I mentioned on another thread that I wrote an article recently on these 60s civil rights leaders, which went unpublished because it was "too long to read". Well here I can publish it. He who doesn't like it doesn't need to read it, but I hope it may be of interest to some. “If America must go up in smoke, then let it go, let it go, let it burn.” That Sunday afternoon back in September 1936 in Monroe, North Carolina in the United States, a scene typical of the post-Civil War south played out. Monroe was a small, sleepy, southern town of around 12,000 inhabitants, divided neatly in two by the railway line running through its middle. On one side of the divide lived the white elite, comfortably accustomed to using any means possible, including threats, intimidation, casual violence and lynchings to maintain their historic position of power and privilege. The county's Ku Klux Klan chapter thrived, with attendances at local rallies estimated at 7,500. Newtown, on the other side of the tracks, was almost another country, a shanty town of wooden huts It was here that freed former slaves and their descendants survived, mainly in conditions of poverty, fear and subjugation. On this particular hot and sweltering afternoon, a commotion and a woman's screaming had brought locals spilling out on to the town's main street. A towering brute of a white police officer, standing 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds, was in the process of making one of his grand arrests. Big Jesse, as the cop was known locally, always put on a good show. He didn't mind showing them just who was boss around here. He had the “sharpest shoe in town and didn't mind using it” they told each other admiringly. Laughter and jeering broke out as Big Jesse hauled the cowering, wailing black woman, half his size, out into the street and hurled her down in to the dust. Using boots and fists, he began administering the form of 'special' justice for which he was renowned, beating her mercilessly until he began to sweat and tire from the exertion in the heat. Playing up to his audience, Big Jesse seized hold of one of the unfortunate woman's limbs and with long strides, set off down Main Street to the jail, dragging his half conscious and bloodied victim behind him like a rag doll, her dusty torn dress pulled up over her head and trailing behind. Watching, horrified, was the 11 year old grandson of a former slave, Robert F. Williams. Years later he recalled how the incident had affected him and how he was still haunted by "her tortured screams as her flesh was ground away from the friction of the concrete.” He remembered how “the emasculated black men hung their heads in shame and hurried silently away from the cruelly bizarre scene." Although neither could have imagined it back then, both police officer Big Jesse and the young Robert F. Williams would go on to make their mark on the distant revolutionary island of Cuba. But in very different ways. In recognition of his loyal service and by popular acclaim from a grateful population, Big Jesse was soon promoted to Chief of Police. Now he preferred to be addressed as Chief Helms rather than any nickname. His son and namesake, Jesse Junior, would follow his father into public office, with even greater success. In government, US Senator Jesse Helms Jr. quickly became a celebrated rising star of the new right, earning the nickname 'Senator No' and making his name through his particularly aggressive brand of Conservatism. Fighting vigorously against civil rights, disability rights, feminism, gay rights, affirmative action and access to abortions, Senator Helms was particularly noted for his fiery and hateful rhetoric opposing homosexuality and labour unions and his advocacy of low taxes. However he's perhaps best known and reviled amongst Cubans and friends of Cuba, as the promoter and principle advocate of the infamous 'Helms-Burton Law' in the mid-1990s, aimed at starving the Cuban people into submission through an intensification and redoubling of the US blockade of the island. As for young Robert, he would go on to be drafted into the segregated US Marines as WW2 entered its final months. Returning home in 1945, having served his country, he found the situation for black people was, if anything, worse than ever. The local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was almost moribund, having only 6 determined members who still resisted unceasing Klan intimidation, threats and violence. As Williams arrived, they were contemplating disbandment. When he objected, the departing membership had a simple solution. “They elected me president,” Williams recalled, “and then they all left.” He quickly teamed up with a local physician, Dr Albert E. Perry, and the pair toured the town's “bars, street corners and beauty parlours” recruiting vigorously, particularly among the unemployed, domestic servants and disillusioned black veterans like himself, who he noted “didn't scare easy”. The branch started to grow once more and with around 50-60 members recruited, Williams invested in a mimeograph machine and began publishing a newsletter which he named The Crusader. His new wife, Mabel, also a civil rights activist, was responsible for the illustrations. The newsletter was distributed around the town by the new NAACP activists and Williams felt it a crucial method of combating misinformation from the white-dominated press and media. Robert F Williams and his wife Mabel prepare for self defence
The group then launched a campaign to integrate the town's public swimming pool. Although the pool had been built and was maintained through general taxes, to which black people contributed, there was a strict 'whites only' segregation policy in place. Since integration was still unthinkable at that time, the NAACP branch first formally asked for a separate pool to be built in Newtown for black use. The distinguished local Aldermen considered the request, but rejected it as “too expensive”. Williams returned with the suggestion that perhaps then one or two days each week could be put aside for black people to swim? The idea was mulled by the town authorities but again rejected it on the grounds of cost. When asked what costs these were, they explained that the pool's water would of course have to be drained and refilled after black people had used it. Undaunted, Williams and Perry organised pickets, protests and sit-ins around the pool issue, but retaliation wasn't long in coming. As the NAACP branch grew in numbers, so did the death threats against Williams and Perry. Klan rallies now reportedly attracted up to 15,000 attendees from across the region and would customarily terminate with huge, heavily-armed motorcades, accompanied by police cars who were supposedly 'keeping order'. These motorcades would slowly tour through the black district of Newtown, whooping, honking their car horns, shouting obscenities and firing fusillades of pistol shots into the air and at the homes of those considered black troublemakers. The NAACP had raised numerous protests about the motorcades, but these were brushed aside by Monroe's authorities who insisted that nothing could be done as the Klan had an “absolute constitutional right” to their rallies and motorcades. Williams wrote; “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 defence because law and order had completely vanished”. On the night of 5th October 1957, following a huge rally, the Klansmen headed for their cars, formed up their motorcade and headed for Newtown. Lurid death threats had been made against Dr Perry whom they accused of the 'crime' of performing an abortion on a white woman, so it was no surprise that the street that was home to Dr Perry was one of the principle KKK targets. Aware of this, Williams and his veterans had prepared by creating sandbag fortifications outside his home and were lying quietly in wait. “We had steel helmets, we had gas masks and we had a better communication system than they have now” he later wrote. As the motorcade's lead cars turned into the street, the Klansmen eagerly loaded their weapons and increased the volume of their shouting and honking. The writer Julian Mayfield described the scene: “It was just another good time for the Klan. Near Dr Perry's home, their revelry was suddenly shattered by the sustained fire of scores of men who'd been instructed not to kill anyone if it were not necessary. The firing was blistering, disciplined and frightening. The motorcade, of about 80 cars, which had begun in a spirit of good fellowship, disintegrated into chaos, with panicky, robed men fleeing in every direction. Some abandoned their automobiles and had to continue on foot.” The procession was abandoned and the next day, The Monroe Board of Aldermen, met in a hastily convened emergency session. They unanimously agreed that they'd now overcome their constitutional objections and passed an immediate ordinance banning all future KKK motorcades. Defending Dr Perry's house. The doctor himself is second from left.
The NAACP branch continued to grow and another case soon arose in Monroe which attracted international indignation and protests. An 8 year old white girl had returned home to her mother after a happy afternoon playing with other children. Innocently she told her mother that she'd kissed two black boys, David Simpson aged 7 and James Thompson aged 9, on the cheek during their games. Her mother became hysterical and immediately called the police, who rushed to arrest the two boys and haul them off to jail. They were handcuffed, given the customary beating and absurdly, charged with rape. Appearing in court a few days later, the boys were found guilty of all charges and sentenced to indefinite detention until at least a minimum age of 21. After passing sentence, Juvenile Judge Hampton Price explained: “Since they just stood silent and didn't say nothin', I knew that was a confession of guilt.” The national NAACP refused to have anything to do with the incident, on account of the fact that it was supposedly a “sex case”. Williams however helped their mothers locate where their children had been held incommunicado and without legal representation for 6 days. He became a one man press office about the case, eventually attracting the attention of Joyce Egginton, a British journalist from the London News Chronicle newspaper. Egginton was able to visit the boys and smuggled in a camera, with which she took photos of the boys hugging their mothers and showing off their injuries. Her paper published her photos alongside her passionate article, simply titled “Why?”. The case became an international cause celebre, with protest marches held in several European cities, the US embassy in Rotterdam pelted with stones and thousands of protest letter. Following an appeal from former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the State Governor eventually reluctantly pardoned the boys without explanation or conditions, although no apology was ever made. Armed attacks, abuse and violence against black people in Monroe continued unabated. Many women had joined the NAACP branch and Williams was with a crowd of them at the courthouse when two awful cases of abuse were due for trial. B. F. Shaw, a white railroad engineer, was charged with attacking an African-American maid at the Hotel Monroe and kicking her down the stairs. Meanwhile, Lewis Medlin, a white mechanic, was accused of having beaten and sexually assaulted Mary Ruth Reid, a pregnant black woman, in the presence of her five children. Williams recalled that Mary's brothers and several of the women of the Monroe NAACP had urged that new machine guns they'd just obtained be tried out on Medlin before his trial, but he told them "that we would be as bad as the white people if we resorted to violence." Although B.F. Shaw failed to even turn up for his trial, his lawyer explained that his client had justification in kicking the maid down the hotel lobby stairs because “she had been making too much noise while working in the corridor and had disturbed his sleep”. He was acquitted of all charges in his absence. Medlin's lawyer meanwhile, argued to the jury that his client had simply been "drunk and having a little fun" at the time of the assault. Further, Medlin was married, "to a lovely white woman, the pure flower of life. Do you think he would have left this pure flower for that?" he said as he indicated the weeping victim. Medlin too was acquitted of all charges, leading the women to furiously accuse Williams of failing to protect them. It was in that moment of anger and humiliation that Williams told reporters; “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 press seized on these comments, which were published with inflamatory and reactionary shock headlines. Williams was suspended from the NAACP for contravening their policy of non-violence and was condemned by Martin Luther King. Williams attempted to explain that “I don't advocate violence for its own sake, or for the sake of reprisals against whites. My only difference with Dr King is that I believe in flexibility in the freedom struggle.” However the pair would clash again over King's refusal of an invitation to to take part in bus freedom rides. Williams criticised King for wanting to “ride the great wave of publicity, but not the buses”. He telegrammed King angrily: “The cause of human decency and black liberation demands that you physically ride the buses with our gallant freedom fighters. You are a phony. If you are the leader of this non-violent movement, lead by way of example. You are betraying our cause by attempting to appease our enemies. Ride the buses as the students have asked you to. If you lack the courage remove yourself from the vanguard.”
In late 1961, after further clashes with the Klan, Robert received a phone call telling him “you've caused a lot of trouble. In 30 minutes you're going to be hanging in the courthouse square”. Gathering their two young sons, the pair immediately left for New York, via a series of safe houses. They hoped to let things cool off for a while before returning to Monroe. However, on arriving in New York, they found a federal warrant had been issued for Robert's arrest on supposed kidnapping charges. He was now amongst the FBI's 10 most wanted. They continued their flight on to Canada and still feeling unsafe in that country, they travelled on to Mexico, finally arriving in Havana, where they requested political asylum. The fledgling Cuban Revolution had committed to and was already demonstrating through radical action, its ambitious promise to eliminate the ingrained racism of centuries. Robert Williams had written favourably about the Revolution in his newsletter and had travelled to New York the previous year, in order to be amongst those who visited Fidel Castro during his famous stay at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem. He'd been greatly impressed when Fidel had hosted a lunch at a nearby cafe for a dozen of the hotel's workers, calling them the “poor and humble people of Harlem”. Williams saw parallels between Cuba's revolutionary battle to defeat oppression and domination and the ongoing civil rights struggle. Cuba had itself been a slave holding state, for even longer than the United States. The trade only finally abolished in 1886 during the final years of Spanish colonialism. Before the Revolution, racism had mirrored that of the United States and had a strong hold on Cuban society. Williams was also unpopular with the US Communist Party, since he wasn't a party member and had been condemned as a 'black nationalist' in opposition to their class-based theory. It's perhaps unsurprising then that Williams should report that “there was some division in Cuba as to whether or not I should be allowed to enter there and it so happened that Fidel himself took the position that I should be allowed in and he had to go against some of the party officials to reach this conclusion”. Robert and Mabel's story had gained wide publicity throughout Cuba, their photos were published in the newspapers and they were interviewed on TV and radio. Visiting US writer Amiri Baraka wrote “I hung out with Rob Williams one day and everywhere he went, people in the street cheered him.” They visited the Office for Agrarian Reform, where the armed Cuban soldier typing at the front desk “spun around in his chair and showed us all 32 teeth. He recognised Robert Williams immediately and shook his hand vigorously”. Visiting a Cuban magazine's editorial offices, the staff huddled round Williams to ask questions about North American politics. “He impressed all of Cuba with his personality”, wrote Baraka. “Strolling through old Havana with a pearl-handled pistol on his hip and a broad smile on his face, his barrel-shaped body parting the admiring crowds, the winning impression that Williams made on revolutionary Cuba was entirely mutual.” Williams himself was to write; “On the streets of Cuba, I learned for the first time in my life what it feels like to be respected as a fellow human being and to be accepted in the human race.” The family were invited to attend July 26th celebrations with Fidel in his old rebel base in the Sierra Maestra and were joined by several other African-American authors including Baraka, John Henrick Clarke and Harold Cruse, who wrote “We were caught up in a revolutionary outpouring of thousands upon thousands of people making their way up the mountain roads to the shrine of the Revolution, under the hottest sun any of us Americans had probably ever experienced.” Little girls in brown uniforms and red berets greeted the delegation with armfuls of flowers and photographers darted around the group snapping pictures. Rebel soldiers led them to the official platform where, wrote Clarke, they “reached the outstretched and welcoming hand of Fidel Castro”. The delegation were introduced to Juan Almeida Bosque and Che Guevara and when Fidel noticed a woman amongst Williams' group was thirsty, he stopped his conversation and brought her a glass of water himself. “This very human gesture of consideration, coming from a busy revolutionary now engrossed in rebuilding his nation, told me more about the character of Fidel Castro than the small mountain of newspaper articles I'd read about him”, wrote Clarke. The ensuing speech, which lasted several hours, was interrupted by a sudden rainstorm and cheers of “Fidel!, Fidel!, Fidel!” and “Venceremos!”, but even soaked to the skin, nothing could dampen the crowd's fervour. Williams was certainly very moved and later wrote; “For what can one say of a glory that mankind has never before approximated? I simply say that I have seen the face of Cuba in the beauty and happiness of her sons and daughters who made a pilgrimage to the Sierra Maestra to hear a modern version of the Sermon on the Mount, on the happy face of a little boy who helped his father prepare a pig for the feast, on the humanitarian face of a little girl who stood by the side of the road and stretched forth a glass of water to the weary travellers, in the clean faces of the little boys in uniform who seemed so proud and confident of the future.” The Cubans had created “one of the greatest democracies in the world today, the great social miracle of the 20th Century”. The Crusader newsletter. Published in Cuba and distributed in the United States
But Robert was not in Cuba to rest, as his wife Mabel recalled; “As soon as we arrived, Robert told everybody that his fight was not in Cuba, his fight was in the United States, so he wanted to establish a radio program. He came up with this idea listening to Voice of America and heard all the good stuff they were talking about and he said, “we should establish a radio program.”” In the early 60s, the US had stepped up its propaganda campaigns against Cuba alongside campaigns of sabotage and armed incursions. Radio Swan and Voice of America broadcast high power radio transmissions aimed at the island with the stated aim of “assisting those who are fighting Castro within Cuba”. Williams presented the idea of a radio show to Fidel who immediately agreed and told some of the people “Help Williams, he knows what he's doing, help him to get his radio program”. However getting the program on the air wasn't to be straightforward. Robert wrote; “The Cuban people had made it plain that they support the liberation struggles of the peoples of the world and I said our struggle was no exception. I'd asked for this time and this program and some of the party officials did not approve of it and Fidel himself had to intervene in this.” Mabel remembered with bemusement that the pair got a “good political education, because there were people who said the struggle we were leading was going to divide the working class in the United States. So there were a lot of people who didn't want us to have a radio program, or if we had one, they wanted to say what could be said on it. And Robert insisted, well no, if I'm going to have a radio program, I have to make the decisions about what's going to be said on the radio program, so we had a political struggle”. However the question was resolved when according to Mabel; “Fidel Castro finally went to Radio Progreso and said “do I have to come down here personally and put Williams on the radio?”. He didn't have to come any more after that and they put us on the radio.” Williams was provided with studio access and a 50,000-watt radio transmitter, which could broadcast all over the United States, even receiving listener correspondence from as far away as Canada. However he wanted to primarily aim at the southern states he knew best and where the struggle was most intense. It was thus that Williams named his new station Radio Free Dixie. Broadcasts began with the announcement “The following program is brought to you as a public service. It does not necessarily reflect the official policy of this station. The facilities of this station have been made available in the hope of promoting a better understanding of the Afro-American and his struggle for freedom in North America. The Revolutionary people of Cuba sympathise with all people who struggle for social justice. It is in this spirit that we proudly allocate the following hour in an act of solidarity, peace and friendship with our oppressed North American brothers.” Radio Free Dixie, broadcasting three days a week, was unlike anything ever heard previously in the United States, with a playlist made up of jazz, soul and blues music such as Nina Simone and Herbie Hancock (which Williams called "the new music of freedom") interspersed with news reports and revolutionary rhetoric castigating the US government for its failure to protect African Americans and support the civil rights movement. Williams said "This was really the first true radio where the black people could say what they want to say and they don't have to worry about sponsors, they don't have to worry about censors”. Whilst Robert wrote and presented all of the show's editorials, Mabel selected the music and read news and first-hand reports of the civil rights struggle sent in by listeners . The program proved wildly popular amongst its US audience and was regularly recorded and cassette tapes passed around amongst black communities. In particular, the program played a great part in giving a voice to the civil rights movement. During the Watts riots in 1965, the station broadcast the clarion call “let our people take to the streets in fierce numbers, and in the cause of freedom and justice, let our battle cry be heard around the world. Freedom! Freedom! Freedom now, or death!". The program was even rebroadcast on Radio Hanoi in Vietnam, aimed at black US GIs who'd been drafted in to fight that war. Meanwhile, Cuban print workers volunteered their free time to restart publication of The Crusader newsletter, which was then smuggled into the USA via Canada. Williams also wrote two books whilst in Cuba, Negroes With Guns (1962) and USA: The Potential of a Minority Revolution (1964), which were said to have had great influence on the formation of the Black Panther Party. Folk singer Pete Seeger even wrote a song called The Ballad of Old Monroe dedicated to Williams, who was “down in Cuba, where the FBI can't go”.
After four years of broadcasting however, Williams started to become restless in Cuba. He reflected that if he'd wanted an easy life, he could stay in Cuba but worried that he “wasn't being as effective as he had been and could be”. He also still felt that “some faction in the Cuban government” was “sabotaging” his work by reducing the program's broadcasting power and putting other barriers in his way. He explained “It's just my assumption, I don't have any concrete evidence, but the United States had started restraining Cuban exiles from attacking Cuba and I assume it was reciprocal and the Cuban government also started restraining me.” Williams said that he'd had a long discussion with Che Guevara on the eve of Che's ill-fated departure to Bolivia. He added that Che had told him that there had been “differences” within the Cuban government, but that Che agreed that Williams should be given more resources and that greater Cuban support should be given to the civil rights movement in the US and other revolutionary movements around the world. In 1996, the Williams family were invited to China by Mao Zedong. They were to spend 3 years there, before eventually moving back to the United States in 1969. Reportedly as part of an effort to improve Sino-US relations, all charges against Williams were dropped and he would take on a role at the University of Michigan's Center for Chinese Studies, playing a significant role in the opening of US-China diplomacy. Robert Williams died in 1996 aged 76 in Baldwin, Michigan from Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He'd asked for his remains to be buried back in his home town of Monroe. His funeral was attended by Rosa Parks who praised him for his lifelong “courage and his commitment to freedom”. As the United States once more descends into racial unrest and violence, perhaps Williams' words when challenged on the destruction of property during civil rights marches are more pertinent than ever. “I'm more concerned with the liberation of people, I'm more concerned with humanity and human flesh than with buildings and the loss of property. You see this is a cold capitalist fact that we must save the property, but I'm interested in saving the people and black people have the same right to be saved as anybody, and unless white America is willing to liberate the black people and to stop oppressing us, then if America must go up in smoke, then let it go, let it go, let it burn.”
@Clive_ofthe_Kremlin if you want to get it published it's probably the sort of thing History Today would be interested in. https://www.historytoday.com/submissions
