Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power
53 minutes. 2005. Closed captions. Thurs., Sep. 25. 7 p.m. Calhoun Hall 100.
The title of this documentary is also the title of a book by Robert F. Williams of Monroe, North
Carolina (1925-1996), a civil rights fighter who strongly advocated fighting back against the Klan
in the Jim Crow South and helped to make the black struggle in the United States internationally
known.
According to law professor and former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver, one of the keynote
speakers for the U.T. 1968 conference, “Robert Williams’ insistence on armed self-defense in
response to racist terrorism inspired hundreds of followers, yet his story has been marginalized or
erased from civil rights history. Negroes with Guns revives the powerful words and actions of this
legendary Black leader and restores him to his central place in the Black struggle for dignity and
human rights.” Interviews with his wife and constant collaborator Mabel Williams and many others
combine with newsreels, photos, and blues, work songs, and protest songs to make this
documentary dramatic.
His grandmother, a former slave, gave Williams the rifle with which his grandfather, a Republican
campaigner and publisher of the newspaper The People's Voice, had defended himself in an
earlier era. At eleven, he witnessed the ruthless beating and dragging of a black woman by a
police officer. He witnessed brutal race riots in 1943 in Detroit, where he worked for Ford Motor
Company.
After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Klan activity in Monroe increased. Between
1957 and 1961 Monroe had regular Klan rallies with 15,000 members present, and minor
scandals such as a white girl kissing two black boys, eight and ten years old, led to imprisonment
of the boys in the basement of the local jail for four months.
Army veteran Williams was the local NAACP president in the 1950s and early 60s and began by
asking protesters to let the law handle a white man who beat up and tried to rape a black woman.
However, the man was found not guilty and the case was dismissed, so it seemed necessary to
proceed without the aid of the local police. Williams filed for a charter from the NRA to establish a
Black Armed Guard of local males 15-50 years old, to whom he taught karate and supplied guns.
Williams was suspended for 6 months when the town’s Black Guard became too controversial,
but his wife was appointed to replace him temporarily, so his influence was not really stopped.
Julian Bond of the national NAACP says with a slight smile in an interview that self-defense when
constitutional rights are violated is the American norm.
When he began getting death threats in 1961, Williams called the Freedom Riders James
Foreman and Paul Brooks and offered them a chance to come in and prove that nonviolence
could prevent violence. While trying to protect the women from the Freedom Rider bus after
church, Foreman’s head was bashed with a rifle. Williams received a lynching threat, so he and
his wife and two sons escaped through the back door via the back roads and was charged with
interstate flight along with a false kidnapping charge.
Williams and his family were given political exile by Fidel Castro and allowed to broadcast such
music as Nina Simone singing “Mississippi Goddamn” in “The Soul Side of Rock in the Year of
Fire” on Radio Free Dixie from Cuba. Williams took the position now that it was necessary to use
whatever weapons were available to meet violence with violence, and that no one who lives
under tyranny can be accused of treason. “If it’s criminal to tell a person to defend himself, I hope
I’ll always be a criminal,” he said. The broadcast was heard all over the world before the CIA
managed to jam part of the air waves, and eventually some of the Radio Free Dixie programs
were re-broadcast on a Hanoi radio station.
Meanwhile, Williams went from Cuba to China and was welcomed with flowers and dancing
children. He did not return until Nixon was opening diplomatic relations with China in 1969, during
the Cultural Revolution, and when he did return he supplied the U.S. government with information
about China. He received a grant to do research and wrote his autobiography. At his funeral Rosa
Parks stated that “the work he did should go down in history and never be forgotten” and
suggested that Williams was highly respected by the non-violent protesters who followed Martin
Luther King, Jr.
The songs in the film came from 15 hours of Radio Free Dixie broadcasts and are used in the film
as a narrative device to introduce key turning points in Williams’ personal and political struggles;
They are:
1. Communication, written and performed by Ahmed Alulul-Malik
2. Bourgeois Blues, written and performed by Leadbelly
3. Trouble, a traditional song performed by Josh White
4. Two songs performed by Otis Redding: Ole Man Trouble, which he also wrote; and A Change
is Gonna Come, written by Sam Cooke
5. Two songs performed by Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam, written by Simone with Warner
Chappel Music; and Jim Crow (It’s All Over Now), written by Simone with Jackie Alper and Ron
Vandeer Groel
6. Meeting Over Yonder by Gene Barge and Man Cooper, performed by The Impressions
7. Christo Redentor, written by Duke Pearson and performed by The Impressions
8. The Story of Old Monroe, performed by Pete Seeger and written by Seeger with Malvina
Reynolds
9. Oh Freedom, a traditional song performed by Odetta
10. Detroit City (I Wanna Go There) by Danny Hill and Mel Tillis, performed by Arthur Alexander.
This film will be shown in
Celluloid for Social Justice: The Legacy of 1968 in Documentaries
Mini-Film-Series Honoring the 40th Anniversary of California Newsreel;
http://www.newsreel.org consisting of documentaries provided by California Newsreel
The film series precedes 1968: A Global Perspective -An Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of Texas at Austin
October 10-12, 2008; http://www.1968conf.org