Robert F. Williams, "Black Power," and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle Author(s): Timothy B. Tyson Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Sep., 1998), pp. 540-570 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2567750 . Accessed: 18/11/2011 13:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American History. http://www.jstor.org RobertF Williams,"Black Power;' and the Rootsof the African AmericanFreedom Struggle TimothyB. Tyson "Thechildhood of Southerners,white and colored,"Lillian Smith wrote in 1949, "hasbeen lived on tremblingearth." For one black boy in Monroe,North Carolina, theearth first shook on a Saturdaymorning in 1936.Standing on thesidewalk on Main Street,Robert Franklin Williams witnessed the batteringof an African Americanwoman by a whitepoliceman. The policeman,Jesse Alexander Helms, an admirerrecalled, "had the sharpest shoe in townand he didn'tmind using it." The policeofficer's son, Sen. Jesse Helms, remembered "Big Jesse" as "a six-foot, two-hundredpound gorilla.When he said, 'Smile,'I smiled."Eleven-year-old RobertWilliams watched in terroras BigJesse flattened the black woman with his fistand then arrested her. Years later, Williams described the scene: Helms "dragged heroff to thenearby jailhouse, her dress up overher head, the same way that a caveman would club and draghis sexual prey." He recalled"her tortured screams as herflesh was ground away from the friction of theconcrete." The memoryof thisviolent spectacle and ofthe laughter of white bystanders haunted Williams. Perhapsthe deferential way that African American men on thestreet responded waseven more deeply troubling. "The emasculated black men hung their heads in shameand hurriedsilently from the cruelly bizarre sight," Williams recalled.1 TimothyB. Tysonis assistantprofessor of Afro-Americanstudies at the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison. I am gratefulto thosewho grantedme interviews,read draftsof thisarticle, or otherwiseassisted in itsprep- aration:Susan Armeny,Amiri Baraka, Julian Bond, David S. Cecelski,William H. Chafe,Alex Charns,Jean Comstock,John Dittmer,Adam Fairclough,James Forman, Kevin Gaines, David Garrow,Raymond Gavins, Glenda ElizabethGilmore, Lawrence Goodwyn, Christina Greene, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, HerbertHill, Gerald Horne, Stephen Kantrowitz,Danielle McGuire,Nellie McKay,Katherine Mellen, LorraineMessinger, Perri Morgan,Syd Nathans, David Nord, CharlesPayne, Richard Ralston, Sidney Rittenberg, Robert Rubin, Kalamu yaSalaam, John Herd Thompson, Martha B. Tyson,M. Hope Tyson,Samuel H. Tyson,Vernon C. Tyson,William L. VanDeburg, Stephen A. Warren,Craig Werner, Patrick Wilkinson, John H. Williams,John L. Williams,Mabel R. Williams,Robert F. Williams,and PeterWood. LillianSmith, Killers of the Dream (1949; New York,1961), 22; ErnestB. Furguson,Hard Right:The Rise ofjesse Helms (New York,1986), 30, 40; RobertF. Williamsinterview by RobertCarl Cohen, 1968, transcript, pp. 4-5, box 1, RobertCarl Cohen Papers(State Historical Society of Wisconsin,Madison); Crusader, Dec. 1967, p. 3; RobertF. Williamsinterview by Timothy B. Tyson,March 10, 1993,audiotape (in TimothyB. Tyson'spos- session).See also RobertF. Williams,"While God LaySleeping: The Autobiographyof RobertF. Williams,"1-4, 1996, ibid. I am gratefulto the Williamsfamily for sharing this manuscript and otherfamily documents with me. Withrespect to the "emasculatedblack men," the gender politics at workare glaringand important.On this heavilygendered and sexualizedlanguage, see TimothyB. Tyson,Radio FreeDixie: RobertF Williamsand the Rootsof Black Power(Chapel Hill, forthcoming). 540 The Journalof AmericanHistory September1998 "BlackPower" and theRoots of theFreedom Struggle 541 Knowledgeof suchscenes was as commonplaceas coffeecups in the Souththat had recentlyhelped to electFranklin D. Roosevelt.For the restof his life,Robert Williams,destined to becomeone of the mostinfluential African American radi- cals of his time,repeated this searing story to friends,readers, listeners, reporters, and historians.He preachedit fromstreet corner ladders to eager crowdson SeventhAvenue and 125thStreet in Harlemand to congregantsin MalcolmX's TempleNumber 7. He borewitness to itsbrutality in laborhalls and collegeaudi- toriumsacross the United States.It contributedto the fervorof his widelypub- lisheddebate with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960 and fueledhis hesitantbids for leadershipin the blackfreedom struggle. Its mercilesstruths must have tightened in his fingerson the nightin 1961when he fleda FederalBureau of Investigation (FBI) dragnetwith his wifeand twosmall children, a machinegun slungover one shoulder.Williams revisited the bittermemory on platformsthat he sharedwith Fidel Castro,Ho Chi Minh,and Mao Zedong. He told it overRadio FreeDixie, his regularprogram on Radio Havanafrom 1962 to 1965,and retoldit fromHanoi in broadcastsdirected to AfricanAmerican soldiers in Vietnam.It echoed from transistorradios in Wattsin 1965and fromgigantic speakers in TiananmenSquare in 1966. The childhoodstory opens the pages of his autobiography,"While God Lay Sleeping,"which Williams completed just beforehis death on October 15, 1996. In theanguish of that eleven-year-old, we can finddistilled the bitterhistory thatshaped one of the South'smost dynamic race rebels, and thousandsof other black insurgents.That momentmarked his life,and his lifemarked the African Americanfreedom movement in the United States.2 The lifeof RobertF. Williamsillustrates that "the civilrights movement" and "theBlack Power movement," often portrayed in verydifferent terms, grew out of the samesoil, confronted the samepredicaments, and reflectedthe same questfor AfricanAmerican freedom. In fact,virtually all of the elementsthat we associate with"Black Power" were already present in the smalltowns and ruralcommunities of the Southwhere "the civilrights movement" was born.The storyof RobertF. Williamsreveals that independent black political action, black cultural pride, and whatWilliams called "armed self-reliance" operated in the Southin tensionand in tandemwith legal effortsand nonviolentprotest. Despitehis dramaticcontributions, Williams has thusfar had virtuallyno place in the unfoldingnarrative of the civilrights movement. Until recently, scholars of the movementfocused on the pathbreakinglegal marchof the NationalAssocia- tion forthe Advancementof Colored People (NAACP) and the powerfulmoral visionof Martin Luther KingJr. Dr. Kingand thearmies of nonviolent direct action have attractedthe energiesof able scholars-David J. Garrow,Adam Fairclough, and TaylorBranch among others. These worksopened new worldsof history,but 2 See TimothyB. Tyson,"Radio FreeDixie: RobertF. Williamsand the Rootsof Black Power"(Ph.D. diss., Duke University,1994); MarcellusC. Barksdale,"Robert F. Williamsand the IndigenousCivil RightsMovement in Monroe,North Carolina, 1961'" Journal of Negro History, 69 (Spring1984), 73-89; RobertF. Williams,Negroes withGuns, ed. MarcSchlieffer (New York,1962); and Williams,"While God Lay Sleeping." 542 The Journalof AmericanHistory September1998 4. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ \4 UnidentifiedAfrican American man in frontof a "whiteonly" laundromat, Monroe, North Carolina, 1961.In the South whereRobert F. Williamsgrew up, blackmaids washed the bodies of aged and infirmwhite people, but the uniformsthat they wore could not be laundered in the same machinesthat white people used. Photo,John Herman Williams, Courtesy ofJohn Herman Wzilliams. theirfailures to examinesufficiently the rootsof blackstruggles and the rangeof blackself-assertion have created what Charles M. Paynecalls "a historymore theatri- cal than instructive."3 In the lastfew years, a steadilygrowing stack of local and statestudies sensitive to the dynamicrelationship between local and nationalmovements has begun to tell larger,more realistic, and morecomplex stories. John Dittmer's Local People and Payne'sI've Got theLz~ght of Freedom have taken us farbeyond the television camerasand civilrights celebrities to theordinary citizens who made theblack free- dom movementand to theroots of that movement in theculture of the rural black South. Both Payneand Dittmeralso presentextensive and persuasiveevidence of the indispensablerole that black self-defenseplayed in sustaininglocal move- 3The bestsuch worksinclude Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The Historyof Brownv. Board of Education and BlackAmerica's Struggle for Equality (New York,1976); David J. Garrow,Bearing the Cross:Martin Luther King,Jr., and the SouthernChristian Leadership Conference (New York,1986); Adam Fairclough,To Redeem the Soul of America:The SouthernChristian Leadership Conference and MartinLuther King, Jr. (Athens, Ga., 1987); TaylorBranch, Parting the Waters:America in the King Years,1954-63 (New York,1988); and Taylor Branch,A Pillarof Fire: America in the King Years,1963-65 (New York,1998). CharlesM. Payne,I've Got the Lightof