Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925 – October 15, 1996) was an American civil rights leader and author best known for being president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1950s and into 1961 and serving as the first president of the provisional government of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), a black nationalist and separatist organization. During the Jim Crow era, Williams succeeded in integrating the local public library and swimming pool in Monroe. At a time of high racial tension and official abuses, Williams promoted armed Black self-defense in the United States. In addition, he helped gain support for gubernatorial pardons in 1959 for two young African American boys who had received lengthy reformatory sentences in what was known as the Kissing Case of 1958.
Williams obtained a charter from the National Rifle Association and set up a rifle club to defend Black people in Monroe from Ku Klux Klan or other attackers. The local chapter of the NAACP supported Freedom Riders who traveled to Monroe in the summer of 1961 in a test of integrating interstate buses. In August 1961, Williams and his wife left the United States to avoid federal kidnapping charges, first traveling to Canada, then Cuba, and later the People's Republic of China. These charges were dropped by the state when his trial opened in 1975, following his return in 1970.
Williams advocated black self-defense. Williams' book Negroes with Guns (1962) has been reprinted many times, most recently in 2013. It details his experience with violent racism and his disagreement with the non-violent wing of the Civil Rights Movement. The text was widely influential; Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton and African American Defense League founder Mauricelm-Lei Millere cited it as a major inspiration.
Early life Youth Robert Franklin Williams was born in Monroe, North Carolina, on February 26, 1925, to Emma Carter and John L. Williams who worked as a railroad boiler washer.Robert Franklin Williams in North Carolina Birth Index, Family SearchYoruba ancestry Robert Franklin Williams in Michigan Obituaries, Family Search. He had two sisters, Lorraine Garlington and Jessie Link, and two brothers, John H. Williams and Edward S. Williams. His grandmother, a former slave of Yoruba ancestry, gave Williams his grandfather's rifle. His grandfather had been a Republican campaigner and publisher of the newspaper The People's Voice during the hard years after Reconstruction in North Carolina. At the age of 11, Williams witnessed the beating and dragging of a black woman by police officer Jesse Helms Sr.pp. 227–228. Helms Sr., later the Monroe chief of police, was the father of future United States Senator Jesse Helms.Jesse Helms: Timeline, PBSRobert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide, p. 36.
As a young man, Williams joined the Great Migration, traveling north for industrial work during World War II. He worked in factories in Detroit. He witnessed the 1943 Detroit race riot prompted by labor competition between white and black Americans. Drafted in 1944, he served for a year and a half as a private in the then segregated Marines before returning home to Monroe.Robert F Williams's United States World War II Army Enlistment Records, Family Search
Marriage and family In 1947, Williams married a 16-year-old African American woman named Mabel Ola Robinson, a fellow civil rights activist.[Mabel Ola Robinson in North Carolina Birth Index], Family Search They had two children named John C. Williams and Robert F. Williams Jr.
Civil rights movement Early NAACP activities Williams returned to Monroe, North Carolina and became the president of the Union County NAACP chapter in 1951. He wanted to change the segregated town to protect the civil rights of blacks.Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide, p. 9.
First they worked to integrate the public library. After that success, in 1957 Williams also led efforts to integrate the public swimming pools, which were funded and operated by taxpayer monies. He had followers form picket lines around the pool. The NAACP members organized peaceful demonstrations, but opponents fired on their lines. No one was arrested or punished, although law enforcement officers were present."In Memory of Robert F. Williams: A Voice for Armed Self-Defense and Black Liberation", Revolutionary Worker, November 17, 1996. At that time, Monroe had a large Ku Klux Klan chapter. The press estimated it had 7,500 members, while the city had a total of 12,000 residents.
Black Armed Guard Alarmed at the threat to civil rights activists, Williams had applied to the National Rifle Association (NRA) for a charter for a local rifle club.Truman Nelson, 'People with Strength: The Story of Monroe, North Carolina', 1962, within 'Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide' (San Francisco: Freedom Archives, 2005), pp. 55, 59. He called the Monroe Chapter of the NRA the Black Armed Guard; it was made up of about 50–60 men, including some veterans like him. They were determined to defend the local black community from racist attacks, a goal similar to that of the Deacons for Defense who established chapters in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in 1964–1965.Nelson, People with Strength, pp. 49, 60, 65.
Newtown was the black residential area of Monroe. In the summer of 1957, there were rumors that the KKK was going to attack the house of Dr. Albert E. Perry, a practicing physician and vice-president of the Monroe NAACP. Williams and his men of the Armed Guard went to Perry's house to defend it, fortifying it with sandbags. When numerous KKK members appeared and shot from their cars, Williams and his followers returned the fire, driving them away."In Memory of Robert F. Williams", Revolutionary Worker, November 17, 1996;Timothy Tyson, "Robert Franklin Williams: A Warrior for Freedom;"Timothy Tyson, "Introduction" to Robert Williams Papers, p. vi.
"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."Williams, Robert F. "1957: Swimming Pool Showdown", Southern Exposure, c. Summer 1980; the article appeared in a special issue devoted to the Ku Klux Klan, accessed November 17, 2013.
In Negroes with Guns, Williams writes:
[R]acists 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.In Thomas (Chapter 4), Spooks, Sex & Socio-Diagnostics, section: "Sadistic White Insanity". 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."Negroes With Guns", Ann Coulter blog, April 18, 2012.
Williams insisted his position was defensive, as opposed to a declaration of war. He relied on numerous black military veterans from the local area, as well as financial support from across the country. In Harlem, particularly, fundraisers were frequently held and proceeds were devoted to purchasing arms for Williams and his followers. He called it "armed self-reliance" in the face of white terrorism. Threats against Williams' life and his family became more frequent.
Kissing Case
In 1958, Williams, as head of the NAACP chapter, defended two young black boys, ages seven and nine, who were jailed and beaten in Monroe after a white girl kissed each of them on the cheek and told her mother, who became enraged.Robert and Mabel Williams Resource Guide , p. 12. The incident was covered internationally and Williams became known around the world. His publicity campaign, inviting a barrage of headlines castigating Monroe and the US in the global press, was instrumental in shaming the officials involved.Nelson, People with Strength: The Story of Monroe, North Carolina, pp. 62–63. Authorities eventually released the boys, who were pardoned by the governor of North Carolina, but the state never apologized for its treatment of them. The controversy was known as the "Kissing Case".
Harassment On May 12, 1958, the Raleigh Eagle, a North Carolina newspaper, reported that Nationwide Insurance Company was canceling Williams' collision and comprehensive coverage, effective that day. They first canceled all of his automobile insurance, but decided to reinstate his liability and medical payments coverage, enough for Williams to retain his car license. The company said that Williams' affiliation with the NAACP was not a factor; they noted "that rocks had been thrown at his car and home several times by people driving by his home at night. These incidents just forced us to get off the comprehensive and collision portions of his policy."
The Raleigh Eagle reported that Williams had said that six months before, a 50-car Ku Klux Klan caravan had swapped gunfire with a group of blacks outside the home of Dr. Albert E. Perry, vice president of the local NAACP chapter. The article quoted police chief A.A. Maurey as denying part of that story. He said, "I know there was no shooting." He said that he had had several police cars accompanying the KKK caravan to watch for possible law violations. The article quoted Williams: "These things have happened," Williams insisted. "Police try to make it appear that I have been exaggerating and trying to stir up trouble. If police tell me I am in no danger and that they can't confirm these events, why then has my insurance been cancelled?"Insurance cancelled, Raleigh Eagle, May 12, 1958, p. 15.
The following year, Williams was so incensed with the decision of a Monroe court to acquit two white men of raping a pregnant black woman, Mary Reid, that he replied by saying on the courthouse steps:
We cannot rely on the law. We can get no justice under the present system. If we feel that injustice is done, we must then be prepared to inflict justice on these people. Since the federal government will not bring a halt to lynching, and since the so-called courts lynch our people legally, if it's necessary to stop lynching with lynching, then we must be willing to resort to that method. We must meet violence with violence.James Bock, "A new debate over nonviolence Militant: A fiery black advocate of violence in the 1960s has returned to the spotlight with recent revelations that Thurgood Marshall passed information about him to the FBI," Baltimore Sun, March 2, 1997.Timothy B. Tyson, "Robert F. Williams: "Black Power" and the Roots of African American Freedom Struggle",The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Susan M. Glisson, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littefield, 2006, p. 236Christopher B. Strain, Pure Fire: Self-defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005, p. 59.James Forman,The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000, 2nd printing, p. 176."The Robert Williams Case",The Crisis, Jun-Jul 1959, Vol. 66, no. 6, p. 327–329.Nelson, pp. 65–66 in People With Strength: The Story of Monroe, North Carolina, quotes Williams as saying "This court has proved that Negroes cannot receive justice from the courts. They must convict their attackers on the spot. They must meet violence with violence!".
The Harvard Crimson quoted him as saying "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." It is not known where these quotes originated.
Suspension from the NAACP In 1959, Williams was in a shoot-out with Ku Klax Klan members and local police officers, from which he fled.