Robert F. Williams
- For the white anti-communist see Robert H. Williams
Robert Franklin Williams (26 February 1925 – 15 October 15 1996) was an American black communist and Civil Rights Movement activist. At his funeral, Rosa Parks recounted the alleged "high regard" in which he was held by those who marched with King in Alabama.
Life
He was a local leader of the NAACP in the 1950s and into 1961. He was suspended after stating that "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."
Also in 1961, he was accused of kidnapping, possibly related to COINTELPRO, and decided to leave the country. He was acquitted in 1975.
Williams went to Cuba in 1961. He regularly broadcast addresses from Cuba to Southern blacks on "Radio Free Dixie". He established the station with approval of Cuban President Fidel Castro. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Williams used Radio Free Dixie to urge Black soldiers in the U.S. armed forces, to engage in insurrection against the United States.
In 1962, he wrote Negroes with Guns, which has been reprinted many times. It included his disagreement with the non-violent wing of the Civil Rights Movement and was widely influential.
Despite his absence from the United States, in 1964 Williams was elected president of the US-based Revolutionary Action Movement.
In 1965, Williams traveled to Hanoi, then the capital of North Vietnam. In a public speech, he advocated armed violence against the United States during the Vietnam War, congratulated China on obtaining its own nuclear weapons (which Williams referred to as "The Freedom Bomb"), and supported North Vietnam against the United States.
Freedom Riders
When Martin Luther King dispatched "freedom riders" from the North to Monroe to campaign there in 1961, the local NAACP chapter served as their base. Williams was at odds with the nonviolent approach of the so-called Civil Rights Movement and advocated armed insurrection.
He was accused of kidnapping a white couple. Later he and his family fled the state with local law enforcement in pursuit. His eventual interstate flight triggered prosecution by the FBI. On 28 August 1961, an FBI Most Wanted warrant was issued in Charlotte, North Carolina, charging Williams with unlawful interstate flight to avoid prosecution of kidnapping. The FBI document lists Williams as a "free lance writer and janitor" and states that (Williams)"...has previously been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and has advocated and threatened violence... considered armed and extremely dangerous." With the issuance of the warrant, signed by J. Edgar Hoover himself, Williams fled to Cuba.
Exile and return
Williams found his way to Cuba, where he regularly made radio addresses to Southern blacks on "Radio Free Dixie", a station he established with assistance from Cuban President Fidel Castro. Though the station's signal was aggressively blocked by the US Government, it was for a time widely known among Black Americans as a voice in support of armed revolution. During this stay, together with his wife, he published the newspaper, The Crusader. It was also here that he wrote Negroes With Guns, which had a significant influence on Black Panthers founder Huey P. Newton.
Within the Soviet dominated United States Communist Party (USPC) some party members opposed his methods, suggesting they would divide the working class in the US along racial lines. In a May 18, 1964 letter from Havana to his U.S. lawyer, Civil Rights Attorney Conrad Lynn (which can be found in Lynn's papers at Boston University's Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Library), Williams, for instance wrote:
...the U.S.C.P. has openly come out against my position on the Negro struggle. In fact, the party has sent special representatives here to sabotage my work on behalf of U.S. Negro liberation. They are pestering the Cubans to remove me from the radio, ban THE CRUSADER and to take a number of other steps in what they call `cutting Williams down to size.'...
The whole thing is due to the fact that I absolutely refuse to take direction from Gus Hall's idiots...I hope to depart from here, if possible, soon. I am writing you to stand by in case I am turned over to the FBI...
Sincerely,
Rob
In 1965, he split with the Soviet brand of communism and settled in China. He lived comfortably there and associated with higher functionaries of the Chinese government. In a 6 January 1968 letter to Williams that can be found in Conrad Lynn's papers, Williams' lawyer wrote:
- "I have been requested by an ad hoc political committee to arrange for you to return to the U.S. immediately so that you may become a candidate for President..."
From China, Williams then replied to Lynn's proposal in a 17 January 1968 letter to Lynn which stated:
- The only thing that prevents my acceptance and willingness to make an immediate return is the present lack of adequate financial assurance for a fight against my being railroaded to jail and an effective organization to arouse the people. I don't think it will be wise to announce my nomination and immediate return unless the kind of money is positively available...
William's lawyer then wrote Lynn in a January 24, 1968 letter that "You are wise in not making a decision to come back until the financial situation is assured." Because no financial backing could be found, no 1968 "Williams for President" campaign was, therefore, launched by African-American and white leftist supporters of Williams in the United States. By November 1969, however, Williams apparently had become disillusioned with the U.S. Left. As his lawyer, Conrad Lynn, noted in a November 7, 1969 letter to Haywood Burns of the Legal Defense Foundation (that can be found in Lynn's papers at the BU library):
- Williams now clearly takes the position that he has been deserted by the left. How and whether he fits black militant organizations into that category I don't know. Radio Free Europe offered him pay to broadcast for them. So far he has refused. But he has not foreclosed making a deal with the government or the far right. He takes the position that he is entitled to make any maneuvre to keep from going to jail for kidnapping...
Williams was viewed very apprehensively by the US federal government which assumed he aspired to fill the vacuum of influence left after the assassinations of his good friend Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. J. Edgar Hoover received reports that blacks looked to Williams as a figure similar to John Brown. Attempts to contact the US government in order to return from exile were rebuffed consistently until the approaching period of détente augured a warming of relations with the People's Republic of China. Suddenly his familiarity with the country after a period of residence there during the tumult of the Cultural Revolution came to be viewed as an asset. He served in an advisory capacity to the US government and was allowed to return home. The state of North Carolina eventually dropped all charges against him.
Later years
Williams was given a grant by the Ford Foundation to work at the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies. He wrote While God Lay Sleeping: The Autobiography of Robert F. Williams while battling Hodgkin's disease.
