ROBERT WILLIAMS RESPONDS TO SENATE INTERNAL COMMITTEE's SUBPOENA

Senate Internal Committee

Upon my return to this country on the 12th of September 1969, while in custody of and being fingerprinted by the FBI, I was issued a subpoena. The internal security on the Judiciary Committee's subpoena commanded me to appear before its September 30, 1969, session in Washington. I was commanded to bring the following personal belongings: “Any and all wire or tape recordings, photographs, photographic or motion picture film, correspondence or copies thereof, notebooks, diaries, address books or lists, telephone books or lists, membership rosters or lists, or any other documents or papers now in your custody or under your control, the property of Robert Williams or Mabel Williams, having to do with the following subjects or any of them”:

• “1. Plans for revolutionary activity against the Government of the United States either in furtherance of a so-called ‘Republic of New Africa’ or in any other connection.

• “2. The so-called ‘Republic of New Africa’ or ‘New African Republic’ and any officers, representatives, or agents thereof.

• “3. Financing of a proposed Negro republic within the present boundaries of the United States of America.

• “4. The activities of the revolutionary organization known as RAM or any member or members thereof as such.”

The above-mentioned material was not available for me to take to Washington because the Committee had already had it stolen from U.S. Customs before I could take possession of it. Attorney Conrad J. Lynn of New York was only able to obtain a promised return of it after it had been photographed and the photos were presented for my identification during the first Washington session. The whole session was an invasion of privacy. Not a single senator showed up and the session was heavily based on notations from my diary, which had been stolen by the committee. Even though I was conscious of the fact that the whole affair was a brazen and sinister violation of my Constitutional and human rights, I answered all questions to the best of my ability in a vain effort to prove that I had nothing to conceal. On November 18, 1969, I appeared a second time in response to a subpoena. Sen. Strom Thurman arrived late and questioned me for a short time.

Part IV, the appendices, consists of transcripts of interviews with Jeffrey Lee Davenport, Mary L. Trucks, and John Chambers Williams (Robert and Mabel's youngest son). It also includes an anthology of poems written by Williams. The interview with Davenport who first became acquainted with Williams after an event that happened nearly forty years ago when more than a dozen Michigan State Police (MSP) officers, Lake County Sheriff Department (LCSD) deputies, and FBI agents surrounded his residency in Pleasant Plains Township. A police report had been filed by the Birmingham Police Department (BPD) by Davenport's employer regarding a bomb threat he made during a heated telephone conversation with his supervisor. Davenport threatened to blow buildings up in the city of Birmingham after being frustrated as a result of the racist conduct, behavior, and treatment he received from coworkers in the city's maintenance department. The BPD in turn informed the MSP and LCSD to advise them of Davenport's Lake County residence while he was on leave from work. The BPD requested the LCSD to conduct surveillance on Davenport but not to confront or arrest him. More than thirty law enforcement officers representing the three agencies were on the scene and had surrounded his cottage while on the lookout for him. Davenport was not identified or located in the area. Davenport's cottage was searched and officers confiscated two handguns and other firearms from the premises. The interviews with Trucks and John Williams focused on Williams's activism and circumstances surrounding his poetic aspirations, which span over the course of his travels and life in Lake County. Many of the poems need literary analysis. Robeson Taj Frazier illustrates how in “each issue(s) of the Crusader, Williams included at least one poem that creatively drew connections between black liberation struggles in the United States and anticolonial movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. An Ocean Roar of Peace is one such example. In it, Williams articulates a politics of solidarity that proposes that oppressed groups of color become one great voice and speak in unison as they reshape world affairs … , a unified roar that would de-mythicize and demystify the power of the West—their puppeteers—and construct a new world order of peace and international friendship.”

WILLIAMS HAILS CUBAN MILITARY MIGHT

Havana English School of the Air in English January 3, 1962–F

(A Special Broadcast: Robert Williams Tells His Impressions of the Third Anniversary Rally and Military Parade on the Plaza de la Revolucion)

Question: Tell me, Bob, are you an American citizen? Answer: Yes, I was born in the United States as an Afro-American. An Afro-American in the United States is a second-class citizen.

Question: Were you invited here as a member of the delegations to the anniversary of the revolution? Answer: Well, I am a foreigner here. I am a guest of the Cuban people. I was invited indirectly by John F. Kennedy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation on a trumped-up charge of kidnapping in the United States. Question: Have you seen any Americans here among the guests who were invited from all over the world? Answer: No, I have not seen any American with the exception of the ones who are already here. It is very difficult for Americans to come to Cuba. In fact, such displays as we witnessed today are meant to be kept away from the American people. The U.S. government is determined not to let the truth be known about Cuba. Therefore, they have decided not to let Americans travel here, and the strong thing about this is that the United States claims to be a democracy. Yet I tried to come here for the 26 July and asked permission to do so from the U.S. State Department. The U.S. State Department said that I could not be allowed to travel to Cuba, because they had broken off diplomatic relations with Cuba and that they could not guarantee my safety here. The strange thing about this is that in another two weeks the U.S. government attempted to kill me. It happened that I ended up in Cuba and that is the only place that I could be safe. Question: Are you a veteran? Answer: Yes, I am a veteran of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps of my State. Question: I suppose then that you have seen a great many military parades in your life? Answer: Yes, I have participated in military parades in the United States in the Army and in the Marine Corps.

LETTER TO FIDEL CASTRO FROM ROBERT F. WILLIAMS

August 28, 1966, Peking, China

Dear Fidel:

First of all, I want to thank you and the Cuban people for assisting me when I was escaping from the United States. I will always be grateful to the Cuban people, and I will always be a friend of the Cuban Revolution. In fact, this is the very reason that I take the liberty to write you this letter from my second exile. The reason that I bother to bring these matters to your attention, or later to the attention of the public, if necessary, is because I find it impossible to believe that Commandante Vallejo, Peniero, and others close around you have fully, truthfully, and faithfully informed you of these ignominious experiences that I encountered while living in Cuba.

Shortly after my arrival in Cuba, I requested support for the Afro-American struggle in the United States. I first requested an information office with the purpose of acquainting the peoples of Latin America, Asia and Africa with the revolutionary potential of the Afro-American struggle and the brutal nature of U.S. racism and its relation to U.S. imperialism. This revolutionary request was never granted. I also requested permission and facilities to broadcast both long and short wave, especially to the Afro-American people in the United States. After much bickering and red tape, I was finally allowed to proceed with the broadcast from Radio Progresso, however, the facilities of Radio Havana, which was to be the short-wave broadcast in the name of Radio Free Dixie, were completely denied. I was told that this was because Radio Havana is the official voice of the Cuban government and that the Cuban government could not be identified in this way with the Afro-American struggle. I was never allowed the use of the shortwave facilities which would have enabled me to reach the great masses of our people all over the United States and especially on the West Coast where there is a heavy concentration of my fellow workers and followers.

Part III includes a selected bibliography of published works written by and about Williams. This selected bibliography consists of important institutional papers in archival collections, including the papers of Robert F. Williams, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Mae Mallory, Conrad Lynn, Richard T. Gibson, and others, as well as a list of primary and secondary sources, including books, government documents, as well as a list of secondary sources, including books, book chapters, dissertations, peer-reviewed journal articles, pamphlets, and the online newspaper articles I discovered that were useful in my scholarship.

The documents selected for the prefatory notes for Robert Franklin Williams Speaks provide a summarized account of Williams's life and activism across various geographical locations, offering insight into the broader content of the civil rights movement, racial tensions in the U.S., and international solidarity during the mid-20th century. Each section of document serves a specific purpose in illuminating Williams's journey and the political and social environment he and Mabel navigated.

In Chapter 1, from 1956 to 1961, the family of Robert Sr. and Mabel Williams, which included their sons, Robert Jr. and John Chambers Williams, lived on Boyte Street in the Newtown neighborhood of Monroe. After returning home from the Marine Corps in 1955 and being elected as president of the Union County chapter of the NAACP, my detailed account of his efforts to combat racial injustice, his involvement in the Negroes with Guns campaign, and his early activism are revealed. This section underscores the genesis of Robert Williams's approach to civil rights, emphasizing his philosophy of armed self-defense and direct action against systemic racism. It sets the stage for understanding his evolution from a local activist to an international figure in the Black liberation movement. Four months after the August 28, 1955, Mississippi kidnapping, brutal beating, lynching, and murder of fourteen-year-old Emmitt Till, and three months after the arrest of Mrs. Rosa Parks and the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Robert Williams escalated his resistance against the policies of the Monroe government, its local police and sheriff's department, and the white racist and terrorists threats from citizens over Jim Crow beliefs and politics. A map drawing of Monroe illustrates the racial divisions in Monroe through the railroad track marking. Because Williams, a veteran of two wars, believed the Constitution guaranteed African Americans full citizenship rights, he made efforts to address white America's refusal in Monroe and elsewhere to abide by its federal laws. Williams delivers a rousing sermon on March 25, 1956, entitled, “Col. Jim Crow's Last Stand” at All Soul's Chapel Unitarian Fellowship Church, calling out “the hypocrisy of a democracy with Jim Crow policies.”

Roots, Racism, Routes, and Resistance: Robert and Mabel Williams's Take on Patrick Henry's “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”

In the American tradition, Patrick Henry's rousing 1775 speech during the Second Virginia Convention “fired up America's fight for independence.” Henry's meaning of self-defense in the battle for independence internalized a love for freedom and humanity against tyranny. Robert and Mabel Williams's meaning of self-defense expressed the same kind of love for freedom, justice, and independence. Robert Williams's meaning was offensive, not on the defensive despite what some imagine. Williams was a pragmatist and he believed, to borrow from Malcolm X, that armed self-defense meant to embrace a “by any means necessary” approach if required to defend oneself and to achieve freedom. Williams's mandate was a rallying call for self-love but open to guerrilla tactics to achieve self-preservation, human dignity, and community objectives. The philosophy of Robert F. Williams as president and Dr. Albert Perry as vice president of the Union County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed “self-defense prevents bloodshed,” “forces protection,” is “born of our plight,” and is “an American tradition.”1 Self-defense, from Williams's perspective and Afrocentric worldview, guarantees humanity and that every African American individual, family, and community receive equal protection and support from the three branches of the federal government. Williams insisted on and petitioned for these native-born American rights. However, when studying him, scholars tend to under-appreciate important aspects of his political philosophy, identity, and family history. As such, multidimensional figures such as Robert F. and Mabel R. Williams—and by extension their most vocal supporters: Mae Mallory, Rosa Parks, and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall—“are often ignored [and/or misinterpreted] because they cannot be cap-tured by singular analytical constructs nor reduced to single dimensions of Black political activism for social justice. Extant treatments of complex figures such as Robert F. Williams are often framed by scholars as homogenized or reduced to characters that fit one of the diverse dimensions of their makeup.”

I remember my first encounter with Robert Williams as if it happened yesterday. I was briefly introduced to Robert Williams by Mabel Williams, whom I had met three weeks earlier in Baldwin, Michigan at St. Ann's Lake County Senior Meals Program. Mabel worked as program director “for many years, sitting on the church's finance board and serving as Lector and Minister of the Eucharist.”1 During my second or third week at the center to meet with and interview Idlewild elders, Mabel invited me to a senior citizen's party at the Henrietta Summers Senior Citizens apartment reception room in Idlewild. As I entered the building that evening, Mabel introduced me to Robert. We shook hands, greeted one another, and briefly chatted. I was impressed by the humble and welcoming demeanor he displayed. I was in awe. I was teaching at West Shore Community College in Scottsville, Michigan, as an associate professor of Communication during fall 1992 and spring and summer 1993 semesters. It was in February of 1993, when I met him a second time. Robert Williams was invited to give an African American History Month presentation at West Shore. David McCullough, a former colleague and professor, who taught sociology courses, extended an invitation to join his class during what was one of Rob's annual presentations in the area. I sat in the front row of the classroom with a notepad and pen in hand eager to actively listen and take notes. I was thoroughly impressed. Rob blew my socks off as he shared stories about his family's travels, his civil rights activism, calls for armed self-defense, NAACP leadership agenda in Monroe, North Carolina, and being exiled in Cuba and China from 1961 to 1969. He also talked briefly about his return to the United States in September 1969. The details were attention getting to say the least. The national impact and international appeal that Robert and Mabel planted left a permanent footprint in American and worldwide history in shaping Black political thought during the turbulent decade of the 1960s and beyond.

Robert Franklin Williams Speaks: A Documentary History is organized into four parts. Part I explores in chronological order the Williams story and the geographical spaces where the family lived, worked, and resided while Robert and Mabel Williams worked in partnership advocating for the civil and human rights of African Americans. It reveals how Williams is and remains a central yet complex figure in the United States. It provides the historical substance and analytical clarity that is necessary for readers to discover for themselves how Williams's messages of resistance, advocacy for armed self-defense, and protests against racial injustice resonate today through “new civil rights movement” causes, efforts, grievances, and protests spearheaded by Black Lives Matter movement activists, proponents, and supporters who continue to dominate the twenty-first-century social justice agenda with renewed liberation demands and themes. In Part II, which follows, the documents illustrate how the Williams couple's activism, travels across continents, and exiled experiences in Cuba and China were flexible and pragmatic. Williams is presented as a defender of African American human rights, fundamental principles and meanings of American democracy, patriotism, armed self-defense, and social justice.

LETTERS BETWEEN RICHARD T. GIBSON AND ROBERT F. WILLIAMS

June 15, 1976, Brussels, Belgium

Dear Rob,

This is a hurried reply to your letter of May 17th, which just arrived today. Of course, I will look into financial problem in Luxembourg. It is ironic that you raise this problem because only a month ago, Lyle Stuart asked me if I would write a book for him on Luxembourg banks, (They have become the poor man's Switzerland, with nearly all the advantages of secrecy and without the negative interest now charged by the Swiss on most foreign deposits). Anyway, while I would hesitate to say that there is no dirty business afoot in your case, it seems to me at first glance like a typical capitalist trick. Luxembourg is three hours away by train or less. In addition, I have some friends there who may be able to provide me with information on this bankruptcy. At the moment, however, I am awaiting vistas from the Tanzanian Embassy in the Hague for a long planned and much delayed trip to Tanzania, Kenya, and Zambia. I hope to get over there by the 1st of July at the latest, once I have my visa. The biggest problem is that none of the three countries has an embassy in Brussels: Tanzania's is in Holland and Kenya and Zambia are in Bonn (another three hours by train from here). Nevertheless, I will try to get the information you want as quickly as possible and will write to you before my departure for Africa. By the way, is there anyone in Tanzania you would like me to lookup? Or in Zambia? (our friend Babu is still in jail, held without trial for years because the Zanaibaris will never give a fair trial and Julius does not want to release him for fear of arousing the ire of the island government). My regards to your wife and family. Cordially as always, Richard.

June 28, 1976, Brussels, Belgium

Dear Rob,

I spoke today by phone with my friend Jean Heisbourg in Luxembourg. He has been investigating your problem there and he tells me that the firm in question is not yet in bankruptcy. It has been placed under the administration of the three people you mentioned in your letter. This means that there are assets and you have a chance of getting your money.

Ledbetter and Lomax set out on an arduous journey to record in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Texas – primarily on prison farms overwhelmingly holding Black prisoners. Ledbetter learns some tunes for which he will later become famous, including “The Rock Island Line.” The strain of their grossly unequal relationship wears Ledbetter down, even as Lomax’s hopes to present the performer to northern audiences build. This chapter explores Ledbetter’s musical aspirations, from his early years as a child prodigy to his time in the Dallas area with Blind Lemon Jefferson.

A month into their travels together, tensions between Ledbetter and Lomax are reaching a breaking point. In Montgomery, they record at Kilby Prison, where the Scottsboro “boys” are being held; later, Lomax will write and perform a song to aid their defense. Later in Montgomery, an argument pushes Ledbetter to walk away from Lomax, and their future together seems uncertain. Lomax is working to secure a place for himself and his “discovery” at the annual meeting of the prestigious Modern Language Association, to be held in Philadelphia in late December, and is relieved when Ledbetter re-emerges, ready to try again.

The fragile alliance has held, and the Modern Language Association (MLA) approved Lomax’s proposal that he unveil Ledbetter at the annual meeting. Joined by Alan Lomax, the trio continue to head north in early December, continuing to collect songs along the way in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. They spend Christmas in Washington, D.C. and then head to the MLA gathering, where Lomax insists that Ledbetter be presented not in the suit and bowtie he prefers, but in the outfit of a prisoner: dungaree overalls, a work shirt, and a straw hat. “Lead Belly” is thus introduced to his largest audience ever, and a storm of sensational and racist publicity follows.