his family.

Not only did Williams frame the struggle for black empowerment largely in terms of his definition of self, but he also sought to continually conform to his notions of what it meant to be a good husband and father. One manifestation of these tactics was that his wife Mabel and his two sons Robert Jr. and John were never far from the focus of the movement. The NAACP of Union County, North Carolina was highly concerned with expanding citizenship for African Americans. They made their arguments largely based upon the legal and societal definitions of manhood and citizenship. Robert especially felt that, if the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution were properly enforced, then there would be no need for a Civil Rights Movement. The “radical” position of the organization was that black men and women needed to have the same rights and privileges as white men and women. In order to gain such rights, blacks had the right to use the same tactics that whites did. This included the manly prerogative to answer

“violence with violence” if necessary. Chapter 2: Providing for physical and economic safety; the twin responsibilities of the modern man.

In describing masculinist rhetoric, historian Steve Estes argued that the basic definition of manhood for both black and white Americans of the Civil Rights Era

“entailed an economic, social, and political status achievable by all men. A man was the head of his household: he made enough money to support his family as the primary if not the only breadwinner. He also had a political voice in deciding how his community, his state, and his country were run. Masculinist rhetoric uses traditional power wielded by men to woo supporters and attack opponents.”82 It is notable that part of this definition of manhood that was present during the 1960s involved the role of men within a family unit.

To conform to this definition of manhood, black men needed to reverse the ideals of earlier decades.

During the era of slavery, black men were encouraged to embrace “a paradigm of that ideal submission never quite approximated by the most obedient children, wives, subjects, or patients” and in this regard became objects to be manipulated rather than humans to work alongside.83 The parallel processes of dehumanization, comodification, and objectification present during the era of slavery later formed the basis for segregation and the traditions of enforcement of Jim Crow policies. Under the system of Jim Crow

82 Estes, 7.

83 David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 1770-1823 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 39.

46 47

segregation present in the American south, many working-class blacks equated their masculinity with their ability to earn a living wage. In this manner, there was an indelible connection between full employment and masculinity in the sense that without a good paying job black men felt deprived of what they perceived as their rightful place at the head of their family. With the notable exception of the World War Two era when a nationwide crisis in which labor was scarce due to the massive mobilization for the war effort and blacks were “central to the labor process in many of Detroit’s key manufacturing facilities” young black men were historically cut out of high-paying industrial jobs.84

The presence of racial stereotypes in the post World War II world created a paradigm in which many Americans artificially defined certain jobs for white men and other jobs for black men. Timothy Tyson wrote at length about W.E.B. Du Bois’s “cake of custom” in which “A white man who would never shake hands with a black man would refuse to permit anyone but a black man to shave his face, cut his hair, or give him a shampoo.”85 There are many problems with the “cake of custom,” one of which is the fact that many black men were never “supposed” to perform jobs that paid a living wage.

Financial freedom cannot be realized if the only employment that a man can gain provides too small of a slice of the cake to provide at least the ability to pay for food, shelter, and clothing without outside aid or welfare.

84 Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, “Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Dec., 1988): 793.

85 Tyson, 20. Emphasis retained from the original. 48

This was a large portion of the continual battle that Robert Williams and his close friend Dr. Albert Perry faced during the World War II and after they returned to civilian life. American participation in the war opened up the job market as a large number of white men were conscripted into the armed forces. To fill the labor gap the War Labor

Board opened unprecedented numbers of jobs to women and people of color and Detroit,

Michigan was especially “a magnet for African American migrants during and after

World War II.”86 Good paying employment is a key factor that allows men to fulfill a patriarchal role in their family. With this measure of power, there is also an associated feeling of worth and dignity associated with “being the man of the house.” This role is both economic and social and is often cited as the ideal mode of operation for American families in the past century.

While working for the Ford Motor Company in 1943, Williams came into contact with several leftist groups including the Communist Party of the United States of

America (CPUSA). The CPUSA rhetoric espoused that “the Communists were for equal rights . . . [the communist speakers] called for an end of exploitation of man by man,” but when Kaiser Shipyards in California recruited several hundred blacks, it was the white union workers who refused to work alongside Robert Williams and his black companions.87

It seems that maintaining segregation and other secondary considerations were often balanced by the desire to fill the labor gap. One consideration for many factories

86 Thomas J. Sugrue, “Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964,” The Journal of American History (Sept, 1995): 553.

87 Cohen, 21. 49

was the idea that Williams and others were somehow filling “white” jobs and that black men could only fill these positions as long as the war persisted. Once victory was achieved then many felt that the prewar status quo should be returned to. During the period of 1945 to 1960 the “postwar boom” was very contentious from the standpoint of working class men. Historian Thomas J. Sugrue writes that “Beginning in the 1950s, the industrial bases of almost every major city in the North began to atrophy, and Detroit was no exception.” These conditions directly affected men like Robert Williams both black and white as there was a steady flow of returning veterans who hoped to return to their former work, which resulted in cyclic hiring patterns “punctuated by periodic layoffs and four recessions.”88

Prior to these patterns Williams had been able to find stable yet temporary work during the war at industrial jobs. These jobs paid a living wage, and Robert Williams was able to live cheaply with his older brother in Detroit. These factors provided an avenue for Williams to send money back home to help his father pay for the mortgage on the family house in Monroe, North Carolina. As with many things in Williams’s life, it was his duty as a man and his relationship with his family that shaped his actions. As a young man, he was dedicated to helping his ailing father keep up with the mortgage on their family home on Boyte Street.89 After his marriage to Mabel Robinson in 1947,

Robert’s definition of family revolved around marriage and children. Following his marriage, Robert was unable to find steady work in Monroe and he again went northward

88 Sugrue, 555

89 Robert’s father had a stroke and fell off one of the train engines at his place of employment which left him unable to work during this period of time. Cohen, 33. 50

in search of economic opportunities. In the post World War Two job market, Williams found it difficult in both the north and the south to obtain anything other than seasonal or temporary work. As part of his migration to California, Robert Williams enlisted in the newly integrated Marine Corps in order to secure a steady job that he felt well suited to.

The Marine recruiter assured Williams that he would receive an appointment that he was “best suited” to. After taking the aptitude test, which indicated that he was best fit for a career as an “information specialist,” the recruiter claimed that the Marines would train Williams in “newspaper and script writing, producing and directing films as well as radio and TV shows.”90 This specialty meshed well with the college courses Robert had taken following his discharge from the army due to demobilization. His period in the

Army during WWII qualified Williams for approximately 18 months of college studies under the new G.I. Bill. Part of his decision to enlist in the Marines was based on a desire to gain more financial aid for college under the existing G.I. Bill. An assignment as an information specialist would allow him to further his education in his chosen profession as writer while earning the ability to return to college and provide for his family in both the long and short term. Instead, he was assigned to an unspecialized unit.

Robert felt that the decision was based solely on the blackness of his skin rather than his demonstrated merit. This became a pattern in the sense that the two things that Williams recalled learning from his time as a Marine were that he enjoyed weapons training and despised the “rampant segregation and discrimination of the Marine Corps.”91

90 Cohen, 65.

91 Christopher Strain, Pure Fire (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 53-54. 51

Williams characterized his service and discharge from the marines in largely unhappy terms. Although the armed services were integrated in 1954, their general practices were steeped in a long tradition of racism that persisted. Section 1 of the 14th

Amendment to the Constitution guarantees “the equal protection of the laws” and the

Supreme Court under Chief Justice Warren had a very “expansive interpretation” of the

“Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses” of the amendment. Chief Justice Warren used this expansive view as the basis for his opinions concerning such matters as integration of the armed forces and the legal decisions including the landmark Brown v.

Board, which started the process of school desegregation.

Unfortunately, liberal ideology at the most elite level of the judicial branch did not necessarily translate into practice for the average citizen. While in the Marine Corps,

Williams found that the ideology and the actions of the average white male operated on older and more entrenched notions. There is also a slippery nature to the “Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses” of the 14th Amendment. Legal scholar Craig Haney describes the Equal Protection Clause of the amendment as “absolutely central to our symbolic legality, yet they are terribly vague and undefined.”92 It is the vague and undefined nature of the amendment that caused concern for Robert Williams and became a focus in some of his writings in The Crusader.

It was an intuitive rather than concrete understanding of these vague yet undefined ideals that led Williams to go from using his masculinity as an identity to his eventual usage of masculinity as a tactic. His duty as a man was to marry, have children,

92 Craig Haney, “The Fourteenth Amendment and Symbolic Legality: Let Them Eat Due Process,” Law and Human Behavior Vol. 15, No. 2 (1991): 184. 52

and provide for and protect that family. These duties went farther than just the traditional role of man as breadwinner, or the masculine duty to produce dependants and monetarily provide for their well being.93

What Williams cited as the main problem for the black community was that the

Constitution of the United States was not enforced properly. Originally, he took the stance that the legalist machinery of the United States applied to all citizens equally. He reasoned that working within this legal framework should provide all American citizens with equal justice. Unfortunately in two legal cases that involved the protection of black women from white men, citizenship did not lead to equal justice. Since the time of slavery white men felt entitled to the bodies of black women. Emancipation did not break many of the cycles of violence and the crimes of rape and attempted rape were very difficult to prosecute when it involved charges brought by black women against white men.94 Courts in Monroe North Carolina and throughout much of the south during this era often pitted two white male lawyers to argue cases in front of a white male judge with a jury of exclusively white males.

These circumstances made it difficult for blacks and especially black women, to get a court that was sympathetic in such cases. There was also a predominant cultural view held by many southern whites that black female bodies were “undesirable” and therefore somehow “not worthy of being raped.”95 The present day perception

93 David Gilmore, 42. David Gilmore among other gender theorists have helped clarify these roles of “attained manhood”.

94 Tyson, 145-147.

95 Ibid., 141-144. 53

concerning rape is that it is a display of male power. These contemporary views completely discount the present day perception that rape is about a display of power by perpetrator and their ability to control the victim rather than aesthetics or perception of beauty in the eyes of the perpetrator.96 Williams reasoned that it was part of his gendered responsibility as a man to protect women of his community from sexual predation, just as he might protect a member of his own family. When the cases were decided in a manner that ignored the personhood of black women and local juries sided with white perpetrators of violence, Robert Williams began to equate masculinity very closely with the right of self-defense. In a very real sense, Williams felt that if the legal machinery would not or could not protect black women, then black men armed with guns must provide that protection through extra-legal action.97

Robert Williams came to the radical viewpoint that black men wielding weapons could repel the sexual and physical abuse of white men toward black women in response to two cases that happened to come to trial on May 5, 1959. The black community of

Monroe was deeply disturbed by the assertion of white male sexuality and power relations that were leveled in an abusive manner toward black women. The first case involved Georgia White who was beaten and kicked down a flight of stairs by Brodus F.

Shaw after Ms. White loudly asked her co-worker if linen in a certain room needed to be changed. Shaw claimed that Ms. White ignored the “Do not disturb” sign and felt that

96 An Groth, W Burgess and LL Holmstrom, “Rape: power, anger, and sexuality,” American Psychiatric Association, 1977; 134: 1239-1243.

97 Robert Williams, Negroes With Guns, 63. 54

the beating was justified. White was treated by Dr. Perry, and Robert Williams drove her home by way of the courthouse to help her press formal charges of assault on Shaw.98

The second case involved a Lewis Medlin who was accused of “aggravated assault with the intent to rape” of Mary Ruth Reed, who was approximately eight months pregnant at the time of the assault.99 Despite the testimony of Reed’s white neighbor

Mrs. Griffin that she witnessed “the white man attack Reed, that the black woman had fled to her neighbor’s door, trembling and bleeding. . . her clothes badly torn.”100 The defense attorney sat Medlin’s wife at Lewis Medlin’s side during the trail and asked

“Your Honor, you see this pure white woman, this pure flower of life. . . do you think that he would leave God’s greatest gift to man, this pure flower, for that[?]”101 In this context the defense attorney effectively put the victim and black womanhood on trail rather than his client. Old backcountry ways and misplaced southern ideals held over from the period of slavery seem to have convinced the jury that either no crime had taken place, or that there was not sufficient evidence from sources deemed reliable to convict

Medlin.

In the first case, Robert recalled “they didn’t even have a hearing, really, in the court. And they didn’t take any evidence against him. And he was acquitted.” The judge ruled that there was no cause for further investigation as there was no case. In the second case, the jury deliberated for a very short time before finding the defendant not

98 Tyson, 145.

99 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, Part 2: 90., Tyson, 148.

100 Tyson, 148.

101 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, Part 2: 90. Negros With Guns, 62. 55

guilty. Based on these two rulings in the same day, several enraged local women came to

Williams who later testified that claimed “that I was responsible for [these men] not being punished. . . And I said from that day forward we would meet violence with violence, we would become our own sheriff, and we would become our own judge and jury, and we would become our own executioner . . . if it requires lynching to stop lynching we would be willing to resort to this.”102 Not only did Williams say this to the enraged women, but he called a press conference the following day to say this to the world. This statement that blacks should “meet violence with violence” shocked the world, and prompted Roy Wilkins of the national branch of the NAACP to suspend

Williams from his position as president for six months. Williams was furious that the national NAACP denied the right of his local chapter to the prerogative of self defense of their community. Perhaps Wilkins disliked the rhetoric that Williams espoused was inflammatory, but the local Monroe chapter had a working class character that knew the indignity of unemployment and underemployment. Hard work, long hours, and bad pay in exchange for backbreaking labor can be transformative. Simple hardworking men often favor direct solutions to their continued problems. Many of the men in the chapter were veterans who knew how to handle firearms and did not fear physical confrontation.

In an area that was plagued by an active Ku Klux Klan that employed firearms as a method of terrorizing the black community, it only seemed logical to the members of the local NAACP branch to be ready to repel the violence of white men through similar tactics. Although the Klan in this area was organized and held various demonstrations,

102 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, Part 2: 90. 56

Robert Williams opened a chapter of the NRA and organized a gun club so that black men and women could hone their proficiency with weapons. Robert deeply felt that it was his right as a man to use flexible tactics and that there was nothing incongruous with starting a branch of the National Rifle Association (NRA). A good number of the males in the Monroe NAACP were veterans of World War II and Williams continued the training of these men in tactics and weapons in order to repel violence. Mabel recalled that “Rob organized a rifle club. We all were members… we started training to learn how to handle weapons and how to shoot.”103 This was in response to threatening telephone calls from the Ku Klux Klan. In conjunction with training in firearms,

Williams felt that it was necessary to demonstrate that men from his gun club were better trained, better armed, and better organized should any physical confrontation occur. By cultivating this skill set in the rifle club as an organization that paralleled the Union

County NAACP Williams was able to demonstrate that yes his groups preferred peaceful demonstration as a road to integration and more full citizenship, but that they were flexible enough to actively resist harassment with the manly prerogative of self- defense.104 In response to his six month NAACP suspension at the 1959 National

Convention Williams ended his protest speech saying “I believe we men should stand up as men and protect our women and children. I am a man, and I will walk upright as a man should. I WILL NOT CRAWL.”105

103 Mabel Williams, Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide, 10-11.

104 Robert Williams, Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide, 11.

105 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1. No 5, July 25, 1959: 1, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 57

In the months and years that followed, Williams was repeatedly asked to clarify his position during speeches and in writing. Ironically, talking about meeting “violence with violence” provided for a path for local women to experience less violence without actually perpetrating any violence. Williams is known as the articulator of a very militant position, but he was never formally charged by authorities as the perpetrator of violence.

His rhetoric and his willingness to show his strength allowed him to never need to apply his apparent capacity for violence.

Although there have only been a few recent studies on Robert Williams, there is a general tendency to portray Williams as an uncompromisingly militant precursor to practitioners of black power. Christopher B. Strain spoke of Williams’s “preference for the fire-and-brimstone retribution of the Old Testament. Apocalyptic in nature, his words recalled those of Nat Turner and other nineteenth-century slaves who rebelled, claiming righteousness in the eyes of God.”106 Timothy Tyson’s Radio Free Dixie does often portray Williams as a man who was unafraid to pick up weapons, but did so as a symbol of power and authority. Weapons could easily have been used as a tool of destruction or execution, but Williams understood the connection between weaponry, masculinity, and the perception of power.

One psychological trick that Williams used effectively was to gain power through a carefully played series of bluffs. In 1960 the NAACP of Union County that Williams headed became the 13th city in North Carolina to join in the lunch-counter sit-ins that were quickly sweeping the nation. Robert had heard of some participants of lunch

106 Strain, 58. 58

counter sit-ins being beaten or otherwise deterred by counter-protesters who dumped condiments on peaceful protesters. In an attempt to counter this behavior, Williams often brought a small gym bag that was rumored to contain a “small machine gun” or

“TNT.”107 When Robert Williams was arrested and formally charged with trespassing in connection with his involvement with a series of sit-ins at Jones’ Drugstore in Monroe, he had the small gym bag with him. While at the police station “a policeman took the bag, put his ear too it to listen for the ticking of a time bomb, then started easing open the zipper very carefully. Everyone in the building seemed to be holding his breath as he slowly reached inside. He appeared greatly disappointed when he found nothing.”108

Through a ruse and rumor, Williams felt that he helped to secure a safer environment to protest in. While students in Nashville who pioneered the tactics of the lunch counter sit-ins were confronted by white teens who “stood in the aisles insulting us, blowing smoke in our faces, grinding cigarette butts on our backs and finally pulling us off our stools and beating us.” 109 Williams was arrested, charged with trespassing, and fined $50, but “the racists didn’t try to touch them.”110 In these early protests there was no bloodshed and Williams delighted in the fact that his group seemed to be making progress in the realm of desegregation without experiencing any retaliation from counter- protesters. They were able to conduct demonstrations in a peaceful manner but they

107 Cohen, 139.

108 Ibid.

109 Juan Williams, 133.

110 Cohen, 139. 59

continued to be denied the right to service at lunch counters. Instead, Jones’s Drugstore closed for the day in response to the repeated protests and eventually closed permanently. 2. Is fighting for your country a path to full employment?

The actions detailed above discuss some of the manners in which Robert Williams helped to protect his community from physical threats of racism. The right to enjoy a meal at a lunch counter was only one facet of the movement. Simply obtaining employment was only a small step in returning black families to a patriarchal position with black men as the financial backbone and example of full citizenship. Following the

Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, Robert and Mabel Williams both wrote pieces in The

Crusader that dealt with issues that surrounded black participation in the armed forces.

These pieces may be considered a critique of the Armed Forces of the United States but the theme of full employment is also explored in these pages. Employment in the Marine

Corps was not a happy experience for Williams and he voiced concerns about the presence of young black men in units that may not accept them as equal partners. At the same time there was concern that the U. S. government was paternalistic toward the new government in Cuba. Both Robert and Mabel Williams expressed concern that the U.S. government viewed Castro’s emerging government as something less than legitimate.

These two issues centered on a certain type of paternalistic attitude. The situation seemed ironic to Robert and Mabel Williams that the U.S. government appeared to be gearing up to use blacks that it did not regard as full citizens to retain Cuba as a pseudo- colony.

60 61

In an open letter addressed to President Kennedy, Mabel Williams wrote about how deploying largely black units to perform in the field of war served as a kind of dual oppression. She was enraged with even the hint that the Kennedy administration would

“take those children in the army” to “fight Cubans who have never done anything to us…

You know that your bible teaches you to love your neighbor and turn the other cheek.”111

The nature of the dual oppression was that blacks with few economic opportunities often resorted to employment in the armed forces. For people of few means the decision to join the armed forces is often viewed as an alternative to poverty. The irony of the situation was that once blacks were accepted into the military, segregation did not disappear. Robert Williams found the Marines especially to be more racist than the civilian world.112

The nature of dual oppression was that segregation and the oppressive situation of day-to-day economic survival often forced black men into the military in an effort to provide for their families economically. Poor economic opportunities for young black men who were unable to obtain gainful employment often forced these men to join a military in the midst of integration, with a history of segregation. Robert Williams served in the Army in a segregated unit attached to the Telephone Linesman School. This segregated unit seemed to exist mostly so that it could perform the majority of heavy

111 Mabel Williams, “Open letter to President Kennedy,” The Crusader Vol. 2 No. 29, April 29, 1961: 8. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Emphasis retained from original.

112 Cohen 86-87. 62

labor including carrying, setting, and climbing splintery telephone poles. The whites in other units often referred to Williams and other black men in his unit as “monkeys.”113

After his discharge from the army, Williams enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was bitterly disappointed to find that integration in the armed forces meant that his experience in the Corps was only marginally different. Williams estimated that blacks only made up 2-3 percent of all men serving in the Corps but 30-40 percent of those serving time in the brig at Camp Pendleton. During the course of his service in the

Marine Corps, Robert frequently complained about his treatment on the basis of his race, which nearly always ended with another sentence to time in the brig. Near the end of his time of service, when it appeared that punishment in the brig was not an effective means of discipline, he was reassigned to duty testing severe cold weather gear in Death Valley.

This detail was given especially to men labeled as “troubled marines.” Once again, it seemed like a disproportionate number of blacks were assigned to this duty. 114

Given these experiences as a baseline, Robert Williams argued that there was a general contempt for blacks serving in the armed forces and he reasoned that it was logical that a disproportionate number of blacks would likely serve on the front lines.

Mabel and Robert feared that those young black men would be deployed to change the situation in Cuba. From their point of view, this would introduce a new form of oppression to the lives of black soldiers. This might turn open the opportunity for those

113 Ibid., 35.

114 Ibid., 78. 63

same young men to one day become military oppressors of Cuba or the Vietnamese under the banner of freedom.115

Williams appeared to heartily agree with his wife on this subject of how the U. S. government employed the armed forces to “police” the rest of the world. It appears that both found these methods to be distasteful. Robert Williams decried the “imperialist dream of filling the vacuum created by the disintegrating colonial empires” and wondered

“Has the United States decree made in nature or an edict granted in Heaven to determine the destiny and course of history off all people’s [sic] for all time? No, a thousand times no.”116

For Williams, the government of the United States had a role in both the non acceptance of blacks as full citizens and in the growing anti-communist sentiment toward

Cuba associated following the events of the then recent Revolution. He appears to have been especially incensed by the Bay of Pigs invasion led by Cuban expatriates trained and armed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Crusader from April 21, 1961 includes a scathing depiction of an “Uncle Tom Negro” pulling on the pants leg of an

“American Imperialist” while he emphatically begs “OH PLEASE MASTER – LET ME

GO TO HELL WID YOU.”117 The American building in the background has a door

115 Mabel Williams “Open letter to President Kennedy” The Crusader Vol. 2 No. 29, April 29, 1961: 8. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

116 Robert Williams, “Hitler’s Protégé”, The Crusader, Vol. 2 No. 29, April 29, 1961: 2, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

117 Robert Williams, “OH PLEASE MASTER – LET ME GO TO HELL WID YOU,” The Crusader, Vol. 2 No. 29, April 29, 1961: 1, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Please note that the editorial commentary was written by Robert Williams while the cartoon is unattributed but similar in style to other cartoons that appear in the pages of The Crusader that were attributed to Mabel Williams. 64

marked “White Only” and a sign on the side of the building which says “Imperialists –

Si! Cuba – No!” The cartoon challenges African Americans to reject imperialism, and implied that only a cowardly “Uncle Tom” would willingly go down the same “path to hell” as the cigar chomping southern white imperialist. (See illustration 1)

The white imperialist in this depiction has much in common with the general white population who stoically denies African Americans access to full employment or maintains the status quo in the area of integration in the south. The imperialist is much larger than the fawning Uncle Tom who begs to go to hell with his white master. It is also interesting to note the battle flag of the Confederacy is flown not just side by side with the flag of the United States, but slightly higher. In this cartoon it becomes apparent that both Mr. and Mrs. Williams began to equate the international policy of the

Eisenhower administration toward Cuba as just as inappropriate as the administration’s domestic policy toward blacks. Both of these policies were rooted in paternalistic attitudes and were emblematic of maintaining white supremacy in a domestic or an international sphere. 65

Illustration #1 “OH PLEASE MASTER – LET ME GO TO HELL WID YOU.”118

Williams revealed his fear that as blacks gained greater access to enlisting in the

Armed Forces as a means of employment that the process was tricking African

Americans into doing the dirty work of the U. S. government. He hoped that this did not include oppressing their Cuban neighbors. Following the regime change in Cuba, a group of African American intellectuals named the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” began to advocate on behalf of the revolutionary government.119 As Robert Williams

118 Mabel Williams, “OH PLEASE MASTER – LET ME GO TO HELL WID YOU,” The Crusader, Vol. 2 No. 29, April 29, 1961: 1, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

119 Tyson, 226. 66

became associated with this group he was able to travel to Cuba twice in 1960. This assemblage of images was in part a reaction to the conditions that he observed during these two visits.

Williams concluded that Cuba was becoming a “black paradise” based on his observations that Afro Cubans were able to move freely about and used the same facilities as whites in their everyday lives. Further, when Williams met “slum dwellers, farmers and factory workers” in Cuba, they voiced the opinion that the Revolutionary

Government had immensely improved their material situation.120 Williams found the freedom and acknowledgement of the personhood of Afro Cubans to be a refreshing change from the formal Jim Crow segregation of the American South. The cartoon challenged African Americans to look at the events of the Cuban Revolution and reach their own conclusion regarding the merit of the emerging government there. The “Uncle

Tom” was so concerned with gaining the attention and favor of white Americans that he was willing to go any length to gain that favor - even if it meant going down the path to hell. Williams urged his readers to think critically about freedom and citizenship, and reject “an atmosphere of hysteria and false logic.”121

Based upon his personal experiences in Cuba during these two visits with the

“Fair Play for Cuba Committee” Williams concluded that a lack of segregation coupled with the beautiful climate could turn Cuba into a vacation hot spot for black families like his. Further, the cartoon effectively summarizes some of the ideals of the “Fair Play for

120 Cohen 144-5.

121 “Hitler’s Protégé” found in “The Crusader” Vol. 2, No. 29 April 29, 1961: 1, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 67

Cuba Committee” in the sense that there was a growing feeling that Fidel Castro was building a more progressive Cuba. This was a clear reversal of the policies of Fulgencio

Batista.

Batisata was responsible for two major trends during his reign as dictator from

1952-1959. Ever since the end of the Spanish-American War, which granted Cuba independence, U. S. companies craved political stability, which Batista as dictator sought to provide when “he suspended civil liberties, shut down congress, postponed the presidential elections, and suspended all political parties.”122 These anti-democratic trends provided proof that the Batista regime was completely in control of the island and that there was no need for intervention on the part of the Eisenhower administration. If this proof had not been there, if instead there were indicators of instability, many Cubans felt that the U. S. government would jump at any pretense to invade the island and officially return it to the status of colonial possession. The second trend was that the pre- revolutionary Cuban government continued to sink deeper into malfeasance, embezzlement, and various forms of corruption and graft.123

During the period of Batista’s dictatorship, there was a concerted effort to expand the Cuban economy beyond the traditional sugar economy. A major part of this effort focused on making Cuba’s beaches and casinos a major destination for vacationers from the United States. This included the expansion of casinos from three in 1952 to thirty- one in Havana by 1958. There is evidence that this increase in the number of casinos was

122 Paul J. Dosal, Cuba Libre: A Brief History of Cuba (Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc, 2006), 67.

123 Ibid. 68

followed by a corresponding expansion in the number of bribes and favors to policemen and other low level local officials who “allowed” these activities to go on. 124

The major financial backing for this expansion came from the American underworld including known gangster Meyer Lansky who made a few “well placed bribes” to Fulgencio Batista in the 1940s during his tenure as president of Cuba. Soon after Batista returned to power in 1952 he named Lansky as his “advisor on gambling reform” to help establish the Cuban casinos as fair and desirable places for tourists from the United States to travel to during the winter months.125 The irony of naming a member of the infamous mafia group “The Syndicate,” to ensure the fairness of gaming at Cuban casinos was not lost upon the general public of Cuba. In many ways, it was just one more indicator of exactly how corrupt the pre-revolutionary government was.

During this same period, there was an increase in the number of cabarets and bordellos along with an associated increase in prostitution and commercialized sex shows. There were certain segments of the Havana underworld that were divided up between American mobsters and local Cubans. Many of the strip clubs and brothels were run by Cubans while the “U.S. mobsters concerned themselves with controlling the casinos, nightclubs, banks, political leaders, and gross national product of the island.”126

The general consensus was that many native Cubans found these trends repugnant thus political groups and revolutionaries of all political stripes took a variety of actions to

124 T.J. English, Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and then Lost it to the Revolution (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 216.

125 Ibid., 95.

126 English, 216. 69

end the dictatorship of Batista. Fidel Castro was able to use this sort of information to great effect to delineate how the Batista regime was not truly “Cuban” and in fact represented an outside and alien faction. After the successful guerrilla insurgency lead by

Castro the new government that emerged never seemed to be regarded by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations as genuine or stable. Robert Williams was frustrated by the

U. S. government’s distaste for the government of Fidel Castro. From his perspective, the new government was enacting meaningful changes in the areas of land reform, education, and medical care that he felt would give “serfs who once tilled the soil without hope of ever rising to a level of human dignity can now expect a new lease on life.”127

Although the reforms that Williams observed were a striking change from the corruption of Batista, the government of the United States opposed the revolutionary government based on the politics of the Cold War which Williams commented that

“Castro’s main trouble with America seems to be that he won’t bring himself and his

Cuba into the orbit of American satellites.”128 The implication was that blacks should not support actions that Williams implied were patently imperialistic. He also felt that while the new Cuban government was concerned with wiping out persistent poverty and was concerned with bettering the lives of people on the bottom rungs of society, the U.S. government had no similar concerns. In fact, it seemed that the general policy of the U.S. government ignored those on the bottom or actively accelerated the separation between the “haves” and “have nots” in American society. It was especially troubling to Williams

127 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1, No. 24 December 5, 1959: 9, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

128 Ibid. 70

that many members of the lower class in the United States also happened to be African

American.

The accompanying article named “Hitler’s Protégé” was a polemical reaction to the Bay of Pigs invasion. Williams drew parallels between the President Kennedy and the infamous Nazi leader saying “Hitler’s ambition of conquest was deliberately cloaked in the deceptive garb of German national security and well being.”129 This passage directly charged that the goal of the Bay of Pigs invasion was no less than the military conquest of Cuba disguised as a move to improve the national security of the United

States. Further, he asserted that “Afro-Americans must demand their own freedom now before being marched off to another war for the cause of international democracy that the black man will never share so long as imperialism wins.”130 The United States could not afford to allow this incident to escalate into a full-scale conflict.

The paternalist attitude of many Americans toward African Americans and the apparent paternalism of the U. S. government toward Cuba had much in common. Just as white supremacists maintained the idea that blacks should be relegated to a status of second class citizenship, there was a parallel set of ideals that felt that Cuba was somehow unable to survive without the guidance of the United States. It is also interesting to note the complex shades of Robert’s and Mabel’s stances on the role of violence and imperialism. While they both decried the use of force as a tool of statecraft, they did not have a problem with the use of weapons for personal defense. Neither

129 Robert Williams, “Hitler’s Protégé,” The Crusader, Vol. 2, No. 29 April 29, 1961: 1, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

130 Ibid., 2. 71

Robert nor Mabel embraced a stance of pure or obligatory non-violence but instead

Robert especially often argued that his rights as a man allowed him to own and use weapons to defend his rights as a citizen. In accordance with his notion of full citizenship for all men, he stated that “The principle of self defense is an American tradition that began at Lexington and Concord.”131 In this sense self defense was formulated as universal for all citizens and did not rest exclusive as a right of white supremacists.

131 Robert Williams, Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide, 8. 3. The Dr. Perry Abortion Case: Employment should be based on aptitude rather than Racial Politics.

Similar to the situation in which Robert Williams found the Marine Corps to be a racist institution that would not allow him to pursue specialized training that he had demonstrated aptitude for, Dr. Albert Perry was not able to fully practice medicine in an independent manner. Mabel Williams voiced the opinion that segregated society placed undue barriers in which “we just could not make the kind of living that other young people, white people, were making. Every time we’d start to try to rise up, somebody was always trying to put us back down in our place.”132 Denial of employment even in entry-level positions was a continued problem for Williams, who was a trained machinist during the war but after he returned to Monroe in 1955, he found great difficulty in obtaining employment and eventually settled for a job as a night watchman. As Mr. and

Mrs. Williams increased their involvement with the NAACP, the insurance policies on their car, home, and life suddenly and “mysteriously” were canceled in 1956.133

Williams cited this and other evidence to make a case to his biographer Robert

Cohen that white supremacist groups in Monroe were covertly waging a concerted economic campaign against himself and members of the Union County NAACP chapter.

This economic campaign also extended to the vice-president of the chapter, Dr. Albert

132 Mabel Williams, Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide, 6.

133 Cohen, 95.

72 73

Perry. Despite Dr. Perry’s status as a well educated and board certified Medical Doctor

(M.D), he was largely restricted in his practice to providing medical care to blacks and low income whites. Robert Williams was a good friend of Perry’s from the time that they served together in the Army during the waning days of World War II, and then they were reunited through their work with the NAACP. Dr. Perry was a physician who often helped those “who otherwise could secure no help because of their destitute conditions.”134 Mabel Williams recalled how Dr. Perry often “walked through mud for miles to reach an expectant mother” even on occasions when the back roads were impassable due to rain or terrain.135 The community at large repaid Dr. Perry’s faithful execution of his profession with “ostracism by some of the so-called ‘big shot’ Negroes and great pressure… from the bigoted whites.”136

Williams chose to highlight the abortion case in the pages of The Crusader due to his view that the case was emblematic of two larger problems within the black community, both of which revolved around the ideals of masculinity. The first was the problem of gaining and maintaining meaningful employment, and the second was the issue of equal justice for all citizens. Williams felt that full employment was a pre- requisite for full citizenship. Without employment, it was difficult to cultivate or maintain the status of a traditional patriarchal bread winner. These themes were explored

134 Mabel Williams, “Looking Back,” The Crusader, Vol. 1, No 17, October 17, 1959: 4, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

135 Ibid.

136 Ibid. 74

in a series of articles starting in October 1959 and much of 1960. 137 The unfortunate conflict for many whites in the area involved the willingness of a community to allow a black man to perform his trade in service of white clients.138 Some of the concern involved the fact that Dr. Perry often delivered babies for low income white women who otherwise might have had no care from physicians. While it did not directly break the taboo of black men having sexual intercourse with white women, the act of assisting in such a personal procedure was considered by many concerned citizens to break social and cultural ideals of propriety.

The major case that The Crusader focused so much attention on concerned a white woman named Lillie Mae Rape. On the 9th of September, 1959 Ms. Rape asked

Dr. Perry to perform an abortion. She was pregnant with what would have been her fifth child, at nearly the same time that her husband had an accident which cost them hundreds of dollars. Their lack of insurance compounded these problems due to the fact that her husband’s accident took the majority of the family savings.139 Further, Ms. Rape was the primary breadwinner for the family following her husband’s accident and being pregnant would have made it difficult to perform her duties as a nurse. This combination of these concerns brought her to the conclusion that termination of her pregnancy was desirable despite the illegality of such a procedure.

137 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1, No. 17, October 17, 1959: 2, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

138 Conrad Lynn to Robert Williams, June 24, 1964, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

139 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1, No 29, January16, 1960: 3, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. The article does not specify whether the “accident” involved a car, personal injury, or exactly what the full nature of the “accident” was. What is clear was the fact that Mr. and Ms. Rape felt severe economic hardship as a result of the incident. 75

The testimony of Dr. Perry reveals that he attempted on several occasions to dissuade Ms. Rape from her chosen course of action. Dr. Perry also indicated that it is likely that he did not even perform an abortion saying that “I did not sterilize any instruments nor did I let her go away bleeding. I did not do anything to her.”140 In addition to the fact that Dr. Perry likely did not perform the requested procedure, it appears that Ms. Rape was not a complaining witness in the case. Instead, Ms. Rape testified that “They examined me before my doctor did… I am interested in seeing Dr.

Perry convicted if that’s the law. It doesn’t Matter to me if he is convicted. I have not hired private prosecution. I have not paid Mr. Richardson. I haven’t got a thing to do with it but testify.”141 Her testimony alludes to outside forces within the community acting with an agenda of their own rather than on her behalf.

Robert and Mabel chose to include these details in the pages of The Crusader to illustrate how southern courts treated African Americans. Not only was Dr. Perry’s skill as a physician on trial, but apparently his ability to serve as a reliable witness in his own defense. The alleged act involved the performance of a very personal and intimate procedure. While it was actually a case concerning abortion, much of the court proceedings were conducted more as if Dr. Perry were on trial for rape, and just as in a typical rape case; issues of sexuality and race appear to have trumped the physical evidence presented in the case. There is indication that Ms. Rape may have conceived

140 From the Official Transcript of State V. A.E. Perry, reprinted in The Crusader, Vol. 2. No 39, March 26, 1960: 6, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

141 Official Transcript of State V. A.E. Perry, Reprinted in The Crusader, Vol. 1. No 29, January 16, 1960 :3, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Note that these court proceedings were reprinted in The Crusader over the period of several months with a few pages in each issue. 76

this fetus during an affair with a black orderly while she was employed as a nurse.

Southern tradition holds that intercourse between a black man and a white woman was among the highest of cultural taboos.142 Similarly, southern sensibilities also defined abortion as a similar personal interaction not to be performed by the same parties. It was on this point that the outside community felt the need to intervene. If this were an incident in which a black doctor had set the broken leg of a white woman, there likely would have been no cause for concern, nor would there have been a court case associated with it. It was the perceived sexual nature and the definition of this procedure as inappropriate by the community that made the incident into a politically charged criminal proceeding.

Robert Williams observed that “It has always been considered a southern virtue for the white Christian gentleman to protect their noble women.”143 To that end, Mr.

Richardson traveled 37 miles to volunteer his services as private prosecutor to “see the state’s job well done.”144 Other “white rabid Christian gentlemen” provided services to guarantee that Ms. Rape “was lodged in Monroe’s finest ‘C’ grade hotel. She was escorted royally by policemen [to and from all courtroom proceedings] and dined like the

Queen of Sheba.”145 These efforts were not necessarily due to genuine concern for Ms.

Rape, but likely were due to the cause of “protecting her virtue.”

142 Tyson 90-92.

143 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1. No 17, October 17, 1959: 2, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

144 Ibid.

145 Ibid. 77

Through the efforts of Mr. Richardson and the testimony of Ms. Rape, Dr. Perry received a prison sentence of 2-3 years at Caledonia Prison Farm in Halifax County as punishment for performing an illegal abortion.146 While Dr. Perry was serving his sentence at Caledonia, there was a hearing concerning his license to practice medicine in the state of North Carolina. Dr. Perry was granted a three day pass from prison to attend his hearing. His white colleague Dr. S. A. Pope of Beuldville also had a hearing the same day concerning his license. Dr. Pope pled guilty to providing an abortion but was not jailed for performing the procedure. Further, Dr. Pope was easily able to attend his hearing due to his suspended sentence. Dr. Perry, on the other hand, needed a special pass from prison to discuss the allegation that he performed an illegal abortion. There was no evidence presented that confirmed that he actually performed the procedure. At the end of the day, Drs. Perry and Pope both had their licenses to practice medicine in

North Carolina revoked, but Dr. Pope went home, while Dr. Perry went back to jail.147

In addition to the issue of a man being able to execute the responsibilities of his profession, Robert Williams viewed this case as highly indicative of the unequal justice of the south. Unequal justice is an indicator of unequal degrees of citizenship. The punishments were also unequal given the strong evidence presented in Dr. Pope’s case versus the complete lack of evidence presented against Dr. Perry. The biggest discernable difference in the cases was the race of the accused. There is no indication that Dr. Pope was better qualified to perform the procedure, further he actually admitted

146 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1. No 29, January 16, 1960: 2, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

147 Ibid. 78

his guilt and role in the performance of an abortion. Dr. Perry had the same licensing and training as Dr. Pope but in his case, there was no physical evidence that he performed an abortion. The simple accusation of the act was enough to see Dr. Perry convicted and sent to jail as punishment for an act that there is more than reasonable doubt to conclude he in fact did.

The Dr. Perry abortion case represents an intersection of multiple interests. Some people in the community were concerned that the pregnancy was the result of Ms. Rape having a relationship with a black man. Sexuality between Ms. Rape and one of her black coworkers was implied but not substantiated. Performance of an abortion by Dr.

Perry was also asserted but not proved. The implication was that Dr. Perry was somehow

“covering up” for the sexual indiscretions of a black man, that he was somehow abusing the power of his station to destroy evidence of sexual congress between an associate of his and their former coworker Ms. Rape.

There were a great number of possibilities as to why some members of the community were concerned in these matters enough to “legally lynch” Dr. Perry. There is a difference between simple survival and the ability to succeed or thrive in an environment. Dr. Perry had the training and skills that many of his white colleagues utilized in order to thrive in their communities. Dr. Perry was hampered in his pursuit of a career that the community certainly had a demonstrated need for. Despite his training and expertise there was an apparent effort to destroy his practice due to a variety of concerns. Some detractors may have been concerned with the fact that Ms. Rape had an abortion performed at all. Another segment of the population evidently had a problem 79

with the idea that a black doctor allegedly performed a personal procedure on a white woman. Another segment of the population was concerned about the inequality of southern justice. All of these concerns came together for quite a charged community wide discussion on what was essentially a disagreement over an intersection of values involving the question of gender, race, and a woman’s right to choose.

Did Ms. Rape or Dr. Perry act improperly in this instance? Robert Williams approached these issues in his writing from two different viewpoints. First of all, Robert was disgusted by the reaction of the community of white, “Christian,” men who felt honor bound to “get” Dr. Perry in an exercise that Williams viewed as a legal effort to jail

Dr. Perry, or at least destroy his practice.148 Ms. Rape’s unfortunate role in this exercise was as a pawn of the white establishment to wield as a weapon against a black professional. Secondly, Williams approached the matter from the standpoint that a trained professional should have the right to freely pursue his vocation without being hampered by racial ideology that assigned certain vocations to white men and others to blacks. In Robert’s mind, any properly trained physician should receive the same pay and respect regardless of race, and they should be able to perform any procedure that is in the best interest of their patients.

148 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1. No 29, January 16, 1960: 3, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 4. How we fight is just as important as the causes that we champion: A Debate on the Tactics of the Civil Rights Movement

During the periods of slavery and reconstruction, extralegal violence was the ace- in-the-hole of white supremacists. Robert Williams sought to break that monopoly on the capacity for violence to keep the peace in the civil rights era. The key to breaking the monopoly was to “not introduce violence into a racist social system - the violence is already there, and has always been there. It is precisely the unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself. . . . We have shown in Monroe that with violence working both ways constituted law will be more inclined to keep the peace.”149

Violence by whites and especially violence perpetrated by members of the Ku Klux Klan was condoned or ignored. Williams and his followers found that by demonstrating prowess with weapons that it brought a new sort of attention to situations as well as prevented extra-legal violence from occurring.

This stance led to a public discussion between Robert Williams and Martin

Luther King Jr. on the subject of tactics to be employed by the Civil Rights Movement.

Both Williams and King could agree on the idea “that legislation and court orders tend

149 “On the Ultra Right,” New York World-Telegram Sunday, July 23, 1965. Reprinted in Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, part 2, March 24, 1970, (Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1971), 150.

80 81

only to declare rights; they can never thoroughly deliver them.”150 The debate for these two men centered on how best to agitate in favor of greater rights for African Americans.

Dr. King observed that “Token integration is a developing pattern. This type of integration is merely an affirmation of a principle without the substance of change.”151

This ideal was far more than an abstraction for King or for Williams. In their own spheres they were working for the ideal of full integration. Williams was very much a front line grassroots organizer. The focus of Negroes with Guns is a narrative of how

Robert Williams and Dr. Albert Perry worked together to build up from a two-man chapter of the NAACP in Monroe to the most working class, militant chapter in the nation. Much of their important work in Union County involved recruiting a different class of previously voiceless veterans, day laborers, and domestics and bringing them to a group that focused on integration on a local level. The group integrated the Monroe library without a fight and participated in lunch counter sit ins, and swimming pool

“wade-ins” to advocate for the right to use the local pool one day a week, all in a non- violent manner.152

Even though the general tactics employed during their daily struggle were largely non-violent, King engaged Williams in a rhetorical debate on tactics following Robert’s statement regarding the necessity to “Meet violence with violence.” King wrote about the “Negro of 1959” and how there were two general types of response to the frustrations

150 Martin Luther King, Jr., “Hate is Always Tragic,” in Robert Williams, Negroes With Guns (Marzani & Munsell 1962; reprint Chicago: Third World Press, 1973), 9.

151 King, “The Social Organization of Non-violence,” in Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 11.

152 Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 51, 42. 82

of life in a segregated society. King summarized one approach as “the development of a wholesome social organization to resist with effective, firm measures any efforts to impede progress. The other is a confused, anger-motivated drive to strike back violently, to inflict damage. Primarily, it seeks to cause injury to retaliate for wrongful suffering.

Secondarily, it seeks real progress. It is punitive - not radical or constructive.”153

Robert Williams’s position as articulated in the pages of The Crusader and in

Negroes with Guns can be summarized by the following ideas: Williams argued that first and foremost, African Americans must not be afraid to resolutely defend their rights not just with carefully thought out rhetoric, but with actions. Those actions can take a variety of forms including picketing, lunch counter sit-ins, and demonstrations, but Robert

Williams asserted in Negroes with Guns that it was only through the use of weapons that he escaped death on multiple occasions.154 In a variety of situations Williams experienced the hatred of the Ku Klux Klan, the Minutemen, and other racist white supremacist organizations that threatened Williams directly or members of groups headed by Williams with violence.

Secondly, African Americans must change their image of the world around themselves. A good number of articles present in The Crusader collectively create a long term theme that highlights the generalized need for paradigm shift within the minds of the

African American community. By shifting paradigms, Robert and Mabel make the subtle argument that there is a better world out on the horizon, as long as they and their readers

153 King, “The Social Organization of Non-violence,” in Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns,12.

154 Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns, 46,64,73,84. 83

are willing to organize and agitate. With these ideals in mind, there are a number of articles that discuss the features of a fully integrated society, proposed steps to get closer to that ideal, and tactics for addressing situations in which peaceful protesters are inevitably challenged.

As part of their discussion with King, Mabel Williams spoke a bit about her objections to pure Gandhian non-violence in an open letter to President Kennedy.

Gandhi spoke of redemptive suffering, the idea that when the world observes overt brutality; the average human will sympathize with those who endure the brutality and condemn the perpetrators of violence.155 The gist of Mabel’s piece in The Crusader asked if teens and young adults who were trained in the tactics of pure non-violence were less fit for later military service. In the article addressed “Dear Mr. Kennedy” Mabel revealed to her readers the violence involved in non-violent workshops recalling that

“Rev. King, the NAACP, C.O.R.E., and many other organizations trained our children how to ‘take it’ on the front lines. They had classes where the instructors slapped our boys and girls, spat in their faces and even kicked them to see if they could ‘take it.”156

And the punishment for reacting was that these trainees could not participate in non- violent direct protests. Later in the letter Mabel continued to wonder if young adults trained in this manner could ever “fight anybody ever again, white or colored… [if] it

155 Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 6.

156 Mabel Williams, “Open letter to President Kennedy,” 3. 84

was immoral to use violence” even if these same people were drafted by the army and forced to fight to “preserve (?) democracy in Cuba!”157

Rev. King was famous for his work with the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the work of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) “Freedom Riders.” These were just two manners in which Rev. King proposed that “socially organized masses on the march” be marshaled in the cause of Civil Rights.158 The general idea of the Freedom Rides was to fill buses with integrated passengers on routes that passed over state lines. It was a direct test of the Irene Morgan Supreme Court decision of 1946, which ruled that

“segregated seating of interstate passengers was unconstitutional.”159 The Freedom

Riders planned to travel from Washington D.C. to New Orleans, Louisiana. The trip was scheduled from May 4, 1961 until May 17 and proposed to follow a route through

Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and end in Louisiana.160 On Sunday May 14th the first bus was attacked by approximately 200 angry southerners resulting in the tires being slashed, the bus was fire bombed and the passengers were severely beaten resulting in the paralysis of William Barbee and Jim Peck needing fifty stitches to close his various wounds.161

Robert Williams applauded the efforts of the Freedom Riders commenting that

“The ‘Freedom Riders’ are striking a mighty blow. All Afro-Americans who are

157 Ibid.

158 King, “The Social Organization of Non-violence,” in Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 14.

159 Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965 (Penguin Books: New York, 1987), 145.

160 Ibid.,148.

161 Ibid., 148-149. 85

enlightened enough to want freedom must support them.162 After being beaten on two separate occasions during the Freedom Rides, Jim Peck commented that “I think it is particularly important at this time when it has become national news that we continue and show that nonviolence can prevail over violence.”163 Historian Lance Hill holds up Rev.

King’s ability to effectively use moral suasion and unwavering dedication to nonviolence as the glue that kept the coalition between black and white liberal northerners together.

Although Rev. King was the rhetorical champion of nonviolence, Robert

Williams read the newspapers describing the incidents that accompanied the Freedom

Rides and wondered why King refused to participate. Williams found these actions to be hypocritical, saying that “Gandhi was a leader who lead by example and suffered with his people. Gandhi never asked his followers to make any sacrifice that he was not himself willing to make.”164 An essential component of this tactical debate between Robert

Williams and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., involves the perceived manliness of these tactics. Despite his critique of Rev. King, Williams clearly felt that these efforts were in search of real progress. In summary of the nonviolent movement Williams wrote “The struggles of the Freedom Riders and Sit-In Movements have concentrated on a single goal: the right to eat at a lunch counter, the right to sit anywhere on a bus. These are important rights because their denial is a direct personal assault on a Negro’s dignity.”165

162 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 2. No 31, June 5, 1961: 2, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

163Juan Williams, 149.

164 Robert Williams, “A Disappointing King,” The Crusader, Vol. 2. No 31, June 5, 1961: 2, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 86

Robert Williams was truly inspired by the events of the Freedom Ride and as the president of the NAACP of Union County drafted a petition that was presented to the

Monroe Board of Aldermen. The petition called for new policies that would help to speed the reversal of Jim Crow segregation especially in industry practices for hiring and firing of black workers. Similarly steps to desegregate schools, remove “White” and

“Colored” signs from public facilities should be removed from the city. In addition to these general provisions, Williams added provision number eight which pertained only to the reinstatement of Dr. Albert E. Perry, Jr. MD and his license to practice medicine.

This more specific provision echoes the other more general positions of the petition; that black men and women needed to be able to live and work within Monroe, North Carolina as full and free citizens.166

Following the issuance of this petition, seventeen “Freedom Riders” came to

Monroe, at Williams’s invitation, to aid the NAACP of Union County to picket on behalf of the aims of the above petition.167 In their long term debate, Rev. King wrote that “Mr.

Robert Williams would have us believe that there is no collective and practical alternative. He argues that [in employing the tactics of nonviolent direct action] we must be cringing and submissive or take up arms. To so place the issue distorts the whole problem. There are meaningful alternatives.”168 In both Negroes with Guns and the

165 Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 75.

166 See Appendix A for the full contents of this petition which Robert Williams included in the text of Negroes with Guns, 75-76.

167 Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 77.

168 King, “The Social Organization of Non-violence,” in Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 13. 87

pages of The Crusader Williams posed the general assertion that “The white man’s great limelight has given him [Martin Luther King, Jr.] too much to risk in an all out struggle for liberation… We understood that he had threatened to fill up the jails – of course, he meant with persons other than himself.”169 The implication was that Williams felt that

King was too much of a “sissy” and that a true man would risk his own blood for the good of the movement. Robert and Mabel Williams felt that Rev. King was supporting the movement with rhetoric and encouraging young blacks to protest, but when it came to taking personal action that King was not “manly” enough to risk his own blood in the struggle.

Robert Williams and others began to assert that as tax paying citizens, members of the black community should reap the benefits of public services. This led the chapter to target the public pool at the Monroe Country Club to encourage steps toward integration starting in 1957. The first step proposed by Williams and the NAACP was to set aside the pool for black use on one or two days a week. This small request was based on a series of tragedies involving young black boys who drowned in local creeks while local white children received free water safety and swimming lessons at a pool funded by

$200,000 from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and $31,000 in local tax revenue.170

The local city council answered that it would be overly expensive to change the water after blacks used the pool to allow for such measures. Instead, the city council

169 Robert Williams, “A Disappointing King”, 3.

170 Tyson, 83., Robert Williams Negroes with Guns, 42. 88

suggested that there was a possibility that a separate pool would be designated for use by black patrons that might be built some time in the future. In the summer of 1961,

Williams and his branch of followers started to wage what they called “wade-ins” in which Robert would gather groups of young teens to come to the Country Club to ask for admission to the pool. When they were denied access, they went back to their car to grab picket signs to protest the segregation of the pool while young blacks were drowning in local swimming holes.

Robert Williams renewed the campaign at the public pool in August 1961. The campaign that started in 1957 revealed how much of a hot-button issue the integrated use of the public swimming pool was. During this second campaign there were incidents in which whites shot weapons above the heads of black picketers, and a particularly heated incident ended with Robert pointing his .45 caliber pistol at a young white man who purposefully rammed Williams’s small car. 171 Following this incident it seemed to

Williams that the campaign needed a new approach. In keeping with his ideals of

“flexible struggle” he invited the nonviolent Freedom Riders to come to Monroe in support of the goals of the above petition. Also it appears that Williams wanted to test advocates of nonviolence in a very direct manner.

Williams used tactics in which he personally invested his time and risked his own blood on the front lines. He didn’t just organize the pickets at the swimming pool; he drove his personal vehicle to pick up local teens interested in swimming. When they were denied entry to the pool, he led the demonstrations. When these demonstrations

171 Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 46. 89

looked as if they were spiraling out of control, he personally protected the group that he was with and negotiated their safe return home.172 When the counter protesters ramped up their show of violence, Williams bore the personal risk and felt that there were two occasions upon which white supremacists directly threatened his life and he answered in person and in the pages of The Crusader, and again in his book Negroes with Guns.173

It is this high degree of personal and if need be physical involvement that

Williams felt embodied true masculinity. It was also this personal involvement that led

Robert to the conclusion that something needed to change in the methodology that his branch took. At the same time he expressed that “Freedom is never voluntarily extended by oppressors” but Williams was willing to test his convictions.174

The events of this series of protests have been well documented in chapter 10:

“Freedom Rider” of historian Timothy Tyson’s work Radio Free Dixie: Robert F.

Williams & the Roots of Black Power. The majority of the seven days of protests were carried out by the Freedom Riders in conjunction with The Monroe Nonviolent Action

Committee.175 After three days of nonviolent protests, antics by the city to disrupt the protests, and the threat of increasingly violent counter-protests, the conflict became substantially tenser on Thursday through Sunday, with the most violent action on Sunday

August 27, 1961. A variety of incidents occurred in which peaceful protesters were

172 Ibid.

173 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 2. No. 33, June 24, 1961: 1, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan., Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 43.

174 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1. No 26, December 19, 1959: 1, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

175 Tyson, 268. 90

knocked down, spat upon and even shot with a pellet gun by the police and counter- protesters. The city of Monroe even went as far as to spray insecticide on the picket line to deter further action.176

Robert Williams described the escalation “On Sunday, August 27, after many days of non-violent protest, the Freedom Riders were violently attacked by a mob of

5,000 racists… The police armed racist Minutemen and Ku Klux Klanners in open view of the main street.”177 Williams attributed a large part of the ensuing chaos to the actions of the chief of police who “drove through the county [on Sunday morning] urging whites to come to town to fight the Freedom Riders.”178 As the peaceful protest turned into a near-riot, James Foreman recognized that the situation was deteriorating and used his authority as a picket captain to call Robert Williams at home. This conversation led

Williams to call the “Negro cab company” to request that four cabs come to pick up the picketers at 4:00 P.M.179

At 4:30 P.M. the cab company called to report that all the streets to the courthouse square were blocked. At nearly the same time, members of Robert’s chapter of the

National Rifle Association (NRA) reported that “the mob had started to attack the picket line, that shots had been fired” and so the group returned to the scene with Julian

176 Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 79, 80.

177 Robert Williams to Mr. J. K. Lumpp, January 30, 1964, personal correspondence of Robert Williams, reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

178 Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 83.

179 Ibid. 91

Mayfield.180 Mayfield was present due to his commitment to the general cause, and personally to Robert after the New York intellectual had met Williams through their mutual interest in the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

Julian Mayfield and members of Robert Williams’s NRA affiliated Black Guard went down to the courthouse in their private cars to extract the picketers and take them out of harm’s way. Their goal was to save 26 protesters from an estimated crowd of

2,000-5,000 counter-protesters.181 The angry throngs included Confederate battle flags and signs including “Open Season on Coons’ and ‘Death to All Niggers and Nigger

Lovers.”182 Extracting a young white Englishwoman out of the situation proved exceedingly difficult as the crowd did not want to see a white woman in the same car as several young black men. During that particular incident, James Forman was threatened with both an automatic shotgun in his face and a long knife that caused Foreman to feel

“a surge of horror and fear at the inescapable thought that he might be castrated.”183 The tactics of nonviolent direct action are certainly manly from the standpoint that Foreman faced the threat of being shot at near point black range or being castrated, with only his wits. When Foreman bravely shoved the young woman into the car, the man with the shotgun smashed Foreman in the head with the barrel of the gun, which caused blood to

“erupt” from his scalp. With Foreman’s blood flowing freely, “three white cops, four

180 Robert Williams, Negroes with Guns, 83. Julian Mayfield was a black intellectual from Harlem and member of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.” He and Williams met during their speaking tours in Cuba and the two kept in sporadic correspondence throughout much of the 1960s as evidenced by their shared correspondence housed at Bentley Historical Library that are part the Robert F. Williams collection.

181 Tyson, 272.

182 Ibid.

183 Ibid., 273. 92

black men” and the English woman all climbed into the car and darted through the crowd at high speed.184 This episode echoed Williams’s observation that “Nonviolence is a very potent weapon when the opponent is civilized, but nonviolence is no repellant for a sadist.”185

Following the extraction of the 26 protesters, the crowd in courthouse square did not disperse until much later that night. Robert Williams reported that some racist whites conducted “hit and run raids on our community firing from their car windows.”186 One of those cars was driven by Mr. and Mrs. G. Bruce Stegall, who were allegedly white supremacists who ventured into the black section of town near the Williams residence on

Boyte Street. Many men in the crowd recognized the Stegall car as being the one with the inflammatory message “Open Season on Coons” on a banner earlier in the day.

Feeling the insult to their race and manhood, the car was stopped by “an angry crowd of about 300 Negroes” who “insisted on killing them.”187 It was very symbolic that Mr.

Stegall brought his wife with him for this particular raid, as much of the Klan rhetoric involved defending white womanhood.188 The two white supremacists would have been no match for 300 Black men and women, many of whom were armed.189

184 Tyson, 273-274. All parties involved survived the incident, but never forgot the day. The young woman named Constance Lever, James Foreman and Julian Mayfield were all important sources for Timothy Tyson.

185 Robert Williams, “Should Negroes Resort to Violence?,” Liberation, September 1959, quoted in Christopher Strain, Pure Fire, 53.

186 Robert Williams to Mr. J. K. Lumpp, January 30, 1964, personal correspondence of Robert Williams, reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

187 Ibid. 93

Robert Williams had just finished making arrangements to help the Freedom

Riders avoid a bloody fate in the courthouse square. Following that near miss, he certainly was not going to have the deaths of two people, even professed white supremacists, occur on his side of town. Instead Williams offered the Stegalls shelter in his own house. While he was talking with Bruce Stegall and his wife, the chief of police called the Williams house to say “that I had caused a lot of race trouble and that State

Troopers were coming and in 30 minutes I would be hanging in the Court House

Square.”190 To avoid any more bloodshed that day, Robert, Mabel and their two young sons grabbed a few items and left that moment for New York, Canada, and eventually

Cuba. Rather than allow violence to occur, Williams used his strength as a man to ensure that no further violence occurred that day. This undoubtedly angered some of his followers, but to perpetrate violence in this manner would have made them just as cowardly as the Ku Kluxers.

Williams reported in a letter to an acquaintance that “The couple, allegedly

‘kidnapped’ stated that they were unharmed, went home and had forgotten the matter… until the police came for them and took them to the station and insisted on a ‘kidnap’ charge.”191 Just as in the abortion case concerning Dr. Perry, it appears that the charges were against both Perry and Williams without the benefit of a complaining witness. The

188 While it is possible that the masculinist rhetoric of the Ku Klux Klan partially informed or shaped the rhetoric of Williams in some reactive fashion, it is difficult to draw this conclusion based on the evidence presented in the correspondence to Mr. J. K. Lumpp.

189 Robert Williams to Mr. J. K. Lumpp, January 30, 1964.

190 Ibid.

191 Ibid. 94

benefit of charging Williams with such a charge was that “kidnapping’ in North Carolina carries a mandatory sentence” and thus if convicted, Robert Williams would be sentenced to a minimum of five years in jail.192

Eleven years later, Mr. and Mrs. Stegall told one reporter that “they do not want

Williams returned [i.e. extradited]” and Mrs. Stegall told another British reporter “they were never in fact kidnapped.”193 Despite the claims by the Stegalls, Robert and Mabel felt that it was in their best interests to no longer live in their long time home of Monroe,

North Carolina. That night was the first in a long path that eventually led to five years of living in Cuba.

192 Ibid.

193 Undated Press Release, Robert F. Williams Legal Defense Fund, reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. This press release references a Klan march that occurred January 29, 1972 and the extradition case in Michigan came up following Williams return from China. The extradition case involved an effort by prosecutors in North Carolina in 1972 to gain access to Williams so that he could stand trial for his role in “kidnapping” the Stegalls. One of the many reasons why Robert and Mabel chose to settle in Michigan following their “exile” in Cuba and China was their proximity to Robert’s brother who had lived in the Detroit area since the 1940s coupled with the knowledge that Michigan, historically does not extradite those involved in cases concerning the Civil Rights Movement to the South. Chapter 3: Life in Cuba results in a different set of difficulties

Following the tense protests of August 27, 1961 Robert, Mabel, Robert Jr., and

John Williams traveled from Monroe, North Carolina to Toronto via car and rail.194 They spent approximately six weeks in various parts of Canada. During this time the family traveled together and at other times the boys and Mabel were separated from Robert.

When the U. S. government asked the Canadian Mounties to aid in the extradition of

Robert Williams, the Mounties passed the information on to Canadian newspapers to enlist the aid of common Canadians in the search. The news stories unwittingly alerted

Williams, who began to understand how precarious his situation in Canada was and thus travelled west by railway to Vancouver, British Columbia and eventually into

Washington state. Once in Washington Robert took a series of buses in Oregon and

California and crossed the U.S. - Mexican boarder at Tijuana. From Tijuana, Robert went to Mexico City and eventually by airplane to Havana, Cuba. Robert Williams and his family were in Cuba from November 1961 until July 1966.195

194 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 2, 107.

195 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 2, 106-9. The version present in his testimony is not precisely the same path as what he related to Robert Cohen in June of 1968 but these two are very similar and thus this author has adopted this version. These two narratives do not concur with the narrative that Tyson included in Radio Free Dixie. Tyson constructed a narrative based on information available in the pages of Robert Williams’s unpublished autobiography While God Lay Sleeping. In this source Robert Williams recalled that he lived in Toronto with Mabel in the home of Vernal and Anne Olson who were white Canadian socialists. Tyson related a story in which Williams was allegedly able to switch places with an Afro-Cuban man during one of these fueling stops Tyson, 284-285. These differences in narrative are fascinating but not germane to the scope of this work.

95 96

Once in Cuba, Robert Williams continued his call for greater rights for blacks in the United States. He became further acquainted with Fidel Castro, who he had met previously during his two visits while speaking on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba

Committee in 1960. Williams also met Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Manuel Piñeiro who were in the process of becoming key members of the newly formed revolutionary government. Rather than an exciting tale of world changing feats, this last chapter is more of a story of friction, sidetracks, and the cooling of the Cuban Revolution.

Mabel and the boys took another path to Cuba and their youngest son John recalled “When we got off the plane it was a sunny day. It was warm. It felt so good getting off the plane and being in Cuba. On the way from the airport, one of the things that caught my eye - my brother and I commented on it - were the swimming pools.” It was almost shocking to see the difference not only in December weather between Canada and Cuba, but also in the fact that Cuba had integrated swimming pools. John mentioned

"It was amazing to see all these pools in the hotels and these kids out there playing. There were always black and white kids playing. It was my first encounter in Cuba, it was symbolic of what was to come in terms of race relations and being able to go to school in

Cuba.”196

It was this first impression of a warm and inviting integrated world that caught the entire family’s attention. When Robert had come down to Cuba on speaking tours for the

“Fair Play for Cuba” committee, he came to feel that Cuba was a place where “human

196 Wanda Sabir, “Growing up Revolutionary: An interview with John Williams, son of Mabel and Robert F. Williams”, available on the World Wide Web at http://www.freedomarchives.org/Reviews/Growing%20up%20Revolutionary.pdf accessed 10-9-09. 97

dignity” was the main driving force in the daily lives of “the little people.”197 Williams wrote that land reform, improved medical facilities, wages, and housing standards were all positive changes in Castro’s Cuba. Further, these improvements were aimed at wiping out persistent poverty caused by the “exploitation of the poor” under the Batista regime.198

Under Batista from 1950-1957 the “average yearly per capita income for the period was around $213, as compared with $829 for Mississippi, the poorest state in the

United States” from the same period.199 During the same time frame, Cuba’s unemployment “normally stood at twenty-five percent.”200 The question for Castro was how to build up from that low point under Batista to a respectable and free nation. One part of the equation was to build a new nation in which “the race problem” was “solved” through socialism.201 The general idea was that the Revolution erased all divisions based on race in Cuba and, therefore, that class was the primary division of the world.

It was to this emerging “race-less” society that Robert Williams submitted a petition to the Minister of Foreign Relations for asylum in the free Republic of Cuba.

Robert Williams requested political asylum from the United States due to the “terror

197 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1. No 24, December 5, 1959: 9, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

198 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1. No 24, December 5, 1959: 9, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

199 Philip Foner, A History of Cuba, and its Relations with the U.S. vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1962), 8.

200 Foner, 8. Emphasis in original.

201 Mark Sawyer, Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), xvi. 98

[which] is directed against my race in the U.S.A.” and he noted that his role was especially precarious “because I had advocated rebellion and self defense against the Ku

Klux terror, tyranny, mayhem and all forms of barbaric oppression.”202

Based upon this petition, Robert, Mabel and their two sons became political refugees housed by the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro. This status made the newly formed government responsible for the family’s “upkeep the same as when refugees come to this country.”203 This new status and the fact that Robert was a personal friend of Fidel Castro’s coupled with the racial policies of the emerging Cuba conferred a great deal of new freedoms upon Robert and his family when compared to their second class status in Monroe.

Cuba was unique in the western hemisphere during this period from a racial standpoint. Some of the phenomena that Robert and Mabel experienced were remnants from the pre-revolutionary period, while other trends were associated with the changeover in government. Just as the Civil Rights Movement was a period of major social change in the United States during this time period, so too was the ongoing Cuban

Revolution. The guerrilla insurgency that started with Fidel Castro’s attack on the

Moncada and Bayamo barracks on July 26, 1953 was the start of a massive redefinition of Cuba and of self for Fidel Castro. During his now famous defense speech “History

202 Transcribed record of Robert Williams’s handwritten petition requesting asylum, reprinted as exhibit No. 49 in Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 2, 111. The complete text of this petition may be found in appendix B.

203 Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, part 1, February 16, 1970 (Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1971), 6. 99

Will Absolve Me!” Castro was able to frame the work of his guerrilla activities as an ideological battle between patriotic and masculine insurgents versus cowardly yet brutal professional killers.204 The basis for this framing comes from the “Black Legends” in which Castro made the allegations that after his forces surrendered peacefully to the professional army they were so incensed by the loss of their brothers in arms that

Batista’s forces committed a variety of atrocities. These charges include systematic torture including burning female insurgents with lit cigarettes, and in the case of their male counterparts “shattered their [the insurgents’] testicles and tore out their eyes.”205

Some of the slightly less horrific charges that Castro leveled against the professional army included charges that soldiers “bent on vendetta” captured rebel attackers, forced them to take off their army disguises, bound them, and executed them without trial.206 Similarly there was evidence that Castro’s fellow attackers were shot in the back, that already wounded men were executed rather than captured, and some reports allege that some combatants were bound and gagged prior to being buried alive.

These reported atrocities were in addition to the charges that Fulgencio Batista’s government did not afford basic rights and freedoms, ignored civil liberties, and in general ignored the proper mechanisms of criminal justice.

The major effect of the Moncada assault was not military, but rather transformational. Before the 26th of July, Fidel Castro was an aspiring lawyer with few clients and a revolutionary with poorly articulated aims. Afterwards, he was at the head

204 Fidel Castro, 11, 12.

205 De la Cova, xi.

206 Ibid., 173. 100

of a group that would modernize and industrialize Cuba while stamping out the decadent corrupt government that embezzled millions. Instead the new government would “no longer buy tanks, bombers and guns,” which were only used to oppress the populace rather than defend the frontiers.207

Following the guerrilla insurgency, Ernesto “Che” Guevara summarized what the insurgency learned from their experiences in the field. The result was his work On

Guerrilla Warfare. While the purpose of the work was to provide others with a blueprint for revolutionary insurgency, from a gendered perspective, Guevara’s prose provides a look at an idealized hyper-masculine guerrilla. Just as “History Will Absolve Me!” contrasted noble insurgents versus brutal professionals, Guevara expanded the dichotomy. When speaking of the two sides, Guevara described: “On one side, we have an oppressive oligarchy with its agent, the professional army, well armed and frequently the recipient of foreign aid. Allied with the army and pampered bureaucracies.”208 They are well armed, paid, and soft and have an “easy life.” This is in contrast to the agrarian revolutionary, who Guevara held up as the highest status. In building the myth of the noble insurgent he needed to first counter the myth of the “maverick of war” who it was felt “practices deception, treachery, surprise, and night operations.”209 Part of the rhetorical trickery of the piece makes a virtue out of practices that were previously characterized as unmanly activities and recast them as necessary ingredients that would strike “an unexpected lightning blow [which above all else] counts.” Similarly, Guevara

207 Castro, History Will Absolve Me! 42,43.

208 Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Che Guevara On Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Praeger, 1961), 5.

209 Ibid., 6. 101

accused the enemy of retaliation “so brutal, not only against men, but women and children.”210

210 Ibid., 25, 22, 23. 2. Masculinity and Militancy, From Common Ground to Point of Ideological Conflict

As we have seen previously, the notion of masculinity is an ever-evolving concept. In two different settings the slippery definition of masculinity has significance to the historical actors. In Monroe, Robert Williams defined his actions in a manner that conformed to his gendered expectations for how a man “should” act. Similarly, Fidel

Castro and Che Guevara defined themselves as noble revolutionaries who were sweeping away the corruption of the Batista government and his brutal professional army. Just as important as these conceptions of masculinity are, it is also important to understand the socially constructed roles expected of men based upon race.

Sociologist Mark Sawyer added his voice to those of Edward Said and others in noting that “race can become a proxy for judging good versus evil, modern versus primitive, capitalist versus communist, and so forth.”211 In this manner the ongoing political revolution that was a continuing part of the Cuban Revolution constructed a definition of race that in the long term has been advantageous to the aims of the revolution and Fidel Castro in particular. As a man of mixed races, much of Batista’s personal support during his regime came from Afro Cubans and especially from black residents of the Orient Provence. Although Afro Cuban participation in the forces led by

211 Sawyer, 6.

102 103

Castro was low, after the military portion of the Cuban Revolution, Castro was able to recruit or co-opt a large proportion of black support.212

Prior to the Revolution, the theory of Latin American Exceptionalism was largely in operation. These theory posits that in areas where race mixing (miscegenation) is high, and there was little to no evidence of institutionalized segregation, similar to Jim Crow laws in North America, then there is no evidence of racial unrest or problems.213 Both of these conditions occur in Cuba historically and so the theory holds that race is not an important signifier in either the pre or post-revolutionary Cuban state. In addition to this, though, the theory of Latin American Exceptionalism also holds that genetic material from the Iberian peninsula mixes more gracefully with that of Native Americans and those of African descent, therefore the olive skin tones are not that different from the result from mixing in Afro Cuban blood, which further reduces any perceived racism.214

When Robert Williams visited Cuba in 1960, he observed that Cuba was a highly integrated land. While on speaking tours of the island, Williams felt embraced by the average Cuban, and as such he attempted to gain a passport to celebrate the 26th of July

1961 in Cuba.215 Williams felt that “the people in Washington who want to crush free

Cuba are the same people who are trying to crush the fight for freedom in the U.S.

212 Ibid, 21-22.

213 Ibid.

214 Ibid.

215 Robert Williams, “Passport to Cuba Denied Williams,” The Crusader, Vol. 3. No 3, July 24, 1961: 2, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 104

Southland.”216 During the two trips that Robert was able to get a passport approved he remarked that “In Cuba as an Afro-American, for the first time in my life I felt free. I felt that I belonged to the human race.”217 These and other comments reveal that Robert

Williams agreed with the notion that Cuba was a veritable black paradise and Mabel and their boys also seemed to have loved the warmer, freer climes. The family enjoyed

Christmas of 1961 in the sun of the Caribbean climate.

From the time of their flight onward, both Robert and Mabel wrote back to friends in Monroe and V.T. Lee, Mrs. E.A. Johnson, and others continued to print The Crusader sporadically during Robert and Mabel’s travels south. During these issues published between October 21, 1961 and April 1962, Robert Williams is named as the “Editor in

Exile” and the typeface continued to be set in Monroe as it had been for the prior 3 years.

The letters from Mabel and Robert that were published during this time period indicated that they missed “the struggle” and their friends.218 In January 1962, Robert returned his attention to writing The Crusader, but also had the idea to extend his voice to the airwaves.

216 Robert Williams, “Monster Rally for Cuba in Harlem,” The Crusader, Vol. 2. No 17, November 12, 1960: 3, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

217 Robert Williams, “Mad Dog Diplomacy,” The Crusader, Vol. 2. No 28, April 22, 1961: 2, reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

218 Mabel Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 1. No 2, November, 11 1961: 2, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Note that The Crusader newsletters published immediately following the flight of Robert and Mabel Williams to Cuba which were published by Mrs. E.A. Johnson and others follow a new numbering scheme. This numbering scheme represents a “new era” of publishing without the aid of Robert or Mabel which Johnson and others likely felt to be a stop-gap measure. It also represents a need to not be silenced by the absence of their leaders, or by the need for Robert to flee a charge that many Monroe residents viewed as a “frame-up” attempt by the Ku Klux Klan. Many locals loyal to Robert felt that the Klan had been trying to “get” the NAACP president anyway they could. 105

In order to continue publishing The Crusader as he desired, Robert Williams needed a manner to write in Cuba and publish, also preferably in Cuba. Soon after arriving in Cuba Robert was able to make arrangements with a group of workers who were willing to donate their labor to help publish The Crusader in Cuba. This resulted in a far more professional looking typeface, but limited the production first to a monthly, then a bi-monthly, and finally to a semi-regular basis. All of The Crusader issues published in Cuba bear the disclaimer “PRINTED IN CUBA AS A PRIVATE

PUBLICATION” in a bold typeface at the bottom of the last page of each issue.219 The only exception during the period in which Robert and Mabel lived in Cuba is the issue published during one of their visits to China, which was published in China by Chinese workers who also donated their services in a similar fashion.220

The two main topics of these issues were the perception of common Americans to the Cuban Revolution and as an offshoot, American perception of Communism, and the

African American struggle for greater rights and personal freedoms. This represented a marked narrowing of focus compared with the grouping of articles written by Williams previously. This time period also represents a shift for Robert Williams from the printed word to more emphasis in news and editorial work for his new “Radio Free Dixie” radio program. The general purpose as stated at the opening of “Radio Free Dixie” was to provide “Music, News and Commentary by Robert F. Williams” and beam a “free voice

219 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 4. No 2, August, 1962: 8, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

220 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 6. No 2, October Special Edition, 1964: 10, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 106

of the South” live to the southern portion of the United States “From Havana, Cuba, Free territory of the Americas.”221

One purpose of the program was to contrast the freedom experienced by people of

African descent in Revolutionary Cuba versus the oppression that Afro-Americans in the

United States experienced in both the North and the South. Robert Williams declared that “Only the savage territories of Angola and South Africa equal the U.S.A. in brutal and bloody racism. The arrogance and hypocrisy of racist America is unexcelled in the entire history of the human race.”222 His comments on the hypocrisy of the United States stemmed from his belief that the U.S. government had absolutely no right to critique

Cuba or others about democracy at the same time that it condoned violence against

African Americans. In his mind the claims of leader of the “Free World” and moral action rang hollow in a land that had yet to “learn to respect the worth and human dignity of man and the self determination of nations the U.S. Government is a disgrace to the intelligence of the American people.”223

Because the time slot was donated to Williams by Radio Progressivo in Havana, there were no sponsors to please, which Williams’s secretary Ms. Jo Salas articulated that the original concept was that it should never have any problem with “censorship or interference.”224 Williams initially rejoiced in the idea that “this will be the first

221 Isolda Dreckman, “Radio Free Dixie” original broadcast August 10, 1962, preamble, 1, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

222 Robert Williams, “Radio Free Dixie” original broadcast August 10, 1962, editorial, 1, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

223 Ibid. 107

completely free radio voice that the Negro people have had to air case against the brutal racial oppression.”225 Although the format included jazz music, “Afro-American folklore,” news, and editorials, the general effect was a deluge of information with a knowing bias against the racial oppression that occurred on a daily basis in the American

South. It was the unrelenting style with which Robert and Mabel reported the news that actually led the Communists in Cuba to require oversight and editing of the subsequent materials. While it was true that many “Marxists are opposed to racial oppression” the

Communist Party of Cuba and members of the Communist Party of the United States of

America (hereafter CPUSA) present in Cuba propagated the mythology that racism was completely absent from the island.226

On the same day that Miss Salas penned that letter to Thomas Parker, Robert

Williams also wrote to Mr. J.A. Lumpp commenting that “My predicament is living proof that the Communists believe more in justice for black folks than any of those self- righteous hypocrites who deceptively speak of defending the world from ‘oppressive

Communism.”227 This letter comments on many things, among them the incongruity of how the United States claimed to be working in the interest of world peace by aggressively repressing Communism.

224 Miss Jo Salas to Ensign Thomas Parker, January 30, 1964 reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. This letter was in response to correspondence directed to Robert Williams and Jo Salas was one of the women who worked with Robert and Mabel Williams to compile material for the Radio Free Dixie program. Salas assisted with secretarial duties in her capacity at Radio Progressivo.

225 Press release, Havana Cuba- July 24, 1962, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

226 Miss Jo Salas to Ensign Thomas Parker, January 30, 1964.

227 Robert Williams to Mr. J.K. Lumpp January 30, 1964. 108

Unfortunately, all of the experiences that Williams had regarding the question of race while he was in Cuba were not positive. Following his time in both Cuba and then

China Williams testified before a Senate subcommittee that although the party line in

Cuba held that there was no racism present following the Cuban Revolution; his experience was that racism remained.228 Despite the fact that there had been a change in the government of Cuba there was “a different form of discrimination. It was more subtle… a change of a political system alone would not bring about a change in people overnight, that these old customs will linger on for many years.”229 Based on these statements, it may be inferred that Williams felt that Cubans slighted Afro Americans and

Afro Cubans in small ways. Similarly, Williams wrote that “U.S. Communists… [and] white Americans who now live under socialism, are still unable to accept Negroes as equals… If racial discrimination in the U.S.A. is not abolished before the triumph of a struggle for socialism, it certainly will not be abolished afterwards.”230

This ideology that Communism and Socialism has no magic bullet to “cure” racism or discrimination put Williams at odds with many members of the Communist

Party in Cuba and especially with the CPUSA members present in Cuba. He also feared that the struggle for black empowerment in the United States might be co-opted by

“omnipotent white racist socialists” who would use the language of Revolutionary Cuba to draw Afro Americans into the socialist fold. Once these militant Black Americans

228 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 2, 92.

229 Ibid.

230 Robert Williams to Clyde Appleton, March 22, 1964, reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 109

were under the socialist banner, Williams feared that in such a scenario that any concerns about race would be quashed as “anti-communist and counterrevolutionary” just as they had been labeled in Cuba in 1964.231

While Robert Williams was faithfully working on his projects with “Radio Free

Dixie” and writing The Crusader, there was an emerging factionalism between the hierarchy responsible for the Cuban Revolution. Williams was experiencing friction from Manuel “Barba Rojo” Piñeiro of the Cuban Communist Party and especially Gus

Hall of CPUSA due to this difference in how he viewed the world, and how it was in direct opposition to one of the growing factions within the Cuban government.232

It appears that Williams’s beliefs on the question of race were coming into direct conflict with the Party line. Several factions in both the United States and Cuba suggest that Williams was writing a manual on Urban Guerrilla Warfare in the same vein as Che

Guevara’s On Guerrilla Warfare. There is further evidence that Williams and Che met and spoke on at least two occasions. Guevara’s ideology from this period has been characterized by political scientist Ruth Reitan thusly: “Guevara concluded that Cuba’s national security would be protected when the nations of Latin America achieved economic and political independence. He therefore encouraged forceful overthrow of capitalist and neocolonial governments in the hemisphere.”233 This line of reasoning by

Guevara suggests that one possible course of action for the burgeoning government of

231 Ibid.

232 Robert Williams to Julian Mayfield May 18, 1964, #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

233 Ruth Reitan, “Cuba, the Black Panther Party and the US Black Movement in the 1960s: Issues of Security,” New Political Science, Vol 21, No. 2 (1999): 219. 110

Cuba was to extend the Cuban Revolution to a wider hemispheric engulfing conflagration. For Guevara the extension of the Revolution could have happened anywhere.

Guevara summarized the guerrilla insurgency as a pursuit of social justice. In order to wipe away the decadence of Batista’s government, strong patriotic men needed to band together in an organized fashion. In many of the passages of Guevara’s diary, which was reprinted as Episodes of the Cuban Revolution, his descriptions reveal hard marches, a lack of food, operating in “stinking swamps, without a drop of [potable] water, continuously attacked by the air force . . . with our shoes totally demolished by the muddy sea water, full of vegetation that injured our bare feet.”234 In stark contrast, several passages of On Guerrilla Warfare suggest that through will and the assertion of manly vigor, the properly trained guerrilla is able to carry “a sustained 55- pound load per man” and while fully encumbered “march 20 to 25 miles” at night.235 Further , “the guerrilla is physically tough and capable of enduring extremes, not only in deprivation of food, water, clothing and shelter but also in bearing sickness and wounds without medical care, for leaving the battle zone brings with it the risk of capture and death.”236

This aesthetic of hyper-masculinity is unattainable by even the most athletic humans on the planet but is emblematic of the false dichotomy that Guevara outlines in his prose. Guevara repeated the major themes of Castro’s History Will Absolve Me by

234 Ernesto “Che” Guevara, “The final offensive and the battle of Santa Clara,” in Che Guevara Reader, ed. David Deutschmann (Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press, 2003), 51.

235 Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 22, 23.

236 Ibid., 33. 111

separating themselves from Batista’s army in a number of ways. If the guerrilla is noble, socially minded, courageous, willing to endure numerous deprivations, then the regular army of Batista is cowardly, employs sadistic methods, breaks the Geneva conventions for conduct on the battlefield, and is unable to operate without foreign support. The purpose of this rhetoric was to clearly delineate between the good guerrilla and the evil

“sadistic” regular army.

Guevara was certainly confrontational in his stance toward North America, and some historians suggest that especially after the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban

Missile Crisis that Guevara would have liked nothing more than a direct confrontation with the United States. This, along with Guevara’s dislike of the manner in which, in his opinion, the Soviets handled the Missile Crisis, pushed Che into a stance that became increasingly disenchanted with the pro-Soviet factions in Cuba.237 Was the possibility of an insurrection involving African Americans that far fetched in the United States?

Apparently Guevara did not think so, and in fact may have been attempting to forge some sort of an alliance with Robert Williams, the president of a unique NAACP branch with a number of “returned veterans who were very militant and who didn’t scare easy.”238

Could Williams return to Monroe, gather his trained veterans, the members of his

NRA chapter and NAACP chapter to engage in a form of urban guerrilla warfare?

Although there was little evidence to sustain it, there is a general but unsubstantiated rumor that Williams was an “expert” on the subject of urban guerrilla warfare.239

237 Ruth Reitan, 220.

238 Williams, Negroes with Guns, 51. 112

Further, Williams testified in 1970 that he was not an expert on the subject of guerrilla warfare and that when the subject came up for debate during his time in Cuba he “was writing to let them know that I was convinced that that was not the method, no matter who had said otherwise.”240

The Senate Judiciary sub-committee used the text of The Crusader article that

Williams wrote on “the new concept of revolution” in the United States as the basis for a line of questioning.241 Mr. Sourwine of the Senate sub-committee to investigate the New

Left used quotations including: “The new concept is lightning campaigns. . . The old method of guerrilla warfare, as carried out from the hills and countryside, would be ineffective in a powerful country like the US. . . The new concept is to huddle as close to the enemy as possible so as to neutralize his modern and fierce weapons.”242 Mr.

Sourwine used these passages to directly ask Williams if he was overtly advocating revolution.243 Williams countered that his intent in writing this article was to demonstrate the folly of waging a guerrilla campaign within the boarders of the United States. He

239 Ruth Reitan makes the claim that Williams wrote a book named Theory of Urban Warfare, which is not part of the holdings at Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, nor is it currently available through Ohiolink, nor is there evidence through Google Scholar or other web search engines that this book in fact exists or is available. It is interesting to note that Reitan does not cite this source in any manner, but rather alludes to its existence.

240 Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, part 3, March 25, 1970 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1971), 186.

241 Question posed by Mr. Sourwine, Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 3, 185.

242 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 5. No 2, February, 1964: 4-5. Reprinted in Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 3, Appendix VIII: 294-301.

243 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 3, 186. 113

countered that such a campaign needed to be avoided “through justice and through the enforcement of the Constitution.”244

This line of questioning revealed that while Williams was an advocate of militancy only within a constitutional framing. His “revolutionary” rhetoric was completely within his definition of his rights as a citizen of the United States of America and relied on a strict enforcement of the equal protection clause included in the 14th

Amendment to the Constitution.

These stances led to no criminal charges against Williams upon his return to the

United States in 1970, but they also did not make him popular with the Soviet aligned factions in Cuba during his time there between 1961-66. It also represented a mild rebuke of the “Guevarist” stance that guerrilla warfare was a possibility in the United

States. These ideas coupled with the constant charges of racism against the United

States south that Williams uttered repeatedly over the Radio Progressivo airwaves during his Radio Free Dixie broadcasts highlighted the “Race Problem” of the United States.

Even though these comments were directed against the United States, it highlighted a problem that was not considered a problem in Cuba and to speak of it so often reminded

Afro Cubans that the “Race Problem” might not truly be fixed in Cuba either.

244 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 3, 186. 3. Is the Race Problem Really a Problem?

In reality, the Soviet factions of Castro’s new government simply did not want to hear about race in any context. When Robert and Mabel Williams first came to Cuba, they were granted political asylum. Part of the significance of that status was that the government of Cuba was responsible for their bills and daily upkeep.245 As Williams continued to publish The Crusader and write the material for “Radio Free Dixie” it became apparent that he “took the position that [conflict within the US] was largely a race struggle, which meant that the dominant class would be whites who had the power, and that there would be no such thing as unity between the black worker and the white workers to overthrow the captive system because it had to do with race.”246 So even within the Guevarist factions in Cuba that believed that guerrilla warfare within the

United States was a viable option for the upheaval of the established order of government, Williams disagreed that the situation in the US fractured along racial lines, while the Cubans felt that lower class blacks should work for change with the help of lower class whites on a purely class basis. As noted above, Williams felt that this notion of guerilla warfare within the U. S. was a folly and that it could never be a viable alternative.

245 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 2, 115.

246 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 3, 137.

114 115

Williams’s central message in both The Crusader and “Radio Free Dixie” was that Afro-Americans needed to continue to resist racist oppression and violence through flexible struggle. He continued to “advocate ‘peaceful demonstrations’ when conditions permit. The possibility of this struggle succeeding diminishes daily. What Negro leaders call ‘peaceful’ is more realistically being viewed as a guarantee of immunity from just retribution for sadistic brutes.”247 Williams firmly believed in the efficacy of non-violent direct action, but not to obligatory nonviolent stances. Violence needed to be repelled through confrontational stances that let would-be attackers know that violence would not be tolerated and would be met with violence if need be. In a very real sense the tactics of his movement would shadow the tactics of counter-protesters and would focus on not allowing violence to escalate.248

During their stay as “guests of Fidel Castro” the upkeep paid by the Cuban

Government came through the offices of the Cuban Communist Party. The Party provided a stipend in cash that Williams picked up on a monthly basis and he claimed the stipend was enough to live “well.”249 As the Cuban Revolution began to cool and greater emphasis shifted toward the preservation of the Castro regime, members of the Popular

Socialist Party, (PSP) including Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Secretary General Blás Roca,

Director of Information Aníbal Escalante, and Raúl Castro, became more closely aligned with the U.S.S.R. with respect to their politics. This was a faction that Williams came to

247 Robert Williams, The Crusader, Vol. 5. No 2, February, 1964: 2. Reprinted in Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 3, Appendix VIII, 294-301.

248 Ibid.

249 Testimony of Robert F. Williams, part 2, 115. 116

call the “Bourgeois Communists” as they were long on revolutionary rhetoric but in his opinion, short on support for further revolutionary action in the field.250 In one manner of thinking, Williams was questioning the revolutionary fervor, militancy, and masculinity of the “Bourgeois Communists.”

As these rhetorical differences between Williams and the “Bourgeois

Communists” began to surface, there were a number of small things that the Communist

Party started to do that inconvenienced Williams in his everyday life. First, “Radio Free

Dixie” was reduced to using “progressively weaker long-wave facilities of Radio

Progesso’ instead of the [more powerful] short-wave Havana radio.”251 The same letter from Williams addressed to Fidel Castro charged that “A promise of $200 a month to buy records and publications for his program was not kept, and much material donated by listeners was stolen.”252 The net result was that in very subtle ways Robert was learning that his rhetorical stances were wearing out his welcome in Cuba.

The news commentary that Williams included was increasingly critical of North

America and the policies of the U. S. government with regard to racial issues. Just a quick sample of his opinion pieces includes rhetoric such as: “The North American concept of democracy carries a vulgar and repulsive connotation. Until such time that the reactionary forces of the U.S. learn to respect the worth and human dignity of man and

250 Cohen, 314.

251 The New York Times (New York), “U.S. Negro Who Fled to Cuba Now Assails Castro From Haven in Peking,” November 14, 1966.

252 Ibid. 117

the self determination of nations, the U.S. Government is a disgrace to the intelligence of the American people.”253

Further, he contrasted what he perceived as the “graft, insecurity, race hatred, oppression and police brutality” of the United States with the policies of Cuba, which he called “the one place where men are equal.”254 These salvos revealed Williams’s anger with institutionalized segregation and his perception that Cuba was more progressive with regard to race, but his commentary often lacked even a suggestion of methods for improving or addressing the problems that he observed.

Part of his anger with the U. S. government stemmed from his perception that the

“propaganda mills of the USA” obscured the truth concerning the situation on the ground in Cuba. In response to wild rumors circulating in the United States that “the people of

Cuba are starving” Williams responded that “This is not true. It is merely wishful thinking on the part of the U.S. Government that is doing everything possible to destroy the poor people’s gains under their great revolution.”255 The big difference that Williams pointed to between the previous era of pseudo-colonial possession of Cuba by the United

States and position of Cuba in 1962 was that in many regards there was no industrial production of goods for mass domestic consumption during the early era. Williams relayed the opinion that under Fidel Castro’s government, Cuba was producing “for

253 Robert F. Williams, “Radio Free Dixie,” transcript of broadcast August 10, 1962, editorial, 1. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

254 Ibid., 6.

255 Robert F. Williams, “Cuba no Fallará,” The Crusader, Vol. 4. No 1, June - July 1962: 3, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 118

herself” and “The socialist countries are helping Cuba to reach a standard of living that was never dreamed of before.”256

Despite these efforts by Williams, it seemed that this message fell on deaf ears.

The majority of people living in the United States in the 1960s believed that Cuba was simply one more satellite of the Soviet Union and as such was just a tiny cog in the larger

“evil empire” locked in the ideological battle of the Cold War. During his time in Cuba

Williams became disenchanted with land that he had always identified himself as a citizen of. He continued to critique the lack of “the most elementary sense of justice and fair play” of “white savages” and “Monroe’s racists.”257 Although his rhetoric was at times blunt and perhaps angry, the general focus continued to be the lack of equal justice and institutional segregation that were symptoms of generalized racism in Monroe that

Williams continued to object to. Similarly, he continued to defend the right of blacks to self-defense and much of his news coverage on “Radio Free Dixie” concerned the use of firearms by blacks in a variety of settings for self-defense.

1962 was also the time period when Williams became acquainted with Manuel

Piñeiro aka “Red Beard” due to his red facial hair. Piñeiro was an assistant of Fidel

Castro’s and a government official charged with the task of “helping” Williams.

Williams was never explicit as to whether Piñeiro was to assist him in the publishing of

The Crusader and the daily tasks associated with the day-to-day operations of “Radio

256 Ibid.

257 Robert F. Williams, “Charms and Arms,” The Crusader, Vol. 4. No 1, June - July 1962: 7,8, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 119

Free Dixie,” or if there was initially some larger design for their relationship.258 Jon Lee

Anderson conducted a series of interviews with Piñeiro that provided some insight into the “clandestine activities” of Cuba as Anderson claims that Piñeiro was “Cuba’s spymaster.”259 On the basis of Piñeiro’s evidence, Anderson asserted that “The Latin

American guerrilla program had Fidel’s early support, and the secret agency known as the ‘Liberation Department’ was set up under Manuel ‘Barba Roja’ Piñeiro as a vice ministry named the Viceministerio Téchnica with the newly formed Interior Ministry run by Ramíro Valdés.”260 In this capacity, Piñeiro recalled that he was responsible for

“intelligence organizations” and “an active and intense relationship with Che” in support of ongoing guerrilla activities.261

Despite the fact that Piñeiro was supposed to be concerned with helping Williams, their ideological differences became a sore subject. Williams continued to maintain that a possible insurrection in the United States would necessarily be race based due to his idea that as long as whites “had jobs and can buy automobiles and homes, they’ve got no reason to rise up against the capitalists. Only those, like us Blacks, who are the victims of severe economic discrimination and racism, have the motivation to want to overthrow

258 Cohen, 208. In his testimony to the senate subcommittee, Williams incorrectly identified Piñeiro’s first name as Alberto, Testimony of Robert F. Williams, Part 2, page 93. Further confusing matters, Cohen used the spelling “Pinero” in his biography of Williams Black Crusader, 208. For the purposes of this work, in all instances in which Robert Williams spoke of his relationship with “Alberto Pinero”, “Red Beard” or Pineiro (as it appears in printed form in the transcripts of Robert’s testimony before the Senate), it is useful to assume that Williams was in fact speaking of Manuel Piñeiro aka “Barba Rojo” or “Red Beard” in English, in all instances. As with many of the members of Fidel Castro’s inner circle Manuel Piñeiro grew a full beard which in his case was a distinctive red in color.

259 Anderson, ix.

260 Ibid., 759.

261 Ibid. 120

the system.”262 Piñeiro maintained the party line that only the numerical superiority associated with the masses of white and black workers could succeed in such an endeavor.263 Robert Williams cites conversations such as these as the reason behind his increasingly difficult time in Cuba.

Williams tended to side more with the faction that he referred to as

“Revolutionary Communists” who encouraged Cuban style uprisings in the rest of Latin

America, and they approved of armed self defense for African Americans.264 They were opposed by factions that Williams nicknamed the “Bourgeois Communists” and the two sides of this debate constitute the two sides that historian Piero Gleijeses described best in the monograph Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa. Gleijeses described Castro’s two principal ambitions during this time period as being essentially opposed to each other. According to the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Castro’s international goals concerned “his sense of revolutionary mission” and his

“fanatical devotion to his cause.”265 These international aims were in direct opposition to his main domestic focus, which was the survival of the Revolutionary Government. In the larger scope of things this included the task of making the emerging government economically viable. These two goals came together in a scheme that Gleijeses

262 Cohen, 208.

263 Ibid. This evidence is based on an interview of Williams conducted by Cohen in Tanzania. It is unfortunate that Cohen was not explicit as to the true nature of this discussion, weather it was rhetorical or a discussion concerning long-term tactical planning.

264 Ibid., 217.

265 Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press: 2002), 375. 121

summarized as Castro’s dual effort “to win prestige and preserve for Cuba what he conceives of as independent status.”266

These two different points of view also delineate the two major historiographical points of view of the period. The major point of contention between John Lee Anderson and Piero Gleijeses centers on whether Guevara’s revolutionary foray into Zaire in 1965 represented a sort of “pseudo-exile” (Anderson) or a “daring move” that was an essential part of Cuba’s over-all strategy (Gleijeses.) This debate is emblematic of the Guevarist versus Pro-Soviet camps within Cuba’s ruling elite.267 Guevara and Fidel Castro headed what Williams nicknamed the “Revolutionary Communist” line, which held that there was “an approaching and inevitable… anti-imperialist revolution” that would involve either all of Latin America or the entire world.268 This point of view forwarded the idea that the best course of action to ensure Cuban security on an international stage was to extend revolutionary efforts.

The “Bourgeois Communists,” as Williams nicknamed them, supported a domestic policy that favored a cooling of revolutionary fervor and the placation of the

United States, while at the same this faction argued for a closer alliance with the Soviet

Union. They also critiqued Williams for not advocating Socialism in his broadcasts, not learning Spanish, and while he was a vocal supporter of Fidel Castro and the aims of the

Revolution, he was far more concerned with the concept of black liberation. The members of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA or USCP in Williams’s

266 Ibid.

267 Anderson, 627-28, Piero Gleijeses, 105.

268 Gleijeses, 375. 122

writings) demanded that he declare himself a Marxist-Leninist and advocate that his listeners in the United States do the same.269 Williams responded that “Marx was a smart man, but he didn’t hold himself up as an expert on racism, and neither did Lenin.

Why should I waste air time telling my people to join me in accepting theories they have never heard of by men whose names mean little or nothing to them?” Further Williams argued that capitalism was not connected to racism, observing that “Have the traditionally Jew-hating Russians eliminated all their anti-Semitism after nearly fifty years of Communist government?”270 From Williams’s perspective it was clear that

Socialism was not a magic bullet to cure racism. This truism was contrary to the party line and added fuel to his critics that labeled him as a counterrevolutionary element in

Cuba.

The Marxist school argues that “Racism, in this approach, is understood to depend upon the existence of class. Once the inputs of economic equality are adjusted, the model predicts, racism will no longer exist.”271 If this model were in operation in post- revolutionary Cuba then even if there was racism that existed prior to the revolution, the addition of Marxism would erase all problems. By holding that race was such an important dividing line in the world, Williams ran the risk of becoming labeled as

“counterrevolutionary.”

269 Cohen, 219. CPUSA is the more common usage in today’s word but Williams used the alternative USCP in his writings. I will retain his original usage when quoting, but elect to use the more familiar abbreviation of CPUSA based on current usage patterns.

270 Ibid., 220.

271 Sawyer, 28. 123

The risk of being labeled as counterrevolutionary or worse as a “Trotskyite” was just as dangerous as there was much debate during this period of the ongoing social and political revolution. Fidel Castro’s general program for change was to leave the old Cuba behind through a process of industrialization and modernization. The twin pillars of this ideal rested upon universal medical care and education for all citizens. Castro argued that it was not in human nature to go without water, and why should people go without proper health care or education?272 This all fell in line with the “capacity to change thesis” which is a summary of the ideal that if modern Cuba focuses on these two larger problems that the entire island could be reformatted in a meaningful manner to reverse the trends of “decadence” experienced during the rule of Batista.

The Revolution was able to exploit pre-revolutionary images of lavish casinos, sex shows, and a government that condoned the existence of prostitution in several ways.

In this environment, homosexuality was exploited by the American underworld in

Havana. It was not uncommon for homoerotic experiences to be sold as a part of the human trafficking of the pre-revolutionary world. Destroying this trade became a goal of the revolution and added to the perception that one of Castro’s goals was the cleaning out of “bourgeois decadence.” This trend became more pronounced in the years that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis as the revolutionary government and especially

Guevara became concerned with defining “the New Socialist Man.” This aesthetic emphasized morality, education, and contributions to progress for altruistic purposes rather than to gain self remuneration. It also opened an avenue in which the unintended

272 Marvin Leiner, Sexual Politics in Cuba: Machismo, Homosexuality, and AIDS (Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., 1994), 159. 124

consequences of prejudice and homophobia were institutionalized as a measure of progress and freedom in the revolutionary era.273

Guevara’s formulation of the new socialist man consciously privileged a certain definition of masculinity. The new socialist man embodies honor, dignity, chivalry and a man with a certain physical presence. In emphasizing the traits of male, socialist, and white the process also defines female, capitalist and black as outside of the ideal.

Further, when Guevara set a paradigm in which men should use their energy and their masculine prowess to forge a new order, he also inadvertently defined women’s primary role to the revolution as reproductive capacity rather than a more active role. There is an unconscious misogyny to the definition of the new socialist man in that there is no equally important role defined for women. As such, women and homosexuals were defined as outsiders or aberrant.274

The greatest affect of this marginalization was that women especially were mobilized rather than liberated. Under the revolutionary government, people who were perceived to be “different” became suspect as counterrevolutionaries. Some of these suspicions have their roots in traditional machismo, which has a trio of prejudices. These three prejudices are against women, homosexuals, and public sex education.275 Some of these trends can be traced to Cuba’s Catholic history where a particular definition of

“morality and ethics” persists despite the fact that only approximately 5 percent of all

273 Leiner, 24.

274 Ernesto “Che” Guevara, “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” 198, 199.

275 Leiner, 2. 125

Cubans are practicing Catholics but somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 percent of

Cubans were baptized.276

These factors cannot be overcome by simple education. Some of these trends date back to the time of European settlement of Cuba. Initially, there were skewed sex ratios of white Europeans that immigrated to the island. The general results were that white men had freer access to native and black women. Similarly, black men were feared as sexual predators of white women, and at the same time, male-to-male relations were defined in such a manner that only “receptors” were considered to be homosexuals.277

In this environment, long hair, tight pants, and “effeminate attributes” eventually became unacceptable due to their association with “bourgeois decadence” and counterrevolutionary characteristics.278 These traits were contrasted to the proper revolutionary who was a strong macho man who was sure to know of fencing, boxing, baseball, and other manly pursuits. Homosexuality became re-imagined as an infectious disease and as such there was a focus on finding environmental, psychological, and non- genetic causes. If it were possible that male homosexuality was in any way influenced genetically, then it might be the case that capitalism was also genetically linked.279 It was far more convenient for the revolutionary government to treat homosexuality and

276 Ibid, 12.

277 Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, Sex and the Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 9.

278 Leiner, 32, 33.

279 Ibid., 37. 126

capitalism both as if they were treatable diseases or some sort of psychological disorder that could be reversed with detection and treatment.

These trends reversed an earlier ideal in which the definition of “revolutionary” was much more widely defined. The overall effect for Robert Williams was that there was a growing disdain for his radio show and the publishing of his newsletter. The message that the Cuban Communist Party and CPUSA found distasteful was that

Williams insisted upon highlighting the racial problems in the United States. Taking the stance that “the Negro struggle” was in fact a problem was a stance that Communists in

Cuba felt was inflammatory to the U. S. government. This was due to the idea that “the

Negro struggle” was considered to be an “internal problem” within the United States.

Part of the “Peaceful Coexistence” ideology of the era was that both the U.S.S.R. and the

U.S. realized there were certain internal problems inherent to the other that were simply off the table for discussion during this era.

In private, Williams began to criticize the policies of Nikita Khrushchev and complained to American Communists that “Khrushchev is a pigheaded son of a bitch” who according to Williams purposefully allowed the existence of the Soviet Intermediate

Range Ballistic Missile launchers to be discovered by the United States. This information set off the Cuban Missile Crisis, which Williams privately accused

Khrushchev of manufacturing. His purpose, in Williams’s, opinion was to use the information as a bargaining tool to counter the U.S. IRBMs deployed in Turkey.280 This

280 Cohen, 242. 127

echoed Mao Tse-tung’s public denunciation of Khrushchev’s actions during the crisis as

“first adventurist, then capitulationist.”281

The pro-Soviet factions in Cuba interpreted these trends represent Williams falling in line more with Chinese Communist ideals rather than with Cuban. Robert

Williams argued that African American men needed to return to a seat of patriarchal power in which they were the main economic provider for their families. This message coupled with the idea that black Americans needed to resist racist violence perpetrated by whites became two major avenues in which he suggested that his followers agitate for improved racial relations within the United States. These ideals clashed with Guevara’s definition of the new socialist man. The fact that Williams identified more with the

Chinese communist line rather than Soviet ideology put him on the “wrong” side of the debate in the brewing Sino-Soviet split from what was becoming the majority Cuban perspective. The result was that these factions sought to silence Williams and others who did not adhere to the “new Moscow line.”282 As part of this effort, CPUSA apparently sent representatives to Cuba specifically to “sabotage my work on behalf of U.S. Negro liberation. They are pestering the Cubans to remove me from the radio, ban THE

CRUSADER and to take a number of other steps in what they call ‘cutting Williams down to size.”283

281 Ibid., 246.

282 Robert Williams to Conrad Lynn, CC Truman Nelson, Anne Olson, Julian Mayfield, May 18, 1964, Reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

283 Ibid. 128

Williams named Gus Hall and his “idiots” (as Williams referred to them in his correspondence) as the main representatives of CPUSA who where charged with this duty. Their apparent goal was to label Williams as a Trotskyite and counterrevolutionary which would put him in a group of untouchable enemies of the government. Furious with this effort, Robert wrote in a letter to his old friend Julian Mayfield, “The lying scum from USCP have told the Yankee loving functionaries that I am a Trot and a Black

Nationalist. Things have been so infiltrated by U.S. agents that lies, sabotage and rumors are rife. The revolutionaries are allowing the true friends to be separated from the revolutionaries.”284

As evidence that the Communist Party of Cuba and CPUSA were working against him, Williams forwarded the idea that the CPUSA encouraged the publisher of Negroes with Guns, Carl Marzani, to withhold royalties.285 In a letter to Conrad Lynn, Williams stated “Marzani is a crook. I am sure he is cooperating with the USCP against me. How in the hell will we be able to tell how much he owes me?”286 As this feud with the

American Communists deepened, they started to carry out an economic campaign against him by attempting to deny him the royalty checks due to him from the publishing and distribution of his book Negroes with Guns. This was in response to the fact that

Williams was becoming an international figure in the struggle for black empowerment.

284 Robert Williams to Julian Mayfield, May 18, 1964, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

285 Testimony of Robert Williams, Part 1, 23., Conrad Lynn to Robert Williams September 7, 1964, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

286 Robert Williams to Conrad Lynn, June 12, 1964, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 129

In the end these connections and the Black Nationalist rhetoric in “Radio Free Dixie” created a number of problems with Gus Hall in particular and CPUSA in general. To that end Williams had overheard rumors that Gus Hall was in the process of negotiating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to turn over Robert Williams for extradition to

Monroe to stand kidnapping charges connected to the night that Williams protected white supremacists from an angry mob.287

Based on this perception that he had “worn out his welcome” with the

Communists in Cuba, Williams began to search for possible escape routes and serviceable exit strategies. Part of the cause for concern was the realization that Black

Nationalists, members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and people that Williams associated with his efforts in the Civil Rights Movement who were previously welcomed in Cuba were conspicuously not invited to subsequent celebrations of the 26th of July.288

The second general trend evident in the correspondence of Williams was a growing concern about censorship of mail. One letter from Mrs. C.L.R. James was sent on behalf of Conrad Lynn to Robert Williams due to Lynn’s perception that “None of the mail I send directly from here reached Rob’t Williams in Cuba.”289

The third trend was connected to the second in the growing sense of paranoia and urgency concerning how safe communication with Williams was and how safe Robert,

287 Robert Williams to Julian Mayfield, May 18, 1964, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

288 Conrad Lynn to Robert Williams, July 1, 1963, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. The 26th of July is the anniversary of the ill-fated attack on the Moncada garrison led by Fidel and Raul Castro in 1953 which the revolutionary government marks as the start of the Cuban Revolution.

289 Mrs. C.L.R. James to Robert Williams, June 4, 1964, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 130

Mabel, and their two sons were personally in Cuba. To that end, these letters were peppered with inquiries about possible exit routes. Conrad Lynn and Rob wrote back and forth concerning the possibility of Williams taking his family to China.290 Also just as

Manuel Piñeiro had once made arrangements for Robert and Mabel to have a car and a stipend, now Piñeiro made special arrangements to acquire “a Czech .25-caliber automatic and a German P-38… just in case somebody here doesn’t like you.”291

As Williams’s personal unease in Cuba became more apparent, he began to make more frequent and urgent requests to his close circle of friends concerning this issue. In the case of Robert’s friend Julian Mayfield, there were inquires concerning his aid in obtaining a visa to an African country.292 The two most important messages transmitted to Williams via Mrs. James were “It is O.K. for his wife to come to NYC.” And “His best place to go is Red China.”293

290 Robert Williams to Conrad Lynn, May 18, 1964, and Conrad Lynn to Robert Williams September 7, 1964, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

291 Cohen, 228.

292 Robert Williams to Julian Mayfield, May 18, 1964, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

293 Mrs. C.L.R. James to Robert Williams, June 4, 1964, reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Chapter 4: Exit to China: A new home and the renewal of the debate on the “proper” role of African American men.

It was approximately 23 months between the time that these seemingly urgent messages between Robert Williams and Conrad Lynn took place and when Williams left

Cuba for China. The path to China began to open based on correspondence between

Robert Williams and Chinese officials following the bombing of a predominantly black church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Williams was outraged by this particular act of terrorism in which the deaths of four young girls became a symbol of the depth of white supremacist hate. After learning of the tragedy, Williams sent telegrams to a variety of world leaders including the Secretary General of the United Nations U Thant and the

Premier of China, Mao Tse-tung. The telegram was simple; it asked these leaders of the world to “Please add your voice to that of shocked humanity in protest against the savage oppression of Americans of African descent in racist Birmingham, USA.”294

The majority of the world leaders did not respond in any manner but on August 8,

1963 Mao Tse-tung responded with a lengthy statement “in support of the American

Negroes against racial discrimination. I wish to take this opportunity, on behalf of the

Chinese people, to express our resolute support for the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.”295

294 Robert Williams transcript of Western Union Telegram to Mao Tse-tung, May 6, 1963, reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

295 Robert F. Williams, The Crusader, “Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s Statement” Vol. 6. No 2, 1964: 1, October special edition, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

131 132

This response by Chairman Mao preceded an invitation to Robert and Mabel to attend the National Day Celebration on October 1, 1963 to commemorate the end of

Chiang Kai-shek’s rule. Robert and Mabel visited China in October 1963 and later sent audio tapes that highlighted examples of African American music to Radio Peking in

April 1964. Just as Robert tested the waters in Cuba during celebrations that coincided with the 26th of July to commemorate the start of the Cuban Revolution, there was a similar process in which Robert and Mabel traveled to China every October to speak at the National Day Celebrations. Williams was also fortunate in the sense that during this period The Crusader was only published sporadically in Cuba, but each time that he traveled to China he was able to have a private Chinese company print an edition to commemorate his trips and the activities of the Chinese Anniversary Rally.296

It is significant that during this time period that Williams was having problems getting The Crusader published in Cuba, there were two issues that he claimed were forgeries. One of these forgeries was published with an old masthead and distributed as

The Crusader Vol. 8. No 4, April-May 1965. This issue from 1965 was distributed by a uniquely Cuban metered postmark bulk mailing. The issue contains statements that

Robert Williams considered to be against the Chinese Government written in an imitation of Robert’s style and attributed to him. Williams expressed the opinion that the entire

296 Robert Williams, The Crusader, “Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s Statement” Vol. 6. No 2, 1964:1, October special edition, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 133

issue was a forgery “under the auspices of the Cuban G-2 which is heavily infiltrated by the U.S. C.I.A.”297

Once Robert, Mabel and their sons moved to China, Williams’s rhetoric continued to reflect an anti-racist stance, but he also sharpened his anti-imperialist stance.

In tandem with this stance, he also returned to comment on black participation in the

Vietnam Conflict. As the conflict in Vietnam escalated, there was a crisis of manpower within the armed forces of the United States. As we have seen above, Williams had strong opinions concerning the black participation in the armed forces which he formed during his unhappy stint in the Marine Corps.

As early as March 1967 Williams began to articulate statements such as “the most hardy of Black Manhood is mobilized as cannon fodder to fight a racist white man’s war of imperialism in colored Vietnam, defenseless Black women and children are being left to the mercy of heavily armed racist savages in the so-called free world of racist

America.”298 His main objections to black participation in Vietnam was that while blacks were clearly second class citizens in the United States, the war in Vietnam deprived the

Civil Rights movement of able bodied young men who Williams felt should stay home and agitate for their own rights. Instead, they were going to Vietnam to kill and oppress other colored men, women, and children. Williams also expressed objection in this article to the disturbing trend in which white supremacist organizations appeared to be

297 Robert Williams, “Crusader Forged: Counterfeiters Strike Again,” The Crusader, Vol. 8. No 4, May 1967:11, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Note that both the issue that Williams names as a forgery and the genuine issue in which Williams wrote to notify his readers of the forgery have the same volume and number.

298 Robert Williams, “USA: Stand By For Violence,” The Crusader, Vol. 8, No. 3, March 1967: 2, reel #11, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 134

unchecked in their stockpiling of weaponry. Due to these trends Williams advocated that

African Americans should refuse to enlist in the armed forces which would almost certainly result in service in Vietnam.

This ideology came in direct conflict with the findings of the 1965 Moynihan

Report, which was officially published under the title “The Negro Family: The Case for

National Action.”299 Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote the report that became his best known work while serving as the assistant secretary of labor in the Johnson administration. His opening assertion was that the “Negro community” is extraordinary, but it has “been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the Negro male and, in consequence, on a great many

Negro women as well.”300 Moynihan suggested that “inverted” black families in which women provide for the economic well being of the family rather than men constituted a

“pathology” in which the family is “dominated” by black women who attained a higher level of education and employment than their husbands.301

299 Moynihan, 226-238.

300 Moynihan, 226.

301 Ibid., 228. Historian Steve Estes argued that in Moynihan’s capacity as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy Planning and Research, he argued that “providing equal opportunity for African Americans was not enough; the government had a responsibility to provide equal results in job, housing, and education.” Estes, 107. I argue that there was not a true equality of opportunity in this era, that segregation put multiple artificial barriers to equality. I reject Moynihan’s assertion that the so called “inversion” of the black family constituted a “tangle of pathology.” This language both denigrates the black community by Moynihan’s implication that the black family is some sort of “cancer” or malignancy on America, and this language obfuscates the issue of persistent poverty which was directly related to the phenomena of unemployment and violence observed in black communities by Moynihan. 135

Statements such as this lent government sanction to the myth of the black

“superwoman.” As articulated by Michele Wallace, the myth of the black superwoman asserts that it was black women who did much of the dirty work to emasculate black men because “She was too domineering, too strong, too aggressive, too outspoken, too castrating, and too masculine. She was one of the main reasons the black man had never been properly able to take hold of his situation in this country.”302 Most importantly the myth of the superwoman held that it was not just the actions of white men or white women that were keeping black men from grasping opportunities; it was black women who were unknowingly undermining black men. The insidious part of the myth was that it actually blamed black families for their situation and has become a general strategy for future generations that have successively blamed the victims of discrimination rather than worked on possible solutions to counteract the effects of racial segregation and persistent poverty.303

Moynihan cited the long-term effects of segregation and discrimination in

American society as factors leading to the decay of black patriarchy and suggested that the education and training facilities of the armed forces presented a formidable opportunity to reverse this process. In his report Moynihan correctly identified that demonstrated merit was not the primary concern in issues of employment for blacks during this era. Instead of addressing the artificial causes of unemployment and chronic underemployment in the black community, Daniel Moynihan instead proposed that black

302 Wallace, 91.

303 Gwendolyn Mink and Rickie Solinger, 226. 136

men enlist in the Armed Forces in higher numbers. His reasoning was that higher numbers of participation by minorities would return minority men to their “rightful” place as the primary breadwinner in the family. This would give them a greater pride in themselves and an opportunity to exert a greater share of power in their lives.304

Secondly, Moynihan felt that “Service in the United States Armed Forces is the only experience open to an American Negro in which he is truly treated as an equal . . . as one man equal to any other man.”305 He also suggested that in the armed forces that “the category ‘Negro’ and ‘white’ do not exist.”306

Robert Williams sought to address these findings from the Department of Labor in a very direct manner in his pamphlet “Listen Brothers!” He strongly felt that “a genuine peace movement for Vietnam is a positive thing.”307 Similar to his earlier articles in The Crusader in which he expressed the opinion that the Armed Forces was integrated but continued to operate in a racist fashion. In general this led to a system in which black men received less training and in his view, black men were most likely to be placed in harms way. While Williams agreed with the finding that black men deserved greater access to employment, he specifically cited the Armed Forces as not an

304 Estes, 113.

305 Moynihan, 235.

306 Ibid.

307 Robert Williams, “Whither Goeth The Peace Movement?,” The Crusader, Vol. 8. No 4, May 1967: 2, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 137

appropriate employer nor was it the “duty” of minorities to respond to orders to “machine gun and napalm your own dear mother” or alternately the Vietcong.308

Despite objections from Williams and others, the suggestions of the Moynihan

Report meshed nicely with the decision to escalate involvement in the Vietnam Conflict.

In direct response to the findings of the Moynihan Report approximately 354,000 men entered the Armed Forces starting in October 1966 and ending in December 1971.

Although many of these men were previously designated as unfit for service, Project

100,000 sought to increase enlistment of blacks to the Armed Forces by 100,000 men per year. Secretary of Defense McNamara claimed that this program would allow men to

“serve in their country’s defense and they can be given an opportunity to return to civilian life with skills and aptitudes which, for them and their families, will reverse the downward spiral of human decay.”309

This statement by McNamara was a response to the alarming trends that

Moynihan cited in which it appeared that young black males were committing a large proportion of personal crimes such as “rape, murder and aggravated assault.”310 Instead of citing the existence of racial profiling and other disturbing trends that skew enforcement of violent crimes toward black males Moynihan and others within the government proposed that African Americans be recruited into the armed forces in

308 Robert F. Williams, “Listen, Brothers!,” 25.

309 Robert McNamara before the VFW National Convention of August 1966, in Readjustment of Project 100,000 veterans: hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, House of Representatives, One Hundred First Congress, First Session February 28, 1990, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990), 1.

310 Moynihan, 233. 138

numbers that were representative of their percentage of the population. This would do two things, first the black unemployment rate would drop from 9.1 percent to 7.0 percent which would provide minority men with gainful employment that they would need to head their household. This opportunity would make them feel like “more of a man” due to their ability to escape the “matrifocal” world of the black ghetto.311

Project 100,000 welded the goals of President Johnson’s War on Poverty to the goals of the Department of Defense to increase the number of both draftees and enlistees by changing the standards for approval for service. 91 percent of the “New Standards

Men” were below previous aptitude and educational standards and the long term numbers reflect that these men “had lower completion rates for both basic and skill training; their premature attrition rates were higher; and they had higher rates of indiscipline.”312 These numbers point to the conclusion that these men largely did not benefit from being in the

Armed Forces but rather suffered more failures, set-backs and casualties than their white counterparts.

While it is unlikely that Robert Williams had access to these metrics when he wrote his pamphlet “Listen, Brother!” he did overtly critique the policy mostly on the basis of his opinion that the armed forces does not provide true employment. As full employment is such a part of working class masculine identity, the denial of job opportunities in an industrial setting was very upsetting. It was as if the Department of

Labor had suggested that white men deserved employment in the United States in the

311 Estes, 113.

312 McNamara, 3. 139

industrial sector while black men were “best suited” to fight abroad based on their higher incidence of involvement in violent crime. Moynihan cited that in 1960 “56 percent of the homicide and 57 percent of the assault offenders committed to state institutions were

Negroes.”313 These statistics were intended to illustrate the high incidence of delinquency and crime present in African American neighborhoods, which Moynihan felt represented an opportunity for reform through the Armed Forces.

It is notable that Edward Said spoke of how relying on “facts,” “attitudes,”

“Trends,” and statistics has an overall dehumanizing value of the subject. In Said’s classic situation he noted that “Modern American Near East experts very seldom make references to Near East Literature.” Similarly these same experts emphasize the importance of Arabic to oil company executives and stress the need of experts in the

United States to learn Arabic not to gain a greater understanding of “what people are or think but what they can be made to think” by our propagandists.314

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan cited “Matriarchy,” “The Failure of Youth,”

“Delinquency and Crime,” and “Alienation,” as some of the root causes of the failure of the black family he also failed to look at the art or literature of African Americans in attempting to better understand their predicament in a domestic sense. 315 He instead cited statistics concerning employment rates, violent crime rates, incarceration rates and

313 Moynihan, 233.

314 Said, 291-292.

315 Moynihan, 228, 231, 233, 236. 140

the disparity in educational attainment between black men and black women.316 The result is a very impersonal and deeply flawed look at a minority segment of Americans.

It is not surprising that Robert Williams also looked at blacks in an urban setting and concluded in “Listen Brothers!” that the average working class black American had more in common with the poor hard working Vietcong who lives in a “rickety bamboo shack” than he did with the white officers.317 Secondly he felt that the government of the

United States used slick rhetoric to “trick black people into winding up on the wrong side… the wrong cause against the wrong people.”318 Through a series of rhetorical trickery the Armed Forces and the U.S. government had effectively dehumanized the

North Vietnamese in such a manner that the average G.I. would shoot their enemy with no more thought than swatting a fly.

Williams rightly questioned the logic that suggested killing our fellow human beings was a valid path to manhood. Part of his objection was his feeling that the armed forces of the United States where all too often employed in parts of the world that were inhabited by people of color. The images that he selected to accompany his prose depict either black victims of police brutality from the United States or black troops operating in areas with civilians of color.319 Williams was very angry about the situation in which blacks in the United States who protested their lack of full citizenship were subject to increasingly violent treatment at the hands of policemen who arrested sit-in participants.

316 Ibid., 228, 229, 235-237.

317 Robert F. Williams, “Listen, Brothers!” 23.

318 Ibid., 20-21.

319 See illustrations #2 and #3 from Robert F. Williams, “Listen, Brothers!,” 24, 22 respectively. 141

At the same time, black men were enlisting in record numbers due to the efforts of

Project 100,000, which began accepting men who were previously disqualified for service due their inability to meet the physical or mental requirements for service.320

Men like Robert Williams viewed it as a slap in the face that many black enlistees only gained entrance to the armed forces after standards were lowered. Williams highlighted his bitterness writing “Niggers always fall short of qualifications when it comes to being entitled to equality, justice and democracy. . . But there aint no bars put on the nigger when it comes time for cannon fodder.”321

Illustration #2 Illustration #3 “How colored they look!” “For democracy? Whose democracy?”

320 McNamara, 1.

321 Robert F. Williams, “Listen, Brothers!,” 38. 142

“Listen, Brother!” protested that black men were heavily recruited and drafted into a conflict fought to “preserve democracy.” These same men were unable to fully enjoy the benefits of democracy at home due to the state of segregation that denied them full citizenship. His rhetoric here echoes some of his earlier thought that “The Black man has fought in every war since the American Revolution without reaping any real and honorable benefits.”322 Williams articulated that many of these men were fighting and dying “For democracy? Whose democracy? Democracy, that’s a crock of shit! Plain and simple, they died for [racist white America’s] right to ride roughshod over colored people, yes to make Vietnam the Mississippi of Asia.”323

In the original text of “Listen Brothers!,” Williams used the name “Charlie” aka

“Chuck Whitey” as an archetypical stand-in for one of the men that “The Hon. Mr. Elijah

Muhammad has a more appropriate name for him. He says he is a two legged devil.”324

Williams explained that in nick naming the Vietcong “Charlie” American whites had cleverly harnessed black disaffection with white America and redirected it. The idea was that black soldiers would channel their pent up rage gained through 400 years of slavery and second-class citizenship and vent it against the North Vietnamese. This internal monologue that Williams included in “Listen Brothers!” actually represents a cooling of thought as Robert had earlier expressed that black soldiers in Vietnam “should throw a

322 F. Williams, “Whither Goeth The Peace Movement?,” The Crusader, Vol. 8. No 4, May 1967: 2, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

323 Robert F. Williams, “Listen, Brothers!,” 21.

324 Ibid. 143

monkey wrench into those murderous operations.” 325 This was because the “new crop of

Uncle Toms. . . unwittingly serve as bullet shields and goon squads to restrain colored humanity.”326

The text of “Listen Brothers!” was written in plain and simple language peppered with anger and profanity. The purpose of this short pamphlet was to reach young men in the trenches of Vietnam and convince them to change their thoughts and actions.

Williams attempted to formulate a compelling argument that black men needed to refuse to serve in Vietnam. Robert Williams advocated that it was the duty of these men to instead “defend the honor of his own mother from Whitey’s insults and dehumanization” but added sadly “When it comes to protecting his own people, a [black] soldier ain’t got no honor.”327 All of these comments by Williams can be linked directly to his formulation of black masculinity. The central thread of Williams’s argument in “Listen

Brothers!” was that a truly masculine and honorable man must reject military service as a valid employment.

This represents a rethinking and a positive step back from earlier statements that he made in the pages of The Crusader. In March of 1967 Williams argued that “Black troops must come to understand that the racist life they spare at the front may be the very

Minuteman, Klansman or thug cop who will brutalize or lynch them at home.”328

325 F. Williams, “Whither Goeth The Peace Movement?,” The Crusader, Vol. 8. No 4, May 1967: 2, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

326 Ibid.

327 Robert F. Williams, “Listen, Brothers!,” 33. 144

Williams added in another article in the same issue of The Crusader that black soldiers must be willing to do one of two things: either come home to fight “white man’s oppression” or to stay in Vietnam and “kill and die for Black liberation.”329 In these two articles from May 1967 Williams very clearly was advocating that black soldiers “frag” their white officers in combat. The practice of “fragging” involved subordinate members of a military troop attacking their officer in protest of their orders. According to statistics compiled from the era, “Reported fragging incidents rose from 126 in 1969, the first year data were kept, to 333 in 1971; insubordination convictions from 82 in 1968 to 152 in

1970.”330

Instead of advocating such a brutal course of action in “Listen Brothers!” Robert

Williams instead ended with a rhetorical question. Why would the average urban dwelling black man travel 10,000 miles to kill the poverty stricken people of color who were fighting for their right to self-determination? Williams challenged black men to instead stay at home, dodge the draft if need be, and if he was determined to fight, black men should fight for his own rights as a human. According to this line of reasoning, black men needed to return to their status as head of their family, not be shipped

328 F. Williams, “Whither Goeth The Peace Movement?,” The Crusader, Vol. 8. No 4, May 1967: 2, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

329 F. Williams, “America is the Black Man’s Battleground,” The Crusader, Vol. 8. No 4, May 1967: 3, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Note that Robert Williams was sometimes inconsistent with common elements of style in some of his writing. He at times capitalized “Black” and “White” and at other times did not. In all cases quotes of Williams retain the original formatting unless his original format utilized all capitals. In these cases quotations revert to current stylistic guidelines.

330 Guenter Lewery, America in Vietnam (New York and Oxford: 1978), 156-167. Quoted in Daniel C. Hallin, “The War in Vietnam, and Political Support: A Critique of the Thesis of an Oppositional Media” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 46, 1984: 10. 145

overseas. Williams’s retort to the Moynihan report was that black men needed to be properly employed in the United States where they could join first class citizenship rather than be made into cannon fodder. 2. Home Again: A quieter life, but still active politically

No matter whether he was in the United States, Cuba, China, or North Vietnam,

Robert Williams consistently argued for black empowerment along the lines of masculinity. This often involved competing definitions of masculinity. While he was in the United States, his argument was often with white supremacists who denied the humanity of African Americans. In the case of Dr. Perry the issue for many racists was less about the legal issues of performing surgical procedures such as an abortion; it was more about the fact that a black man was accused of performing an intimate procedure on a white woman.

At other points in his life, Williams often met with issues concerning labeling.

The fact that he sought refugee status in Communist countries but did not accept their dogma that class divisions were far more important than race distinctions meant that he was never was able to gain lasting support in these countries. During his time in China

Williams continued to cultivate relationships with Black Nationalist groups. He held various offices of leadership with groups including “The Black Legion,” “The Republic of New Africa,” “The Provisional Government of the African-American Captive Nation,” and “The Revolutionary Action Movement.”331 While his detractors in Cuba cited these relationships as evidence of his counterrevolutionary affiliations, the Chinese seemed to have fewer reservations in this regard. While Williams claimed that these affiliations

331 Testimony of Robert Williams, Part 1 index: v., part 2: 76-88.

146 147

mostly involved adding his name and prestige to these groups there was a perception that he was a significant leader and that if he were to ever return to the United States he might become a significant leader of the emerging “New Left.”332

There is a significant amount of evidence from his correspondence from this era that Williams felt that the New Left was not necessarily the best fit as an ally for African

Americans. In a letter to a party from the West Indies that Robert Williams addressed as

“Dear Brother James” he summarized how figures from the American Left had a variety of agendas of their own. When Williams met Alan Ginsberg in Cuba apparently a significant portion of their conversation revolved around “the fight to legally smoke ‘pot’ and to practice homosexuality” both of which were issues of greater importance to

Ginsberg than black empowerment or Civil Rights.333

Similarly Williams was hopeful that Stokeley Carmichael and Fidel Castro could forge a working relationship but he later lamented that “Fidel doesn’t know what is going on down there. He is surrounded by a gang of crooks.”334 Williams also commented that

“Cuba is playing a dirty game with Afros and I know this from experience… Stokeley can expect support from Cuba only if he is prepared to become an Uncle Tom and take direction from the white supremacy oriented Cubans.”335

332 Question posed by Mr. Sourwine, Testimony of Robert Williams, Part 1, 21. It is interesting to note that much of the reason for the three days that Robert Williams was called to testify before the Congressional subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act was due to the fear that he was an expert on urban guerrilla warfare.

333 Robert Williams to “Brother James,” July 15, 1967, reel #3, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

334 Robert Williams to Mae Mallory, April 1, 1968, reel #3, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 148

Robert Williams once repeated his strong opinion that leftists and Marxists in both the United States and Cuba “are determined to keep us in a state of dependency and to deprive us of our full manhood no matter what the social system may be.”336 These serious doubts may be part of why Williams began to back away and distance himself from certain revolutionary elements within the United States.

During much of his time in China Robert Williams defined his mission as inspiring blacks in the United States to “agitate and educate.” Further, he hoped “to create a link and also to reach our people, to inspire our people to unite, to also inspire them to resist injustice, and to bring about change.”337 If anything truly disturbed Williams concerning his period of exile in Cuba, it was their general policy of official inclusion with informal exclusion, which Sawyer termed “inclusionary discrimination.”338 Robert

Williams agreed noted that the Cuban “Communists believe more in justice for black folks than any of those self-righteous hypocrites who deceptively speak of defending the world from ‘oppressive Communism.”339 On the other hand, they did not seem to be that concerned with the problems of poverty experienced by blacks, which was a root problem

335 Robert Williams to Richard Gibson, August 10, 1967: 1, reel #3, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

336 Robert Williams to Richard Gibson, August 10, 1967: 2, reel #3, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

337 Testimony of Robert Williams Part 1, 9.

338 Sawyer, xx.

339 Robert F. Williams to J.A. Lumpp, January 30, 1964. 149

for many people. Further Williams noted that “white americans who now live under socialism, are still unable to accept Negroes as equals.”340

Yes there were points when Williams seemed to feel that the Cubans were far more progressive on including the general lack of formal segregation, but this evidently did not end racism. Robert Williams seemed to take at least one lesson away from his experience in Cuba. The PSP argued that the best manner to change the race problem in the United States would be to have the working class of all colors unite to change the conditions. Williams was not a Communist and did not believe that the revolutionary goals of Radical Communism were a viable avenue to achieving social change. Further,

Robert Williams knew that the white working class men that Communist dogma proposed as his allies had in many cases already been brought under the banner of the Ku

Klux Klan generations before his birth. In a very real sense the racial hatred of the Klan would likely undermine the possibility of a broad class based social movement.

While in China, Robert enjoyed a much freer hand in his work as the Communist

Party largely did not interfere with the publishing of The Crusader. Further, the Chinese set him up with a camera crew that followed his travels as a westerner in parts of China that were largely closed to the outside world. Williams lived in China with his wife and two sons for an additional three years before he decided to come home to the United

States on September 12, 1969.341 Despite concerns that he might have the connections to become a significant leader in either the Black Power Movement or the emerging New

340 Robert F. Williams to Clyde Appleton, March 22, 1964.

341 “Williams Seized on Return to U.S.,” New York Times, September 13, 1969, 1. 150

Left, Williams became better known as an expert on China. It was largely his unparalleled experience as an American who lived in China during a time when China was fairly closed to the west that led to Robert Williams’s time as a member of the faculty at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.342 Once they returned to the United

States Robert Williams apparently felt a need to distance himself from the Black

Nationalist and New Left groups that he had previously lent his prestige to. This was in part due to his concerns over the possibility of extradition back to Monroe to face kidnapping charges, but also due to his understanding that the new black militants were out to provoke violence rather than deter it through self defense tactics.343

Dr. Timothy Tyson depicted this portion of Robert Williams’s life as a time when he withdrew from public life and quietly “planted flowers while the FBI watched.” His son John Chalmers Williams explained “My dad chose to live” as opposed to Malcolm X,

Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers who were all assassinated for their activities in the Civil Rights Movement.344 While it is convenient to this thesis to suggest that

Williams focused on raising his sons as he wanted to and dedicated himself to being a good provider, and example and role model as he grew old, there is evidence that

Williams was more politically active than Tyson cited.

A survey of his correspondence from 1970- 1975 reveals two trends. One is the good number of letters exchanged between Professor Robert F. Williams and a variety of

342 Notes on the provenance of the Robert F. Williams Collection, Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

343 Tyson, 304.

344 Ibid., 305. 151

institutions that sought to attract him as a speaker. These letters mostly discuss details including travel plans and honoraria surrounding a series of speaking engagements.345

The other trend present in the correspondence from this period is an active defense against efforts to extradite Robert Williams to Monroe, North Carolina to stand trial for kidnapping charges. Robert contended for 14 years that the kidnapping charge was “a frame up” but that charging him with kidnapping was convenient due to the mandatory minimum five year jail sentence associated with a conviction. While some of the strategy that Williams employed included resisting extradition, the petition that made the most headway was submitted on July 12, 1972. This petition was in the matter of a writ of habeas corpus in which the defense established that there was no valid existing warrant for the arrest of Robert F. Williams on these charges and the case was dropped based on this information in January 1976.346

In addition to the trends identified above, Black Studies professor Ronald

Stephens argued that during the final 24 years of his life, Robert Williams became a champion of human rights in his surrounding area. According to Stephens, Robert and

Mabel stood up against a local seasonal prostitution ring in the resort town of Idlewild,

Michigan.347 Robert and Mabel Williams also compiled a series of newspaper clippings

345 I did not copy any of these pieces of correspondence from reel #5 on this subject but it would be a useful exercise to correlate this series of letters with documents from the Internal Revenue Service which are available at Bentley Historical Library as a part of their rather large collection of IRS, CIA and FBI records on Robert and Mabel Williams.

346 Petition of Robert F. Williams for Writ of Habeas Corpus, State of Michigan in the Circuit Court for the County of Wayne, July 12, 1972, reel #5, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 152

that presented evidence of police brutality against minorities and unfair treatment of blacks in local prisons.348 For these and other actions, the sheriff’s department attempted to label Williams as a troublemaker but Williams was able to effectively position himself in the community “as a defender of the rights of Black residents.”349

It appears that Robert Williams was less confrontational during his life in Baldwin but he was highly concerned with human rights issues. From a political standpoint he was more focused on what he could do for the community as one person rather than anything that was broader or involved mobilizing large groups to advocate for broader civil or human rights. The man who had lived for so long fighting the system and then living in self-imposed exile from the United States came home and provided a good home life for his family until his death on October 15, 1996 of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

347 Ronald J. Stephens, “Narrating Acts of Resistance: Explorations of Untold Heroic and Horrific Battle Stories Surrounding Robert Franklin Williams’s Residence in Lake County, Michigan” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 33 No. 5, May 2003: 675-703, 681,682.

348 Ibid., 683

349 Ibid., 685. 3. Conclusion:

Robert Williams was truly one of the great but unsung figures of the Civil Rights

Movement. His life illustrates how the movement, which is so often envisioned as only an American Movement that spanned the years from 1955-1965 and was waged largely in nonviolent terms, has recently been complicated. During his years abroad from 1961-

1970 and beyond Williams continued to emphasize both his concept of flexible struggle and armed self defense. These central concepts were coupled with his working-class identification, which emphasized the importance of equal access to jobs for African

American men as an avenue to a strong economic position and fuller citizenship.

Throughout his period abroad, Williams often highlighted how employment was the key to a return to patriarchal power for within the black family. This study has attempted to expand upon the existing literature on Robert Williams by looking at the international scope of his campaign for black empowerment. During his period in Monroe and his years abroad Robert Williams envisioned the struggle for Civil Rights in terms of gaining fuller citizenship, which he equated with attaining full manhood. He often expressed that full manhood was impossible without meaningful employment that paid a living wage.

The traditions and customs associated with segregation have yet to be fully reversed as equality of education and employment continue to be ideals that often fall short of their intended mark and chronic underemployment is a stark reality for many working class

153 154

Americans. The work of Robert Williams and the Civil Rights Movement is sadly still yet to be completed as full economic and social equality for all Americans continues to be a goal rather than our shared reality. Works Cited

Primary Sources

Articles

Guevara, Ernesto “Che.” “The final offensive and the battle of Santa Clara.” In Che Guevara Reader, ed. David Deutschmann. Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press, 2003.

_____. “Socialism and Man in Cuba.” In Che Guevara Reader, ed. David Deutschmann. Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press, 2003.

King, Martin Luther Jr. “Hate is Always Tragic.” In Robert Williams. Negroes With Guns. Marzani & Munsell 1962; reprint Chicago: Third World Press, 1973.

_____. “The Social organization of Non-violence.” In Robert Williams. Negroes with Guns. Marzani & Munsell 1962; reprint Chicago: Third World Press, 1973.

Poussaint, Alvin F. M.D. “The Confession of Nat Turner and the Dilemma of William Styron.” In William Stryon’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. Ed. John Henrik Clarke. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.

Williams, Mabel. “Looking Back.” The Crusader. Vol. 1, No 17, October 17, 1959: 4. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Open letter to President Kennedy” in The Crusader Vol. 2 No. 29, April 29, 1961: 8. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 1. No 2, November, 11 1961: 2. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Williams, Robert. The Crusader. Vol 1. No 1, June 26, 1959: 1. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 1. No 5, July 25, 1959: 1. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

155 156

_____. “Should Negroes Resort to Violence?” Liberation, September 1959. In Christopher Strain. Pure Fire. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 1, No. 17, October 17, 1959: 2. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 1, No. 24, December 5, 1959: 9. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 1. No 26, December 19, 1959: 1. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 1, No 29, January16, 1960: 3. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Monster Rally for Cuba in Harlem.” The Crusader. Vol. 2. No 17, November 12, 1960: 3. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Mad Dog Diplomacy.” The Crusader. Vol. 2. No 28, April 22, 1961: 2. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “OH PLEASE MASTER – LET ME GO TO HELL WID YOU.” The Crusader. Vol. 2 No. 29, April 29, 1961: 1. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Hitler’s Protégé.” The Crusader. Vol. 2 No. 29, April 29, 1961: 2. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 2. No 31, June 5, 1961: 2. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “A Disappointing King.” The Crusader. Vol. 2. No 31, June 5, 1961: 2. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 2. No. 33, June 24, 1961: 1. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Passport to Cuba Denied Williams.” The Crusader. Vol. 3. No 3, July 24, 1961: 2. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 157

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 4. No 2, August, 1962: 8. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Cuba no Fallará.” The Crusader, Vol. 4. No 1, June - July 1962: 3. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Charms and Arms.” The Crusader, Vol. 4. No 1, June - July 1962: 7,8. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 5. No 2, February, 1964: 4-5. In Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, part 3, March 25, 1970. Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1971. Appendix VIII: 294-301.

_____. “Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s Statement.” The Crusader,Vol. 6. No 2, 1964: 1, October special edition. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. The Crusader. Vol. 6. No 2, 1964: 10, October Special Edition. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “USA: Stand By For Violence.” The Crusader. Vol. 8, No. 3, March 1967: 2. Reel #11, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Whither Goeth The Peace Movement?” The Crusader. Vol. 8. No 4, May 1967: 2. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “America is the Black Man’s Battleground.” The Crusader. Vol. 8. No 4, May 1967: 3. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Crusader Forged: Counterfeiters Strike Again.” The Crusader. Vol. 8. No 4, May 1967:11. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 158

Books

Castro, Fidel. History Will Absolve Me! Habana: Impraso por Cooperativa Obrera de Publicidad, 1960.

Cleaver, Elderidge. “On Becoming.” In Soul on Ice. New York, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968.

Cohen, Robert Carl. Black Crusader. Secaucus, N.J.: L. Stuart, 1972.

Du Bois, W. E. B. “Marcus Garvey.” In W. E. B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses 1920-1963. Ed. Dr. Philip S. Foner, with a tribute by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970.

Guevara, Ernesto “Che.” Che Guevara On Guerrilla Warfare. New York: Praeger, 1961.

Wallace, Michelle. Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. New York: Dial Press, 1979.

Williams, Mabel. Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide. San Francisco: Freedom Archives, 2005.

Williams, Robert. Negroes with Guns. Marzani & Munsell 1962; reprint Chicago: Third World Press, 1973.

_____. Listen, Brothers! New York: World Wide Publishers, 1968.

X, Malcolm. “The Black Revolution.” In Malcolm X Speaks. New York: Grove Press, 1965.

Government Documents

Official Transcript of State V. A.E. Perry, Reprinted in The Crusader. Vol. 1. No 29, January 16, 1960: 3. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Official Transcript of State V. A.E. Perry. Reprinted in The Crusader. Vol. 2. No 39, March 26, 1960: 6. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Request for Political Asylum. Transcribed record of Robert Williams’s handwritten petition requesting the government of Fidel Castro for political asylum. Reprinted as exhibit No. 49 in Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal 159

Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety -First Congress, Second Session, part 2, March 24, 1970. Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1971.

Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, part 1, February 16, 1970. Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1971.

Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, part 2, March 24, 1970. Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1971.

Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, part 3, March 25, 1970. Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1971.

Petition of Robert F. Williams for Writ of Habeas Corpus, State of Michigan in the Circuit Court for the County of Wayne, July 12, 1972. Reel #5, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert McNamara before the VFW National Convention of August 1966. In Readjustment of Project 100,000 veterans: hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Veteran’s Affairs. House of Representatives. One Hundred First Congress, First Session February 28, 1990. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990.

Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” Reprinted in Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics. Edited by Gwendolyn Mink and Solinger, Rickie. New York and London: New York University Press, 2003.

U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. The Social and Economic Status of the Black Population in the United States: An Historical View, 1790-1978, Special Studies Series, p. 23, No. 80, 1979. Quoted in William A. Edwards “Garveyism: Organizing the Masses or Mass Organization?.” In Garvey His Work 160

and Impact. Ed. Rupert Lewis and Patrick Bryan. Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc., 1992.

Newspapers

World-Telegram (New York). “On the Ultra Right.” Sunday, July 23, 1965. Reprinted in Testimony of Robert F. Williams before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, part 2, March 24, 1970. Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1971.

The New York Times (New York). “Williams Seized on Return to U.S.” September 13, 1969.

The New York Times (New York). “U.S. Negro Who Fled to Cuba Now Assails Castro From Haven in Peking.” November 14, 1966.

The Pittsburgh Courier (Pittsburgh). “Letter to the Editor from James Thompson,” published in Spring 1942. In Lewis H. Fenderson. “The Negro Press as a Social Instrument.” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 20, no. 2, Spring 1951: 181 -188.

Personal Correspondence

Mrs. C.L.R. James to Robert Williams, June 4, 1964. Reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Conrad Lynn to Robert Williams, July 1, 1963. Reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Conrad Lynn to Robert Williams, June 24, 1964. Reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Conrad Lynn to Robert Williams, September 7, 1964. Reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert Williams to Mr. J. K. Lumpp, January 30, 1964. Reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert Williams to Clyde Appleton, March 22, 1964. Reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 161

Robert Williams to Julian Mayfield, May 18, 1964. Reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert Williams to Conrad Lynn, CC Truman Nelson, Anne Olson, Julian Mayfield, May 18, 1964. Reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert Williams to Conrad Lynn, June 12, 1964. Reel #1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert Williams to Mr. Julian Mayfield May 18, 1964. Reel#1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert Williams transcript of Western Union Telegram to Mao Tse-tung, May 6, 1963. Reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert Williams to “Brother James,” July 15, 1967. Reel #3, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert Williams to Richard Gibson, August 10, 1967: 1. Reel #3, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Robert Williams to Mae Mallory, April 1, 1968. Reel #3, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Miss Jo Salas to Ensign Thomas Parker January 30, 1964. Reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Press Releases

Undated Press Release. Robert F. Williams Legal Defense Fund. Reel #1 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Press release, Havana Cuba- July 24, 1962, reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 162

Radio Transcripts

Dreckman, Isolda. “Radio Free Dixie” transcript of broadcast August 10, 1962, preamble, 1. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Williams, Robert. “Radio Free Dixie” transcript of broadcast August 10, 1962, editorial, 1. Reel #11 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

_____. “Radio Free Dixie” transcript of broadcast August 10, 1962, editorial, 1. Reel #10 Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Web Sources

Sabir, Wanda. “Growing up Revolutionary: An interview with John Williams, son of Mabel and Robert F. Williams.” Available on the World Wide Web at http://www.freedomarchives.org/Reviews/Growing%20up%20Revolutionary.pdf accessed10-9-09.

Secondary Sources

Articles

Cha-Jua, Sundiata Keita and Clarence Lang. “The ‘Long Movement’ as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies.” Journal of Negro History, v. 92 issue 2 (2007): 265-288.

Collins, William J. “Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production: Fair Employment in World War II Labor Markets.” The American Economic Review Vol. 91, no. 1 (Mar., 2001): 272-286.

Groth, An, W Burgess and LL Holmstrom. “Rape: power, anger, and sexuality.” American Psychiatric Association. 1977; 134: 1239-1243.

Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, "The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past," The Journal of American History March 2005. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/91.4/hall.html Accessed 11-21-10. 163

Haney, Craig. “The Fourteenth Amendment and Symbolic Legality: Let Them Eat Due Process.” Law and Human Behavior Vol. 15, No. 2 (1991): 183-204.

Harlan, Louis R. “Booker T. Washington and the Politics of Accommodation.” In Booker T. Washington in Perspective. Ed. Raymod W. Smock. Jackson and London: University of Mississippi, 1988.

Harold, Christine and Kevin Michael DeLuca. “Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2005): 263 -286.

Korstad, Robert and Nelson Lichtenstein. “Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement.” The Journal of American History Vol. 75, No. 3 (Dec., 1988): 786-811.

Nelson, Bruce. “Organized Labor and the Struggle for Black Equality in Mobile during World War II.” The Journal of American History Vol., 80, No. 3 (Dec., 1993): 952-988.

Pateman, Carol. “The Fraternal Social Contract.” In The Masculinity Studies Reader. Ed. Rachel Adams and David Savran. Malden: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2002.

Reitan, Ruth. “Cuba, the Black Panther Party and the US Black Movement in the 1960s: Issues of Security.” New Political Science, Vol 21, No. 2, (1999): 217-230.

Scott, Joan W. “AHR Forum, Unanswered Questions.” The American Historical Review, vol. 113 No. 5 (December 2008): 1422-1430.

Sugrue, Thomas J. “Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964.” The Journal of American History (Sept, 1995): 551-578.

Tinsman, Heidi. “A Paradigm of Our Own.” The American Historical Review, vol. 113 No. 5 (December 2008): 1357-1374.

Books

Beckstrand, Lisa. Deviant Women of the French Revolution and the Rise of Feminism. Madison, Teaneck: Fairligh Dickinson University Press, 2009.

David, Marcel. Fraternité et Révolution française, 1789-1799. Paris, 1987. Quoted in Hunt, Lynn. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. 164

Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 1770-1823. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

De la Cova, Antonio Rafael. The Moncada Attack: The Birth of the Cuban Revolution. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007.

Dosal, Paul J. Cuba Libre: A Brief History of Cuba. Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc, 2006.

English, T.J. Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and then Lost it to the Revolution. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008.

Estes, Steve. I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Finkelman, Paul. Dred Scot v. Sandford: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford Books, A Division of St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1997.

Finkelman, Paul. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. M. E. Sharp, Inc., 2001.

Foner, Philip. A History of Cuba, and its Relations with the U.S. vol. 1. New York: International Publishers, 1962.

Gleijeses, Piero. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage Books A Division of Random House: 1976, reprint of 1972.

Gilmore, David. Manhood in the Making. Yale University, 1990.

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Gender & Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina 1896-1920. The University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Hawkins, Hugh. Booker T. Washington and His Critics: The Problem of Negro Leadership. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1962.

Hill, Lance. The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 165

Hunt, Lynn. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992.

Jespersen, T. Christopher. American Images of China, 1931-1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Klein, Christina. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945 -1961. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003.

Kramer, Paul A. The Blood of Government, Race, Empire, the United States, & the Philippines. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Leiner, Marvin. Sexual Politics in Cuba: Machismo, Homosexuality, and AIDS. Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., 1994.

Lewery, Guenter. America in Vietnam. New York and Oxford: 1978. In Daniel C. Hallin. “The War in Vietnam, and Political Support: A Critique of the Thesis of an Oppositional Media.” The Journal of Politics. Vol. 46, 1984: 2-24.

Mink, Gwendolyn and Rickie Solinger. Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics. New York and London: New York University Press, 2003.

Poussaint, Alvin F. M.D. “The Confession of Nat Turner and the Dilemma of William Styron.” Reprinted in William Stryon’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, ed. John Henrick Clarke. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Strand, London: Penguin Classic, 2003; reprint of Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1978.

Sawyer, Mark. Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Scott, Joan Wallach. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Shibusawa, Naoko. America’s Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Smith, Lois M. and Alfred Padula. Sex and the Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 166

Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Vintage Books A Division of Random House, Inc. 1989, reprint of 1956.

Strain, Christopher. Pure Fire. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

Tyson, Timothy. Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams & the Roots of Black Power. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965. Penguin Books: New York, 1987. Appendix A

Petition to the Monroe Board of Alderman

Petition We the undersigned citizens of Monroe, petition the City Board of Aldermen to use its influence to endeavor to:

1. Induce the factories in this county to hire without discrimination. 2. Induce the local employment agency to grant non-whites the same privileges given to whites. 3. Instruct the Welfare Agency that non-whites are entitled to the same privileges, courtesies and considerations given to whites. 4. Construct a swimming pool in the Winchester Avenue area of Monroe. 5. Remove all signs in the city of Monroe designating one area for colored and another for whites. 6. Instruct the Superintendent of Schools that he must prepare to desegregate the city schools no later than 1962. 7. Provide adequate transportation for all school children. 8. Formally request the State Medical Board to permit Dr. Albert E. Perry, Jr., to practice medicine in Monroe and Union County. 9. Employ Negroes in skilled or supervisory capacities in the City Government. 10. ACT IMMEDIATELY on all of these proposals and inform the committee and the public of your actions. (signed) Robert F. Williams Albert E. Perry, Jr., M.D. John W. McDow

167 Appendix B

Petition for political asylum presented by Robert F. Williams to the Government of Cuba

Havana, Cuba, October 2, 1961. To the Minister of Foreign Relations, Havana, Cuba:

I, Robert Franklin Williams, who was born in Monroe, North Carolina, U.S.A. on the date of February 26, 1925 as a descendant of captive people who had been kidnapped, bound in chains of slavery and brutally forced from the bosom of their African motherland, do for the following reasons, request asylum in the free Republic of Cuba:

I. Because much terror is directed against my race in the U.S.A. Racists are now waging a mass program based on violence and starvation for the inhumane purpose of genocide. II. That because I had advocated rebellion and self defense against the Ku Klux Klan terror, tyranny, mayhem and all forms of barbaric oppression, I became a special target of the Ku Klux Klan, the white citizens councils, the Southern Patriots, Inc.

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