BLACK POWER TRAIL-BLAZER ROBERT F WILLIAMS INTERVIEW

BROTHER MALCOLM / MALIK ON NON-VIOLENCE & REVOLUTION

Malcolm X 1964: ‘Revolution is like a forest fire’

From The Militant, Vol. 72/No. 6 February 11, 2008

Below is an excerpt from By Any Means Necessary, a
collection of speeches and interviews by Malcolm X that is
one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for February. On
March 19, 1964, shortly after leaving the Nation of Islam
and forming the Muslim Mosque, Inc., Malcolm gave an
interview to poet and music critic A.B. Spellman, which is
excerpted below. Malcolm outlined his initial thinking on
the formation of a new organization to fight for the rights
of Blacks and his views on self-defense, nonviolence, and
revolution. Betty Shabazz and Pathfinder Press 1970.

SPELLMAN: What is your program for achieving your goals of
independence?

MALCOLM: When the black man in this country awakens,
becomes intellectually mature and able to think for
himself, you will then see that the only way he will become
independent and recognized as a human being on the basis of
equality with all other human beings, he has to have what
they have and he has to be doing for himself what others
are doing for themselves. So the first step is to awaken
him to this, and that is where the religion of Islam makes
him morally more able to rise above the evils and the vices
of an immoral society. And the political, economic, and
social philosophy of black nationalism instills within him
the racial dignity and the incentive and the confidence
that he needs to stand on his own feet and take a stand for
himself.

SPELLMAN: Do you plan to employ any kind of mass action?

MALCOLM: Oh, yes.

SPELLMAN: What kinds?

MALCOLM: We’d rather not say at this time, but we
definitely plan to employ mass action… .

SPELLMAN: If the Muslim Mosque, Inc., joined in a
demonstration sponsored by a nonviolent organization, and
whites countered with violence, how would your organization
react?

MALCOLM: We are nonviolent only with nonviolent people. I’m
nonviolent as long as somebody else is nonviolent—as soon
as they get violent they nullify my nonviolence.

SPELLMAN: A lot of leaders of other organizations have said
they would welcome your help but they qualify that by
saying “if you follow our philosophy.” Would you work with
them under these circumstances?

MALCOLM: We can work with all groups in anything but at no
time will we give up our right to defend ourselves. We’ll
never become involved in any kind of action that deprives
us of our right to defend ourselves if we are attacked.

SPELLMAN: How would the Muslim Mosque, Inc., handle a
Birmingham, Danville, or Cambridge—what do you think should
have been done?

MALCOLM: In Birmingham, since the government has proven
itself either unable or unwilling to step in and find those
who are guilty and bring them to justice, it becomes
necessary for the so-called Negro who was the victim to do
this himself. He would be upholding his constitutional
rights by so doing, and Article 2 of the Constitution—it
says concerning the right to bear arms in the Bill of
Rights: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the
security of a free state, the right of the people to keep
and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Negroes don’t
realize this, that they are within their constitutional
rights to own a rifle, to own a shotgun. When the bigoted
white supremists realize that they are dealing with Negroes
who are ready to give their lives in defense of life and
property, then these bigoted whites will change their whole
strategy and their whole attitude… .

SPELLMAN: What is your evaluation of Monroe?

MALCOLM: I’m not too up on the situation in Monroe, North
Carolina. I do know that Robert Williams became an exile
from this country simply because he was trying to get our
people to defend themselves against the Ku Klux Klan and
other white supremist elements, and also Mae Mallory was
given twenty years or something like that because she was
also trying to fight the place of our people down there. So
this gives you an idea of what happens in a democracy—in a
so-called democracy—when people try to implement that
democracy.

SPELLMAN: You often use the word revolution. Is there a
revolution underway in America now?

MALCOLM: There hasn’t been. Revolution is like a forest
fire. It burns everything in its path. The people who are
involved in a revolution don’t become a part of the
system—they destroy the system, they change the system. The
genuine word for a revolution is Umwaelzung which means a
complete overturning and a complete change, and the Negro
revolution is no revolution because it condemns the system
and then asks the system that it has condemned to accept
them into their system. That’s not a revolution—a
revolution changes the system, it destroys the system and
replaces it with a better one. It’s like a forest fire,
like I said—it burns everything in its path. And the only
way to stop a forest fire from burning down your house is
to ignite a fire that you control and use it against the
fire that is burning out of control. What the white man in
America has done, he realizes that there is a black
revolution all over the world—a nonwhite revolution all
over the world—and he sees it sweeping down upon America.
And in order to hold it back he ignited an artificial fire
which he has named the Negro revolt, and he is using the
Negro revolt against the real black revolution that is
going on all over this earth.

Negroes with Guns, Chapter FOUR: Non-Violence Emboldens the Racists

Sons of Malcolm continue the special Williams series with Chapther 4 from Negroes With Guns.

In this Chapter the 'Freedom Riders', young people, many of them young white students came to North Carolina, like they did in many parts of the racially segregated South to campaign struggle alongside Black people to undertake direct non-violent action to oppose segregation.

These Freedom Riders were principled pacifists, most sent by the reformist pacifist leadership of the Civil-Rights movement to 'educate' Williams and others as to the benefits of their tactics. As Williams says in this chapter "Although I myself would not take the non-violent oath, I asked the people of the community to support them and their non-violent campaign. Monroe students took the nonviolent oath, promising to adhere to the non-violent discipline, which, along with other principles, prohibited selfdefense. I also stated that if they could show me any gains won from the racists by non-violent methods, I too would become a pacifist."

As to the successes of opposing any other type of struggle other than pacifism, the experience of Williams chapter/branch of the NAACP became an important case in point for the whole Civil-Rights movement.

Sons of Malcolm

Chapter 4

Non-Violence Emboldens the Racists: A Week of Terror

In our branch of the NAACP there was a general feeling that we were in a deep and bitter struggle against racists and that we needed to involve as many Negroes as possible and to make the struggle as meaningful as possible. We felt that the single issue of the swimming pool was too narrow for our needs, that what we needed was a broad program with special attention to jobs, welfare, and other economic needs.

I think this was an important step forward. The struggles of the Freedom Riders and the 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. It is important for the racists to maintain these peripheral forms of segregation. They establish an atmosphere that supports a system. By debasing and demoralizing the black man in small personal matters, the system eats away the sense of dignity and pride which are necessary to challenge a racist system. But the fundamental core of racism is more than atmosphere-it can be measured in dollars and cents and unemployment percentages. We therefore decided to present a program that ranged from the swimming pool to jobs.

The Monroe Program

On Aug. 15, 1961, on behalf of our Chapter I presented to the Monroe Board of Aldermen a ten point program that read as follows:

PETITION

We, the undersigned citizens of Monroe, petition the City

Board of Aldermen to use its influence to endeavor to:

1. Induce 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 consideration 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 school 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

Our demands for equal employment rights were the most important of the ten points. Many plants were moving in from the North-runaway industry from the North moving in to avoid labor unions, seeking low-priced workers in the South. They received considerable tax-supported concessions from the local Industrial Development Commission and they didn’t hire any Negroes. In fact, local bigoted officials had done everything in their power to prevent Negroes from obtaining employment. They had even gone so far as to stipulate that the new industries could not hire Afro-Americans if they expected the special concessions made possible through the taxation of us all. This amounted to taxation without representation and it was one of our biggest complaints.

As a result of this racist policy, out of approximately 3,000 Afro-Americans in Monroe, there are 1,000 unemployed-persons unable to obtain jobs even as janitors, maids, or porters. And maids and porters, when employed, earn at most $15 for a six-day week. One of the few kinds of work available, cotton picking, pays all of $2.50 for 100 pounds of picked cotton; at breakneck speed it takes a long day, much more than eight hours, to pick 150 pounds. Virtually every Negro high school and college graduate in Monroe has to leave to find employment. This is not true of the white graduates. Negroes are even laid off in the summer so white college youth can work at home. Meanwhile, each summer our street corners are crowded with colored youths just out of school. They have no means of gainful employment or wholesome recreation.

For reasons such as these we believe that the basic ill is an economic ill, our being denied the right to have a decent standard of living.

The Freedom Riders Come to Monroe

We had planned to put picket lines around the county courthouse to draw attention to our program and to apply pressure for its achievement. At this time seventeen Freedom Riders came to our support, perhaps the first time that they engaged in a struggle over such fundamental demands as our program presented. Hitherto, as I’ve said, the goals were peripheral and while important, amenable to small compromises. For example, we had won integration in the public library. On these peripheral matters, leaders of the Sit-In Movements can meet with city and state officials and win concessions. I believe this is an important part of the overall Negro struggle. But when these concessions are used for propaganda by Negro “leaders” as examples of the marvelous progress the Afro-American is supposedly making, thereby shifting attention from the basic evils, such victories cease to be even peripheral and become self-defeating. When we tackle basic evils, however, the racists won’t give an inch. This, I think, is why the Freedom Riders who came to Monroe met with such naked violence and brutality. That and the pledge of non-violence.

The Freedom Riders reflected an attitude of certain Negro leaders who said that I had mishandled the situation and that they would show us how to get victory without violence. With them came the Reverend Paul Brooks, sent by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to act as a “troubleshooter” for the Freedom Riders, should the need arise, and to work with the community, helping it to develop nonviolent techniques and tactics. I disagreed with their position but was more than willing to co-operate.

The community rented a house for them which was christened “Freedom House” in their honor. They were joined by some of our militant youth who had participated in the picket lines around the swimming pool the previous month. Together they formed the Monroe Non-Violent Action Committee.

Although I myself would not take the non-violent oath, I asked the people of the community to support them and their non-violent campaign. Monroe students took the nonviolent oath, promising to adhere to the non-violent discipline, which, along with other principles, prohibited selfdefense. I also stated that if they could show me any gains won from the racists by non-violent methods, I too would become a pacifist.

At the same time, several observers were in Monroe to see for themselves what so-called democracy was like in Union County. We knew that people living in other sections of the country and other countries of the world would find it hard to believe that such vicious racist conditions, such brutality and ruthlessness, existed in the United States especially in such a “progressive” Southern state as North Carolina was supposed to be. So we encouraged these visits. Julian Mayfield, the young Afro-American novelist and an old friend of Monroe, was there. A young exchange student, Constance Lever of Durham, England, was a guest at our house along with Mrs. Mae Mallory, who had been active in the movement for true integration in her own city, New York.

When the Monroe Non-Violent Action Committee set up its picket line on the first day, the Freedom Riders seemed convinced they were making real progress. One Freedom Rider even returned from the line overjoyed. He said, “You know, a policeman smiled at me in town today while I was on the line.” I laughed and told him not to pay that any attention because the policeman was probably smiling at the thought of how best to kill him. Constance, the English exchange student, had joined the picket line. She said, “Oh, I don’t think these people are so bad. I just think you don’t know how to approach them. I noticed that they looked at me in a friendly way in town today.” I tried to explain to her that these people were trying to win her and the others over in the hope that they would leave Monroe. The day that these people realized that they couldn’t win the Freedom Riders over, they would show their true nature. A few days later, Constance Lever was arrested by the Monroe police and charged with “incitement to riot.”

The Racists Act by Violence

It was on the third day that the townspeople started insulting the pickets and their politeness turned to viciousness. A policeman knocked one picket to the ground and threatened to break his camera. Another was arrested and all the time the white crowd heckled. When one of the white Freedom Riders smiled back at the hecklers, two of Monroe’s “pure white flowers” spit in his face. Tensions continued to mount.

On the fourth day a white Freedom Rider was attacked on the street in town and beaten by three whites. The police broke this up and promised to arrest the white people who had attacked this Freedom Rider. So the Freedom Riders kept on thinking there was a possibility that the law would be on their side because they had publicly proclaimed themselves to be non-violent. I told them it was all right for them to be pacifists but they shouldn’t proclaim this to the world because they were just inviting full-scale violent attack. In the past we hadn’t had any victims of the type of violence they were beginning to experience because we had shown a willingness to fight. We had had picket lines and sit-ins and nobody had successfully attacked our lines. But they said they were struggling from a moral point of view.

On Friday a white Freedom Fighter was shot in the stomach with a high-powered air rifle as he was walking the line. This happened right in front of the police. And that day the city sprayed the picket line with insecticide, hoping to drive the students away from the line. Meanwhile, the city had passed special laws, ordering pickets to be fifteen feet apart at all times. They had to maintain this distance; they couldn’t be too close or too far apart. Then the police started using the tactic of stopping one picket and when the one behind continued walking on they would arrest him for passing too closely behind the other. Also that afternoon, a Negro boy, ten years old, was attacked in town by three white men because he had been seen on the picket line. None of the attackers was arrested.

“Ain’t You Dead Yet?”

That night the Freedom Riders went for a ride into Mecklenburg County across the line and stopped at a restaurant. There they were recognized and attacked by white racists. In the scramble one of the Freedom Riders could escape only by running into the woods; the others had to flee in the car, leaving him behind. We notified the Monroe city police, our county police, the Charlotte police, and the Mecklenburg County police that a Freedom Rider was in the woods, missing, and the racists were trying to catch him. We were afraid he would be lynched. We asked them to intercede. The Monroe police refused. The Union County police refused.

Rev. Brooks called the Governor’s office. Governor Terry Sanford was out, they said. But Rev. Brooks got an opportunity to speak to the Governor’s chief aide, Hugh B. Cannon, and complained to him about the lack of police protection for the Freedom Riders. The Governor’s aide kept talking about Robert Williams. Rev. Brooks said he was not calling about Robert Williams; he was calling about a missing Freedom Rider. He said that they were pacifists, non-violent people, and wanted police protection. The Governor’s aide, Hugh B. Cannon, replied, “if you’re a real pacifist you had better get the hell out of Monroe, man, because there’s going to be plenty of violence there.”

Rev. Brooks kept trying to appeal to him for police protection but finally gave up. He said, “Since you’re talking about Robert Williams so much, he’s right here. Do you want to talk to him?” The Governor’s aide said, Yes.

Cannon and I had talked about two weeks before when I had asked for state police protection. Instead the Governor had sent an Uncle Tom representative named Dr. Larkins, who is supposed to be the Governor’s troubleshooter. He came and held a secret meeting with me to find out what it would take to quiet things down. I gave him the ten-point program and it shocked him. He said that it was too much, that the demands were too high, but he would take it up with the Governor anyway. And he said that, well, he understood I had been undergoing economic pressure and that this was wrong and that maybe I could get a job, that maybe the state could help me if we just didn’t start any trouble around here.

When I called back the Governor’s office and told Hugh B. Cannon about this bribe attempt, he replied, “You mean to tell me that you’re not dead yet?” And I told him, “No, I’m not dead, not yet, but when I die a lot of people may die with me.” So he said, “well, you may not be dead, but you’re going to get killed.” I kept telling him that we wanted protection, trying to avoid bloodshed. He said, “If you’re trying to avoid bloodshed you shouldn’t be agitating.”

The Governor and the FBI

So this Friday night, when Rev. Paul Brooks finished talking to Hugh B. Cannon and he said he wanted to talk to me, I got on the phone and told him what had happened. He said, “Well, you’re getting just what you deserve down there. You’ve been asking for violence, now you’re getting it.” I told him that I wasn’t appealing to him for myself. I was appealing to him for a pacifist. And I told him, “Besides, I’m not appealing to you for a Negro; this happens to be a white boy who’s lost in the woods.” He said, “I don’t give a damn who he is. You asked for violence and now you’re getting it, see; you’re getting just what you deserved.” So I told him, “Do you know one thing ... you are the biggest fool in the whole world!” He became infuriated and started raging on the telephone and told me to shut up. I told him that he may be the Governor’s assistant but he couldn’t tell me to shut up. He said, “If you don’t stop talking to me like that I’ll hang up.” And he finally hung up. No protection came.

Each time the Freedom Riders would get ready to go on the picket line they would call the FBI in Charlotte and ask for protection. The FBI would say, “We’re on our way.” But they would never be there when anything happened. On Saturday when the Freedom Riders were picketing in town and the taxicabs that had been transporting them to the line had started out to pick them up, the local white racists gathered together and blocked the road. This meant the Freedom Riders had to walk back to the colored community which was almost a mile away. The mob followed the Freedom Riders along the streets, throwing stones at them and threatening to kill them. When they came into the colored community, the colored people who were not participating in the picket line became very upset that our community had been invaded by a mob chasing Freedom Riders. Many of the colored people started stoning cars and beating back the white racists.

ROBERT & MABEL WILLIAMS INTERVIEW

Continuing with the special series on Robert F Williams, Sons of Malcolm this interview series in which Robert and Mabel Williams (pictured) recount the history of their struggle. Included in this interview series is a section about the relationship between Malcolm X / Malik El-Hajj Shabazz and the Williams' struggle. Malcolm X was a supporter of the struggle being led by the Williams, support which included raising funds for the NAACP chapter/branch, of which Robert Williams was the leader.Thanks to the Freedom Archives website which is a invaluable resource for those interested in the history fo radical struggle in the USA and around the world.

And thanks to Brother Billy X for publicising this series through the Black Panther Party Alumni website. This website is an excellent website about the tireless work done by former Panthers to keep their legacy alive and to develop further resources to enable people to have a greater understanding into the Panthers.

Robert F. Williams Audio

Credit for use: Freedom Archives

01 Introduction
02 The Williams' Beginnings
03 The American Tradition of Freedom Through Guns
04 Organizing the Naacp Against Segregation in Monroe [1955-1961]
05 Armed Self-Defense as a Right
06 The Rifle Club and the 10-Point Program [1957]
07 The Crusader Newsletter [1959 On]
08 Racism, Blackness, And the 'Kissing' Case [1958-59]
09 The Relationship With Malcolm X [1959-60]
10 The Cuban Revolution [1959 On]
11 The Swimming Pool Desegregation Campaign [1957-1961]
12 The KKK Mobilizes and Attacks Monroe
13 Klan Attempts to Kill Robert
14 The Freedom Riders Come to Monroe

Negroes with Guns, Chapter THREE - Williams showdown with NAACP leadership

Sons of Malcolm continues with its special series on Robert F Williams in serialising his seminal Black Power treatise Negroes with Guns. In this the third chapter of the book, Williams outlines the struggle between his militant leadership of the civil rights struggle with that of the reformist and ‘turn the other cheek’ leadership-style of the NAACP of which Williams was the Monroe branch/chapter leader. This chapter gives a rare insight into the struggle that was taking place inside the NAACP between these two very different approaches to the Black Liberation struggle and as shown in Timothy B Tyson’s biographical work on Williams, William’s militant leadership had deep roots in the oppressed Black communities of the ‘South’.

[picture: Front covers of Mabel and Robert William's newsletter 'The Crusader'. One showing Williams making a speech as Mao tse tung looks on and the other showing the retribution on part of the Black masses against racism in torching US cities]

Chapter 3

The Struggle for Militancy in the NAACP

Until my statement hit the national newspapers the national office of the NAACP had paid little attention to us. We had received little help from them in our struggles and our hour of need. Now they lost no time. The very next morning I received a long distance telephone call from the national office wanting to know if I had been quoted correctly. I told them that I had. They said the NAACP was not an organization of violence. I explained that I knew that it was not an organization of violence. They said that I had made violent statements. I replied that I made these statements as Robert Williams, not as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They said that because I was an official of the organization anything that I said would be considered NAACP policy, that we were too close together. I asked them why if we were so close together they hadn’t come to my rescue all this time when I had been the unemployed victim of the Klan’s economic pressure and when I had had all of my insurance canceled as a poor insurance risk. I asked them why they didn’t then consider our closeness.

Suspension, Distortion and Re-election

In the next few hours Roy Wilkins of the NAACP suspended me from office. I didn’t learn about it from the national office. I first heard of it when Southern radio stations announced and kept repeating every thirty minutes that the NACCP had suspended me for advocating violence because this was not a means for the solution of the race problem and that the NAACP? was against Negroes using violence as a means of self-defense.

Our Union County NACCP was one of the few interracial branches in the South. We had some white pacifist members, and when I was suspended they sent a telegram to the national office stating that they were white Southerners and that they were pacifists, but they protested my suspension on the ground that they understood the problems in the community and that the national office did not. This telegram was never made public by the NACCP. And not a single paper ever printed the fact that ours was an interracial branch and that even Southern white pacifists supported my position.

Nevertheless, this all developed into a national debate. We found out that there was no provision in the NACCP constitution to justify or authorize this hypocritical action by Roy Wilkins. I demanded some sort of hearing. Wilkins turned the matter over to the NAAWs paternalistic Committee on Branches, and in New York City on June 3, 1959, they conducted what turned out to be a trial where I fought the suspension. The committee ruled that I was to be suspended for six months’ time, after which I would automatically be reinstated.

I didn’t think of doing anything more about the suspension; there was a more important matter at hand. As a result of the trial I was more convinced than ever that one of our greatest and most immediate needs was better communication within the race. The real Afro-American struggle was merely a disjointed network of pockets of resistance and the shameful thing about it was that Negroes were relying upon the white man’s inaccurate reports as their sources of information about these isolated struggles. I went home and concentrated all of my efforts into developing a newsletter that would in accurate and no uncertain terms inform both Negroes and whites of Afro-American liberation struggles taking place in the United States and about the particular struggle we were constantly fighting in Monroe. The first Issue of The Crusader came off the mimeograph machine June 26, 1959.

Then at the last minute I decided to appeal the committee’s decision to the NAACP’s 50^th National Convention which was meeting in New York that July. The national office found it necessary to issue a special convention pamphlet attacking me. This pamphlet tried to confuse my demand that Negroes meet violence with violence as a means of selfdefense with the advocacy of lynch law. In its own way the national office contributed to the erroneous impression played up by the racist press that 1 was agitating for race war and the indiscriminate slaughter of white people.

My suspension was upheld by the convention delegates, many of whom either felt or were pressured into seeing the vote as a question of publicly supporting or disavowing the NAACP national leadership. But on the real issue at hand, delegate sentiment forced the national leadership to support the concept of self-defense. The preamble to

the resolutions passed by that convention read we do not deny but reaffirm the right of an individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults.”

While I was suspended, the people in my branch voted to make my wife president to serve in my place. And at the end of the six months, instead of going back into office automatically, I held an election because I didn’t want the NAACP national office to think that they were doing me any special favor. We had the election and I was re-elected unanimously.

The national office of the NAACP was determined to keep within the good graces of a lot of the influential Northern whites who were disturbed by our militancy. They maintained an indifferent attitude to our branch. We had a charter and that was all. We were unable to secure assistance from them in any of our school integration cases and our sit-in cases.

In 1960 we started a sit-in campaign. We became the thirteenth town in North Carolina to start sit-in demonstrations. Though the NAACP wasn’t taking notice, our sit-ins proved that self-defense and non-violence could be success fully combined. There was less violence in the Monroe sit-ins than in any other sit-ins in the South. In other communities there were Negroes who had their skulls fractured, but not a single demonstrator was even spat upon during our sit-ins. We had less violence because we had shown the willingness and readiness to fight and defend ourselves. We didn’t appear on the streets of Monroe as beggars depending upon the charity and generosity of white supremacists. We appeared as people with strength, and it was to the mutual advantage of all parties concerned that peaceful relations be maintained.

While the demonstrations were taking place I was arrested and finally sentenced to serve thirty days on the chain gang. The NAACP was supposed to handle my case. They handled it up to the State Supreme Court, but then they dropped my case from appeal without telling me and with only a few days left in which to file an appeal. I discovered this through the newspapers because my case had been consolidated with that of seven students from Chapel Hill, N.C. The newspapers listed the names of the defendants whose NAACP lawyers had filed appeals and I was the only one in the group whose name did not appear. I appealed to the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. They took my case up and filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“A Letter from De Boss”

All this did not mean that the NAACP? national office was short on advice. While they did not feel responsible enough to take the appeal to higher courts, they did feel responsible enough to send me a letter upon my return from Cuba in the summer of 1960. I subsequently made two trips to Cuba.

My experiences in Monroe and with the NAACP? which had resulted in launching The Crusader were also sharpening my awareness of the struggles of Negroes in every part of the world, how they were treated, their victories and their defeats. It was clear from the first days that Afro-Cubans were part of the Cuban revolution on a basis of complete equality and my trips confirmed this fact. A Negro, for example, was head of the Cuban armed forces and no one could hide that fact from us here in America. To me this revolution was a real thing, not one of those phony South American palace revolutions. There was a real drive to bring social justice to all the Cubans, including the black ones. Beginning late in 1959 1 had begun to run factual articles about Cuba in The Crusader, pointing up the racial equality that existed there. The articles seem to have stirred up the national office for they sent me a letter which included statements such as these:

“… I wonder, however, whether you are fully aware of the dangers and disadvantages of the course of action you seem to favor. 1 have followed closely the events in Cuba in recent months and in particular, Dr. Castro’s visit to the United Nations this fall. Regardless of the merits of the Cuban cause 1 was greatly disturbed by the frequent show of insincerity which, 1 believe, should give you food for thought before you find yourself used as just another pawn in the present unfortunate feud between Cuba and our country.

“… It is a callous interference in a native American problem and should be recognized as such by anyone in a responsible position of leadership in the American Negro movement.

“. . . the present Cuban attempts to endear themselves to American Negroes are obviously caused by ulterior motives. (Let me just ask you how the American Negro tourist would feel in Cuba at the constant chant of ‘Cuba si, Yanqui no!’)

“… Are you willing to forsake the important support of that section of the people who are equally opposed to suppression of Negro rights in our country?

“… Does not the unfortunate example of the great American Negro singer Paul Robeson show you the dangers and mistakes of the road which you seem to be choosing? What has Paul Robeson with all his greatness done for the American Negro in his present struggle for equality: The answer, regrettable as it is, must be: Nothing.”

These excerpts were reprinted in The Crusader and replied to in this way:

“Only a fool or a mercenary hypocrite could muster the gall to call a nation and its great leader insincere in dealing with the captive blacks of North America when in the course of their daily lives they display the greatest measure of racial equality and social justice in the world today. It is certainly a first magnitude truism that social justice starts at home and spreads abroad. In past months I have twice been to Cuba and there is nothing insincere about my being made to feel that I was a member of the human race for the first time in my life. If this is America’s idea of insincerity, then heaven help this nation to become insincere like Fidel Castro and Free Cuba in granting persons of African descent entrance into the human race.

“As for my being ‘used as a pawn in the struggle of Cuba’ against imperialist and racist North America, I prefer to be on the side of right than on the side of Jim Crow and oppression. I prefer to be used as an instrument to convey the truth of a people who respect the rights of man, rather than to be used as an Uncle Tom whitewasher of black oppression and injustice and an apologist for America’s hypocrisy. Cuba’s aversion for America’s inhumanity to man is not an interference in a ‘native American problem.’ It is common knowledge that the master race of the ‘free world’ is out to export North American manufactured racism. Racism in the U.S.A. is as much a world problem as was Nazism. If the U.S.A. is to be the only nation exempt from the Human Rights Charter of the United Nations, then that august body is a party to the great transgressions against America’s captive people. I, for one, refuse to remain silent and cooperate with the very force that is seeking after my destruction.

“The racists in America are the most brutal people on earth. It is foolhardy for an oppressed Afro-American to take the attitude that we should keep this life-death struggle a family affair. We are the oppressed, it is only natural for us to air our grievances at home and abroad. This race fight in the U.S.A. is no more a fight to be fought just by Americans than is the fight for black liberation to be conducted by colored only. Any struggle for freedom in the world today affects the stability of the whole society of man. Why would you make our struggle an exception?

“I am not afraid of alienating white friends of our liberation movement. If they really believe in freedom they will not resent deviation from the old worn path that has led us in fruitless circles. If they are insincere they are no more than Trojan horses infiltrating our ranks to strike us a treacherous, nefarious blow on behalf of those and that which they pretend to detest. For if they resent our becoming truly liberated, they will detest us for not following their misguidance and skillfull subterfuge designed to prevent our arrival to the promised land. They speak much of tolerance, but they display unlimited intolerance toward those Afro-Americans who refuse to become their puppets and yes-man Uncle Toms.

“It is strange that 1 am asked how a ‘Negro’ American tourist would feel in Cuba hearing the constant chant of ‘Cuba Si, Yanqui NJ No one has bothered to ask how it feels to constantly face ‘White Only’ signs. These signs mean ‘White yes, Colored no!’ No one has asked me how it feels to be marched under guard with felons along a public street to jail for sitting on a ‘white only’ stool. On hearing ‘Cuba Si, Yanqui No’ and having lived all of my life under American oppression, I was emotionally moved to join the liberation chorus. I knew it didn’t apply to me because the white Christians of the ‘free world’ have excluded me from everything ‘yanqui.’

“You make a cardinal mistake when you fail to give the great Paul Robeson credit for making a great contribution to the American ‘Negro’ struggle. Paul Robeson is living proof that the Afro-American need not look upon the United States as ‘Nigger heaven’ and the last stop for us on this earth. Paul is living proof that other civilized societies honor and respect black people for the things that ‘Free America’ curses, oppresses and starves for. Paul has proven that all black men are not for sale for thirty pieces of silver. He has lit a candle that many of the new generation will follow.

“Yes, wherever there is oppression in the world today, it is the concern of the entire race. My cause is the same as the Asians against the imperialist. It is the same as the African against the white savage. It is the same as Cuba against the white supremacist imperialist. When I become a part of the mainstream of American life, based on universal justice, then and then only can I see a possible mutual cause for unity against outside interference.”

I don’t want to leave the impression that I am against the NAACP; on the contrary I think it’s an important weapon in the freedom struggle and I want to strengthen it. I don’t think they should be worrying about Cuba when there is plenty to worry about in our country. They know, as I know, the extent to which the state governments and the Federal government ignored our appeals for help and protection.

Hypocrisy and Run-around

After we closed the pool, as I’ve already described, the racists in Monroe went wild. On that same day, after we had gone home, a mob dragged a colored man from his car and took him out into the woods where they beat him, stood him up against a tree and threatened to shoot him. I had called the Associated Press and the UPI and reported that this man had been kidnapped and I also called the Justice Department.

Apparently just when this man’s attackers were getting ready to shoot him, the chief of police came out and rescued him. How did the chief of police know where to find him in the woods? Later on this Negro was unable to indict anyone who had attacked him even though he recognized some of the members of the would-be lynch mob. The FBI refused to demand any indictments for kidnapping.

The racists would come through the colored community at night and fire guns and we had an exchange of gunfire on a number of occasions. One night an armed attack was led on my house by a sergeant of the State National Guard. He was recognized, but no action was taken against him. And the chief of police denied that an attack had taken place. We kept appealing to the Federal government. It was necessary to keep a guard of about twenty volunteers going every night-men who volunteered to sleep at my house and to walk guard. This was the only way that we could ward off attacks by the racists. The telephone would ring around the clock, sometimes every fifteen minutes, with threatening calls.

Then through my newsletter, The Crusader, I started appealing to readers everywhere to protest to the U.S. government, to the U.S. Justice Department; to protest the fact that the 14^th Amendment did not exist in Monroe and that the city officials, the local bureau of the FBI in Charlotte, and the Governor of the state of North Carolina were in a conspiracy to deny Monroe Negroes their Constitutional rights.

One of the readers of The Crusader wrote to Congressman Kowalski of Connecticut, who in turn wrote a letter to the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy. He said that he had been appalled to learn about the lawlessness in Monroe, and how this was damaging to our country at a time when the United States was claiming to be a champion of democracy in the world. The Congressman asked for an investigation. But despite all those letters and telegrams to the U.S. Justice Department, no investigation was made. The only investigation they made was to ask our chief of police if these things were true. The chief of police assured them that they were not.

Finally I went to the Charlotte bureau of the FBI and filed a long report calling for a Federal indictment of the chief of police for denying citizens their rights guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment. This report was filed, but I never heard from the FBI. Later a newspaperman told me that he had heard from the Justice Department and that they claimed they could find no evidence of any violation of the 14^th Amendment in Monroe. They never did bother to answer me.

Yet it was at this time that I received a letter from the United States Department of State. In this letter they denied my family and me the right to travel to Cuba, where we had been invited for the 26^th of July celebration. The grounds for their refusal were: “because of the break in diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, the government of the United States cannot extend normal protective services to its citizens visiting Cuba.”

This false pretense of being interested in protecting me was a farce of the first magnitude and classic hypocrisy. Numerous threats and four attempts of murder had been made on my life in the preceding three weeks and the would-be assassins, aided and abetted by local officials, were offered immunity from law by the deliberate silence of Federal officials to whom I had continuously appealed for “normal protective services.” The Federal government couldn’t possibly have been interested in protection for me and my family, for they passed up many opportunities to protect us here at home.

This all happened a month before I was forced to leave Monroe.

NEGROES WITH GUNS, ChaptherTWO

'Sons of Malcolm' special Robert F Williams series presents the seminal Black Power treatise, 'Negroes with Guns' by Robert F Williams, taken from the 1998 reprint:

[left: cartoon from William's magazine 'The Crusader', illustrating the concept expressed also by Malcolm X / Malik El-Hajj Shabazz that Black people in the US should see themselves, not as a minority but as the majority of anti-imperialist masses across the world struggling for their rights ]

Chapter 2

An NAACP Chapter Is Reborn in Militancy

My home town is Monroe, North Carolina. It has a population of 11,000, about a quarter of which is Negro. It is a county seat (Union County) and is 14 miles from the South Carolina border. Its spirit is closer to that of South Carolina than to the liberal atmosphere of Chapel Hill which people tend to associate with North Carolina. There are no trade unions in our county and the southeastern regional headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan is in Monroe.

There was also, at the time of my return from the Marines, a small and dwindling chapter of the NAACI‘. The Union County NAACP was a typical Southern branch-small, not very active, dominated by and largely composed of the upper crust of the black community-professionals, businessmen and white-collar workers.

Before the Supreme Court desegregation decision of 1954, the NAACP was not a primary target of segregationists. In many places in the South, including Monroe, racists were not too concerned with the small local chapters. But the Supreme Court Decision drastically altered this casual attitude. The Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils made it their business to locate any NAACP chapter in their vicinity and to find out who its officers and members were. Threats of violence and economic sanctions were applied to make people withdraw their membership. Chapters, already small, dwindled rapidly.

A Veteran Returns Home

When I got out of the Marine Corps, I knew I wanted to go home and join the NAACP In the Marines I had got a taste of discrimination and had some run-ins that got me into the guardhouse. When I joined the local chapter of the NAACP it was going down in membership, and when it was down to six, the leadership proposed dissolving it. When I objected, I was elected president and they withdrew, except for Dr. Albert E. Perry. Dr. Perry was a newcomer who had settled in Monroe and built up a very successful practice. He became our vice-president. I tried to get former members back without success and finally I realized that I would have to work without the social leaders of the community.

At this time I was inexperienced. Before going into the Marines I had left Monroe for a time and worked in an aircraft factory in New Jersey and an auto factory in Detroit. Without knowing it, I had picked up some ideas of organizing from the activities around me, but I had never served in a union local and I lacked organizing experience. But I am an active person and I hated to give up on something as important as the NAACP.

So one day I walked into a Negro poolroom in our town, interrupted a game by putting NAACP literature on the table and made a pitch. I recruited half of those present. This got our chapter off to a new start. We began a recruiting drive among laborers, farmers, domestic workers, the unemployed and any and all Negro people in the area. We ended up with a chapter that was unique in the whole NAACP because of working class composition and a leadership that was not middle class. Most important, we had a strong representation of returned veterans who were very militant and who didn’t scare easy. We started a struggle in Monroe and Union County to integrate public facilities and we had the support of a Unitarian group of white people. In 1957, with out any friction at all, we integrated the public library. It shocked us that in other Southern states, particularly Virginia, Negroes encountered such violence in trying to integrate libraries.

We moved on to win better rights for Negroes: economic rights, the right of education and the right of equal protection under the law. We rapidly got the reputation of being the most militant branch of the NAACP Obviously we couldn’t get this reputation without antagonizing the racists who are trying to prevent Afro-Americans from enjoying their inalienable human rights as Americans. Specifically, we aroused the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan and a showdown developed over the integration of the swimming pool.

The Ku Klux Klan Swings into Action

As I explained in the last chapter, the swimming pool had been built with Federal funds under the WPA system and was supported by municipal taxation. Yet Negroes could not use it. Neither the Federal government nor the local officials had provided any swimming facilities for Negroes. Over a period of years several of our children had drowned while swimming in unsupervised swimming holes. When we lost another child in 1956 we started a drive to obtain swimming facilities for Negroes, especially for our children.

First, we asked the city officials to build a pool in the Negro community. This would have been a segregated pool, but we asked for this because we were merely interested in safe facilities for the children. The city officials said they couldn’t comply with this request because it would be too expensive and they didn’t have the money. Then, in a compromise move, we asked that they set aside one or two days out of each week when the segregated pool would be reserved for Negro children. They said that this too would be too expensive. Why would it be too expensive, we asked. Because, they said, each time the colored people used the pool they would have to drain the water and refill it.

They said they would eventually build us a pool when they got the funds. We asked them when we could expect it. One year? They said “No.” Five years? They said “No,” they couldn’t be sure. Ten years? They said that they couldn’t be sure. Finally we asked if we could expect it within fifteen years and they said that they couldn’t give us any definite promise.

There was a white Catholic priest in the community who owned a station wagon. He would transport the colored youth to Charlotte, N.C., which was twenty-five miles away, so they could swim there in the Negro pool. Some of the city officials of Charlotte saw this priest swimming in the Negro pool and they wanted to know who he was. The Negro supervisor explained that he was a priest. The city officials replied they didn’t care whether he was a priest or not, that he was white and they had segregation of the races in Charlotte. So they barred the priest from the colored pool.

Again the children didn’t have any safe place to swim at all-so we decided to take legal action against the Monroe pool.

First, we started a campaign of stand-ins of short duration. We would go stand for a few minutes and ask to be admitted and never get admitted. While we were preparing the groundwork for possible court proceedings, the Ku Klux Klan came out in the open. The press started to carry articles about the Klan activities. In the beginning they mentioned that a few hundred people would gather in open fields and have their Klan rallies. Then the numbers kept going up. The numbers went up to 3,000, 4,000, 5,000. Finally the Monroe Enquirer estimated that 7,500 Klansmen had gathered in a field to discuss dealing with the integrationists, described by the Klan as the “Communist-Inspired-National-Association-for-the-Advancement-of-Colored-People.” They started a campaign to get rid of us, to drive us out of the community, directed primarily at Dr. Albert E. Perry, our vice-president, and myself.

The Klan started by circulating a petition. To gather signatures they set up a table in the county courthouse square in Monroe. The petition stated that Dr. Perry and I should be permanently driven out of Union County because we were members and officials of the Communist-NAACP. The Klan claimed 3,000 signatures in the first week. In the following week they claimed 3,000 more. They had no basis for any legal action, but they had hoped to frighten us out of town by virtue of sheer numbers.

In the history of the South in days past, it was enough to know that so many people wanted to get rid of a Negro to make him take off by himself. One must remember that in this community where the press estimated that there were 7,500 Klan supporters, the population of the town was only about 12,000 people. Actually, many of the Klan people came in from South Carolina, Monroe being only fourteen miles from the state border.

When they discovered that this could not intimidate us, they decided to take direct action. After their rallies they would drive through our community in motorcades and honk their horns and fire pistols from the car windows. On one occasion, they caught a colored woman on an isolated street corner and made her dance at pistol point.

At this outbreak of violence against our Negro community, a group of pacifist ministers went to the city officials and asked that the Klan be prohibited from forming these motorcades to parade through Monroe. The officials of the county and the city rejected their request on the grounds that the Klan was a legal organization having as much constitutional right to organize as the NAACP.

Self-Defense Is Born of Our Plight

Since the city officials wouldn’t stop the Klan, we decided to stop the Klan ourselves. We started this action out of the need for defense because law and order had completely vanished; because there was no such thing as a 14^th Amendment to the United States Constitution in Monroe, N.C. The Local officials refused to enforce law and order and when we turned to Federal and state officials to enforce law and order they either refused or ignored our appeals.

Luther Hodges, who is now Secretary of Commerce, was the Governor of North Carolina at that time. We first appealed to him. He took sides with the Klan; they had not broken any laws, they were not disorderly, he said. Then we appealed to President Eisenhower but we never received a reply to our telegrams. There was no response at all from Washington.

So we started arming ourselves. I wrote to the National Rifle Association in Washington which encourages veterans to keep in shape to defend their native land and asked for a charter, which we got. In a year we had sixty members. We had bought some guns too, in stores, and later a church in the North raised money and got us better rifles. The Klan discovered we were arming and guarding our community. In the summer of 1957 they made one big attempt to stop us. An armed motorcade attacked Dr. Perry’s house, which is situated on the outskirts of the colored community. We shot it out with the Klan and repelled their attack and the Klan didn’t have any more stomach for this type of fight. They stopped raiding our community. After this clash the same city officials who said the Klan had a constitutional right to organize met in an emergency session and passed a city ordinance banning the Klan from Monroe without a special permit from the police chief.

At the time of our clash with the Klan only three Negro publications-the Afro-American, the Norfolk Journal and Guide, and Jet Magazine-reported the fight. Jet carried some pictures of the self-defense guard. Our fight occurred two weeks before the famous clash between the Indians and the Klan. We had driven the Klan out of our county into the Indian territory. The national press played up the Indian Klan fight because they didn’t consider this a great threat the Indians are a tiny minority and people could laugh at the incident as a sentimental joke-but no one wanted Negroes to get the impression that this was an accepted way to deal with the Klan. So the white press maintained a complete blackout about the Monroe fight.

After the Klan learned that violence wouldn’t serve their purpose they started to use the racist courts. Dr. Perry, our vice-president, was indicted on a trumped-up charge of abortion. He is a Catholic physician, and one of the doctors who had been head of the county medical department drove forty miles to testify in Dr. Perry’s behalf, declaring that when Dr. Perry had worked in the hospital he had refused to file sterilization permits for the County Welfare Department on the ground that this was contrary to his religious beliefs. But he was convicted, sentenced to five years in prison, and the loss of his medical license.

The Kissing Case

In October, 1958, two local colored boys, David Simpson, aged 7, and Hanover Thompson, aged 9, were arrested on the charge of rape which is punishable in North Carolina by death.

This was the famous “Kissing Case.” What had happened was that David and Hanover got into a game of “cowboys and Indians” with some white children one afternoon. After a while, the white girls in the group suggested they play “house.” One of the little white girls, Sissy Sutton, sat on Hanover’s lap and suddenly recognized Hanover as her old playmate. Hanover’s mother worked for Sissy’s mother and until Hanover reached school age his mother had taken him with her when she went to work at the Sutton house.

When this little girl discovered that Hanover was her old playmate she kissed him on the cheek. Later on in the afternoon she ran home and told her mother how she had seen Hanover and how she was so happy to see him again that she had kissed him.

Sissy’s mother got hysterical when she heard this and called the police. Before the two boys had even gotten home they were arrested and thrown into the county jail. If a person is arrested for rape in North Carolina he is not permitted to see anyone for a period of time while the police investigate. Therefore the police didn’t notify the boys’ parents.

A few days later when we finally found out what had happened and where the two missing boys were, we tried to get help. But the national office of the NAACP wouldn’t have anything to do with the case because it was a “sex case.” A seven-year-old white girl had kissed a nine-year-old Negro boy on the cheek and the national office didn’t want any part of it.

The children were sent to the reformatory soon after they were arrested. I called the civil rights lawyer, Conrad Lynn, and he carne down from New York. First thing, he went to talk with Judge Hampton Price, who had passed sentence.

The Judge said to Lynn that he had held a “separate but equal hearing.” Lynn asked him what he meant by a “separate but equal hearing.” And the Judge told him how on the morning of the trial he had called in Mrs. Sutton and her daughter, and Mrs. Sutton had made a statement, and they were sent home. Then in the afternoon the two Negro mothers were summoned to the Judge, and their boys were brought in. Then the Judge said to Lynn, I told them what Mrs. Sutton had told me and then since they were guilty- I sent them up for fourteen years at the reformatory.”

The NAACP national office still wasn’t doing anything about the case but an English reporter who was a friend of Lynn’s visited the reformatory and sneaked out a photograph of the boys, which appeared along with a story on the front page of the Dec. 15,1958, London News Chronicle. Then all of Europe got wind of the case and there were protest demonstrations in London, Rotterdam, Rome, and Paris. Only then did many American newspapers begin to express “concern” about the ‘Kissing Case.”

At the end of December, 1958, Dr, Perry, Conrad Lynn, and I were called to New York by Roy Wilkins and he offered me a job in Detroit if I’d leave Monroe. I flatly refused his offer.

By now so much pressure was building up abroad and even in the U.S.A. that the NAACP national office entered the case-this case that had until now involved such dreadful sexual implications. In late January there was a hearing, but the children were sent back to the reformatory. Meanwhile, world pressure was mounting. An example is that of the petition signed by the 15,000 students and faculty at a Rotterdam, Holland, high school named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The petition called for the release of the children and it was sent to Mrs. Roosevelt.

Somebody said something, finally, to President Eisenhower, and finally he said something to our then Governor Hodges, and on Feb. 13, 1959, the children were released.

“We Will Meet Violence with Violence”

In 1969 Mrs. Georgia White, a Negro mother of five children who worked in a Monroe hotel as a maid, was kicked down a flight of stairs into the lobby of the hotel by a white guest. He said he kicked Mrs. White down a flight of stairs because she had been making too much noise while working in the corridor and had disturbed his sleep. When we asked for an indictment, the chief of police, A. A. Mauney, refused our request. Finally when we threatened to take legal action by bringing in NAACP lawyers, he relented and placed this man under a $75 bond. Even though this white defendant subsequently failed to appear in court for his trial, he was not convicted.

That same day there was another colored woman in court, Mrs. Mary Ruth Reid. Mrs. Reid was eight months pregnant. She was the victim of an attempted rape by a white man who came to her house, drove her from her house, and then beat her. He caught her while she was trying to escape down the main highway and knocked her to the ground. Mrs. Reid’s six-year-old boy was running along the side and when the white rapist beat his mother the boy picked up a stick and started hitting the man over the head with it while his mother escaped. She went to a neighbor’s house and her neighbor called the police and gave her aid. The neighbor was a white woman and she came to court that day with Mrs. Reid. She came and testified that she had seen the defendant chasing Mrs. Reid and that Mrs. Reid had come to her house in an excited and hysterical state, without shoes, and with her clothes torn from her. This testimony required considerable courage on the part of Mrs. Reid’s white neighbor.

During the trial the defense attorney arranged for the defendant’s wife to sit at his side as if she were also involved in the case. Then the defense attorney appealed to the jury. He said, “Judge, Your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you see this man. This is his wife. This woman, this white woman is the pure flower of life. She is one of God’s lovely creatures, a pure flower. And do you think this man would have left this pure flower for that?” And he made it appear as if the colored woman was actually on trial. Then the defense ended by saying, “It’s just a matter of whether or not you’re going to believe this woman or this white man. Judge, Your Honor, this man is not guilty of any crime. He was just drinking and having a little fun.” The man was acquitted.

Mrs. Reid had several brothers who had wanted to kill her white attacker before the trial began. But I persuaded them not to do anything. I said that this was a matter that would be handled legally, that we would get a lawyer-which we did. We brought a lawyer all the way from New York who wasn’t even allowed to take the floor in court. So I was responsible for this would-be rapist not being punished.

The courtroom was full of colored women and when this man was acquitted they turned to me and said, “Now what are you going to do? You have opened the floodgates on us. Now these people know that they can do anything that they want to us and there is no prospect of punishment under law and it means that we have been exposed to these people and you’re responsible for it. Now what are you going to say?” I told them that in a civilized society the law is a deterrent against the strong who would take advantage of the weak, but the South is not a civilized society; the South is a social jungle. So in cases like this we have to revert to the law of the jungle; it had become necessary for us to create our own deterrent. I said that in the future we would defend our women and children, our homes and ourselves with our arms. That we would meet violence with violence.

My statement was reprinted all over the United States. What I had said was, “This demonstration today shows that the Negro in the South cannot expect justice in the courts. He must convict his attackers on the spot. He must meet violence with violence, lynching with lynching.”

The next day in an interview with the Carolina Times I again pointed to the lack of protection from the courts. I said, “These court decisions open the way to violence. I do not mean that Negroes should go out and attempt to get revenge for mistreatments or injustices.” I made this statement again on the same day over a Cincinnati radio station. Later that evening in a telecast interview in Charlotte I again made clear that I was speaking of self-defense when the courts fail to protect us.

Since the principle is so obvious, I couldn’t understand the commotion my statement aroused or why it should receive so much national publicity. Two years previously, when we had shot up the Ku Klux Klan in self-defense, not a single white newspaper in America reported the incident. We were only serving notice that we would do more of the same, that Negro self-defense was here to stay in Monroe. So I didn’t feel we were doing anything new. I realize now that we were establishing a principle, born out of our experience, which could, and would, set an example to others.

Looking back, it is clear that racists made a big error in publicizing our stand. Even though it has caused me and my family a great deal of suffering, the result has been to force a debate on the issue. It also shook up the NAACP considerably out of its timid attitudes and forced an official reaffirmation from the NAACP of the right of Negroes to selfdefense against racist violence.

NEGROES WITH GUNS, Prologue and Chapther One

'Sons of Malcolm' special Robert F Williams series presents the seminal Black Power treatise, 'Negroes with Guns' by Robert F Williams, taken from the 1998 reprint:

[picture: Robert F Williams and his wife and comrade Mabel Williams in exile in Cuba circa 1961]

Prologue
Why do I speak to you from exile?

Because a Negro community in the South took up guns in self-defense against racist violence-and used them. I am held responsible for this action, that for the first time in history American Negroes have armed themselves as a group to defend their homes, their wives, their children, in a situation where law and order had broken down, where the authorities could not, or rather would not, enforce their duty to protect Americans from a lawless mob. I accept this responsibility and am proud of it. I have asserted the right of Negroes to meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense-and have acted on it. It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must, act in self-defense against lawless violence. I believe this right holds for black Americans as well as whites.

Many people will remember that in the summer of 1957 the Ku Klux Klan made an armed raid on an Indian community in the South and were met with determined rifle fire from the Indians acting in self-defense. The nation approved of the action and there were widespread expressions of pleasure at the defeat of the Kluxers who showed their courage by running away despite their armed superiority. What the nation doesn’t know, because it has never been told, is that the Negro community in Monroe, North Carolina, had set the example two weeks before when we shot up an armed motorcade of the Ku Klux Klan, including two police cars, which had come to attack the home of Dr. Albert E. Perry, vice-president of the Monroe chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The stand taken by our chapter resulted in the official re-affirmation by the NAACP of the right of self-defense. The Preamble to the resolution of the 50^th Convention of the NAACP, New York City, July 1959, states: “. . . we do not deny, but reaffirm, the right of an individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults.”

Because there has been much distortion of my position, I wish to make it clear that I do not advocate violence for its own sake or for the sake of reprisals against whites. Nor am I against the passive resistance advocated by the Reverend Martin Luther King and others. My only difference with Dr. King is that I believe in flexibility in the freedom struggle. This means that I believe in non-violent tactics where feasible; the mere fact that I have a Sit-In case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court bears this out. Massive civil disobedience is a powerful weapon under civilized conditions where the law safeguards the citizens’ right of peaceful demonstrations. In civilized society the law serves as a deterrent against lawless forces that would destroy the democratic process. But where there is a breakdown of the law, the individual citizen has a right to protect his person, his family, his home and his property. To me this is so simple and proper that it is self-evident.

When an oppressed people show a willingness to defend themselves, the enemy, who is a moral weakling and coward, is more willing to grant concessions and work for a respectable compromise. Psychologically, moreover, racists consider themselves superior beings and are not willing to exchange their superior lives for our inferior ones. They are most vicious and violent when they can practice violence with impunity. This we have shown in Monroe. Moreover, when because of our self-defense there is a danger that the blood of whites may be spilled, the local authorities in the South suddenly enforce law and order when previously they had been complacent toward lawless, racist violence. This too we have proven in Monroe. It is remarkable how easily and quickly state and local police control and disperse lawless mobs when the Negro is ready to defend himself with arms.

Furthermore, because of the international situation, the Federal Government does not want racial incidents which draw the attention of the world to the situation in the South. Negro self-defense draws such attention, and the Federal Government will be more willing to enforce law and order if the local authorities don’t. When our people become fighters, our leaders will be able to sit at the conference table as equals, not dependent on the whim and the generosity of the oppressors. It will be to the best interests of both sides to negotiate just, honorable and lasting settlements.

The majority of white people in the United States have literally no idea of the violence with which Negroes in the South are treated daily-nay, hourly. This violence is deliberate, conscious, condoned by the authorities. It has gone on for centuries and is going on today, every day, unceasing and unremitting. It is our way of life. Negro existence in the South has been one long travail, steeped in terror and blood-our blood. The incidents which took place in Monroe, which I witnessed and which I suffered, will give some idea of the conditions in the South, conditions that can no longer be borne. That is why, one hundred years after the Civil War began, we Negroes in Monroe armed ourselves in self-defense and used our weapons. We showed that our policy worked. The lawful authorities of Monroe and North Carolina acted to enforce order only after, and as a direct result of, our being armed. Previously they had connived with the Ku Klux Klan in the racist violence against our people. Selfdefense prevented bloodshed and forced the law to establish order. This is the meaning of Monroe and I believe it marks a historic change in the life of my people. This is the story of that change.

Chapter I

Self-Defense Prevents Bloodshed

In June of 1961 the NAACP Chapter of Monroe, North Carolina, decided to picket the town’s swimming pool. This pool, built by WPA money, was forbidden to Negroes although we formed one quarter of the population of the town. In 1957 we had asked not for integration but for the use of the pool one day a week. This was denied and for four years we were put off with vague suggestions that someday another pool would be built. Two small Negro children had meantime drowned swimming in creeks. Now, in 1961, the City of Monroe announced it had surplus funds, but there was no indication of a pool, no indication of even an intention to have a pool. So we decided to start a picket line. We started the picket line and the picket line closed the pool. When the pool closed the racists decided to handle the matter in traditional Southern style. They turned to violence, unlawful violence.

We had been picketing for two days when we started taking lunch breaks in a picnic area reserved for “White People Only.” Across from the picnic area, on the other side of a stream of water, a group of white people started firing rifles and we could hear the bullets strike the trees over our heads. The chief of police was on duty at the pool and I appealed to him to stop the firing into the picnic area. The chief of police said, “Oh, I don’t hear anything. I don’t hear anything at all.” They continued shooting all that day. The following day these people drifted toward the picket line firing their pistols and we kept appealing to the chief of police to stop them from shooting near us. He would always say, ‘Well, I don’t hear anything.”

The pool remained closed but we continued the line and crowds of many hundreds would come to watch us and shout insults at the pickets. The possibility of violence was increasing to such a proportion that we had sent a telegram to the U.S. Justice Department asking them to protect our right to picket. The Justice Department referred us to the local FBI. We called the local FBI in Charlotte and they said this was not a matter for the U.S. Justice Department; it was a local matter and they had checked with our local chief of police, who had assured them that he would give us ample protection. This was the same chief of police who had stood idly by while these people were firing pistols and rifles over our heads, the same chief of police who in 1957 had placed two police cars in a Klan motorcade that raided the Negro community.

Attempt to Kill Me

On Friday, June 23, 1961, I went into town to make another telephone call to the Justice Department. While I was there I picked up one of the pickets and started back to the line at the swimming pool, which was on the outskirts of town. I was driving down U.S. Highway 74 going east when a heavy car (I was driving a small English car, a Hillman), a 1955 DeSoto sedan, came up from behind and tried to force my lighter car off the embankment and over a cliff with a 75foot drop. I outmaneuvered him by speeding up and getting in front of him. Then he rammed my car from the rear and locked the bumper and started a zig-zag motion across the highway in an attempt to flip my light car over. The bumpers were stuck and I didn’t use the brake because I didn’t want to neutralize the front wheels.

We had to pass right by a highway patrol station. The station was in a 35-mile-an-hourr zone and by the time we passed it the other car was pushing me at 70 miles an hour. I started blowing my horn incessantly, hoping to attract the attention of the highway patrolmen. There were three patrolmen standing on the opposite side of the embankment in the yard of the station. They looked at the man who was pushing and zig-zagging me across the highway and then threw up their hands, laughed, and turned their backs to the highway.

He kept pushing me for a quarter of a mile until we came to a highway intersection carrying heavy traffic. The man was hoping to run me out into the traffic, but about 75 feet away from the highway I was finally able to rock loose from his bumper, and I made a sharp turn into the ditch.

My car was damaged. The brake drum, the wheels, and the bearings had been damaged, and all of the trunk compartment in the rear had been banged in. After we got it out of the ditch, I took the car back to the swimming pool and showed it to the chief of police. He stood up and looked at the car and laughed. He said, I don’t see anything. I don’t see anything at all.” I said, “You were standing here when I left.” He said, ‘Well, I still don’t see anything.” So I told him I wanted a warrant for the man, whom I had recognized. He was Bynum Griffin, the Pontiac-Cheverolet dealer in Monroe. He said, I can’t give you a warrant because I can’t see anything that he’s done.” But a newspaperman standing there started to examine my car, and when the chief of police discovered that a newspaperman was interested, then he said, ‘Well, come to the police station and I’ll give you a warrant.”

When I went to the police station he said, ‘Well, you just got a name and a license number and I can’t indict a man on that. You can take it up with the Court Solicitor.” I went to the Court Solicitor, which is equivalent to the District Attorney, and he said, ‘Well, all you got here is a name and a number on a piece of paper. I can’t indict a man on these grounds.” I told him that I recognized the man and mentioned his name. He said, “Wait a minute,” and he made a telephone call. He said, I called him and he said he didn’t do that.” I again told him that I had recognized the man and that I had the license number of the car that he had used.

Finally the Court Solicitor said, “Well, if you insist, I’ll tell you what you do. You go to his house and take a look at him and if you recognize him, you bring him up here and I’ll make out a warrant for him.” I told him that was what the police were being paid for, that they were supposed to go and pick up criminals. So they refused to give me a warrant for this man at all.

“God Damn, The Niggers Have Got Guns!”

The picket line continued. On Sunday, on our way to the swimming pool, we had to pass through the same intersection (U.S. 74 and U.S. 601). There were about two or three thousand people lined along the highway. Two or three policemen were standing at the intersection directing traffic and there were two policemen who had been following us from my home. An old stock car without windows was parked by a restaurant at the intersection. As soon as we drew near, this car started backing out as fast as possible. The driver hoped to hit us in the side and flip us over. But I turned my wheel sharply and the junk car struck the front of my car and both cars went into a ditch.

Then the crowd started screaming. They said that a nigger had hit a white man. They were referring to me. They were screaming, “Kill the niggers! Kill the niggers! Pour gasoline on the niggers! Burn the niggers!”

We were still sitting in the car. The man who was driving the stock car got out of the car with a baseball bat and started walking toward us saying, “Nigger, what did you hit me for?” I didn’t say anything to him. We just sat there looking at him. He came up close to our car, within arm’s length with the baseball bat, but I still hadn’t said anything and we didn’t move in the car. What they didn’t know was that we were armed. Under North Carolina state law it is legal to carry firearms in your automobile so long as these firearms are not concealed.

I had two pistols and a rifle in the car. When this fellow started to draw back his baseball bat, I put an Army .45 up in the window of the car and pointed it right into his face and didn’t say a word. He looked at the pistol and he didn’t say anything. He started backing away from the car.

Somebody in the crowd fired a pistol and the people again started to scream hysterically, “Kill the niggers! Kill the niggers! Pour gasoline on the niggers!” The mob started to throw stones on top of my car. So I opened the door of the car and I put one foot on the ground and stood up in the door holding an Italian carbine.

All this time three policemen had been standing about fifty feet away from us while we kept waiting in the car for them to come and rescue us. Then when they saw that we were armed and the mob couldn’t take us, two of the policemen started running. One ran straight to me, grabbed me on the shoulder, and said, “Surrender your weapon! Surrender your weapon!” I struck him in the face and knocked him back away from the car and put my carbine in his face, and I told him we were not going to surrender to a mob. I told him that we didn’t intend to be lynched. The other policeman who had run around the side of the car started to draw his revolver out of the holster. He was hoping to shoot me in the back. They didn’t know that we had more than one gun. One of the students (who was seventeen years old) put a .45 in the policeman’s face and told him that if he pulled out his pistol he would kill him. The policeman started putting his gun back into the holster and backing away from the car, and he fell into the ditch.

There was a very old man, an old white man out in the crowd, and he started screaming and crying like a baby, and he kept crying, and he said, “God damn, God damn, what is this God damn country coming to that the niggers have got guns, the niggers are armed and the police can’t even arrest them!” He kept crying and somebody led him away through the crowd.

Self-Defense Forces Protection

Steve Presson, who is a member of the Monroe City Council, came along and told the chief of police to open the highway and get us out of there. The chief of police told the City Councilman, “But they’ve got guns!” Presson said, “That’s OK. Open the highway up and get them out of here!” They opened the highway and the man from the City Council led us through. All along the highway for almost a third of a mile people were lined on both sides of the road. And they were screaming “Kill the niggers! Kill the niggers! We aren’t having any integration here! We’re not going to swim with niggers!”

By the time we got to the pool the other students who had gone on had already started the picket line. There were three or four thousand white people milling around the pool. All the city officials were there, including the Mayor of Monroe. They had dark glasses on and they were standing in the crowd, which kept screaming. Then the chief of police came up to me and said, “Surrender your gun.” I told him that I was not going to surrender any gun, that the guns were legal, and that the mob was dangerous; if he wanted those guns he could come to my house and get them after I got away from there. Then he said, ‘Well, if you hurt any of these white people here, God damn it, I’m going to kill you!” I don’t know what made him think that 1 was going to let him live long enough to shoot me. He kept saying, “Surrender the gun!” while the white people kept screaming.

The City Councilman reappeared and said that the tension was bad and that there was a chance that somebody would be hurt. He conceded that I had a right to picket and he said that if I were willing to go home he would see that I was escorted. I asked him who was going to escort us home. He said “the police.” I told him that 1 might as well go with the Ku Klux Klan as go with them. I said I would go with the police department under one condition. He asked what that was. I told him I would take one of the students out of my car and let them put a policeman in there and then I could rest assured that they would protect us. And the police said they couldn’t do that. They couldn’t do that because they realized that this policeman would get hurt if they joined in with the mob.

The officials kept repeating how the crowd was getting out of hand; somebody would get hurt. I told them that I wasn’t going to leave until they cleared the highway. I also told them that if necessary we would make our stand right there. Finally they asked me what did I suggest they do, and I recommended they contact the state police. So they contacted the state police and an old corporal and a young man came; just two state patrolmen. Three or four thousand people were out there, and the city had twenty-one policemen present who claimed they couldn’t keep order.

The old man started cursing and told the people to move back, to spread out and to move out of there. And he started swinging a stick. Some of the mob started cursing and he said, “God damn it, I mean it. Move out.” They got the message and suddenly the crowd was broken up and dispersed. The officials and state police knew that if they allowed the mob to attack us, a lot of people were going to be killed and some of those people would be white.

Two police cars escorted us out; one in front and one behind. This was the first time this had ever been done. And some of the white people started screaming “Look how they are protecting niggers! Look how they are taking niggers out of here!”

As a result of our stand and our willingness to fight, the state of North Carolina had enforced law and order. Just two state troopers did the job and no one got hurt in a situation where normally (in the South) a lot of Negro blood would have flowed. The city closed the pool for the rest of the year and we withdrew our picket line.

This was not the end of the story of our struggle in Monroe in 1961. By a quirk of fate the next episode involved the Freedom Riders and their policy of passive resistance. The contrast between the results of their policy and the results of our policy of self-defense is a dramatic object lesson for all Negroes. But before I go on to that 1 have to describe how our policy of self-defense developed and how the Negro community in Monroe came to support my conclusion that we had to “meet violence with violence.”

The story begins in 1955 when, as a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, I returned to my home town of Monroe and joined the local chapter of the NAACP.