Robert Franklin Williams Read online

  had gone on had a lready started the picket line. There were

  three or four thousand white people milling around the pool.

  All the city officials were there, including the Mayor of Monroe. They had dark glasses on and they were standing in the crowd, which kept screaming. Then the chief of police came

  up to me and said, "Surrender your gun." I told him that I

  was not going to surrender any gun, that the guns were legal,

  and that the mob was dangerous; if he wanted those guns he

  could come to my house and get them after I got away from

  there. Then he said, "Well, if you hurt any of these white

  people here, God damn it, I'm going to kill you!" I don't know

  what made him think that I was going to let him live long

  enough to shoot me. He kept saying, "Surrender the gun!"

  while the white people kept screaming.

  The City Councilman reappeared and said that the tension was bad and that there was a chance that somebody would be hurt. He conceded that I had a right to picket and

  he said that if I were willing to go home he would see that I

  was escorted. I asked him who was going to escort us home.

  He said "the police." I told him that I might as well go with

  the Ku Klux Klan as go with them. I said I would go with the

  police department under one condition. He asked what that

  was. I told him I would take one of the students out of my

  car and let them put a policeman in there and then I could

  rest assured that they would protect us. And the police said

  they couldn't do that. They couldn't do that because they

  realized that this policeman would get hurt if they joined in

  with the mob.

  The officials kept repeating how the crowd was getting

  out of hand; somebody would get hurt. I told them that I

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  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  wasn't going to leave until they cleared the highway. I also

  told them that if necessary we would make our stand right

  there. Finally they asked me what did I suggest they do, and

  I recommended they contact the state police. So they contacted the state police and an old corporal and a young man came; just two state patrolmen. Three or four thousand people were out there, and the city had twenty-one policemen present who claimed they couldn't keep order.

  The old man started cursing and told the people to

  move back, to spread out and to move out of there. And he

  started swinging a stick. Some of the mob started cursing

  and he said, " God damn it, I mean it. Move out." They got

  the message and suddenly the crowd was broken up and

  dispersed. The officials and state police knew that if they

  allowed the mob to attack us, a lot of people were going to

  be killed and some of those people would be white.

  Two police cars escorted us out; one in front and one

  behind. This was the first time this had ever been done. And

  some of the white people started screaming "Look how they

  are protecting niggers! Look how they are taking niggers out

  of here!"

  As a result of our stand and our willingness to fight, the

  state of North Carolina had enforced law and order. Just two

  state troopers did the job and no one got hurt in a situation

  where normally (in the South) a lot of Negro blood would

  have flowed. The city closed the pool for the rest of the year

  and we withdrew our picket line.

  This was not the end of the story of our struggle in

  Monroe in 1961. By a quirk of fate the next episode involved

  the Freedom Riders and their policy of passive resistance.

  The contrast between the results of their policy and the results of our policy of self-defense is a dramatic object lesson for all Negroes. But before I go on to that I have to describe

  how our policy of self-defense developed and how the Negro

  community in Monroe came to support my conclusion that

  we had to "meet violence with violence."

  The story begins in 1955 when, as a veteran of the U .S.

  Marine Corps, I returned to my home town of Monroe and

  joined the local chapter of the NAACP.

  12

  Chapter 2

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  An IAACP Chalter Is

  aeborn In fIIllltancY

  • • • •

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  My home town is Monroe, North Carolina. It has a population of 11,000, about a quarter of which is Negro. It is a county seat (Union County) and is 14 miles from the South

  Carolina border. Its spirit is closer to that of South Carolina

  than to the liberal atmosphere of Chapel Hill which people

  tend to associate with North Carolina. There are no trade

  unions in our county and the southeastern regional headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan is in Monroe.

  There was also, at the time of my return from the Marines, a small and dwindling chapter of the NAACP. The Union County NAACP was a typical Southern branch-small,

  not very active, dominated by and largely composed of the

  upper crust of the black community-professionals, businessmen and white-collar workers.

  Before the Supreme Court desegregation decision of

  1954, the NAACP was not a primary target of segregationists.

  In many places in the South, including Monroe, racists were

  not too concerned with the small local chapters. But the Supreme Court Decision drastically altered this casual attitude.

  The Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils made it

  their business to locate any NAACP chapter in their vicinity

  and to find out who its officers and members were. Threats

  of violence and economic sanctions were applied to make

  13

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  people withdraw their membership. Chapters, already small,

  dwindled rapidly.

  A Veteran Returns Home

  When I got out of the Marine Corps, I knew I wanted to

  go home and join the NAACP. In the Marines I had got a taste

  of discrimination and had some run-ins that got me into the

  guardhouse. When I joined the local chapter of the NAACP it

  was going down in membership, and when it was down to

  six, the leadership proposed dissolving it. When I objected,

  I was elected president and they withdrew, except for Dr.

  Albert E. Perry. Dr. Perry was a newcomer who had settled

  in Monroe and built up a very successful practice. He became our vice-president. I tried to get former members back without success and finally I realized that I would have to

  work without the social leaders of the community.

  At this time I was inexperienced. Before going into the

  Marines I had left Monroe for a time and worked in an aircraft factory in New Jersey and an auto factory in Detroit.

  Without knowing it, I had picked up some ideas of organizing

  from the activities around me, but I had never served in a

  union local and I lacked organizing experience. But I am an

  active person and I hated to give up on something as important as the NAACP.

  So one day I walked into a Negro poolroom in our town,

  interrupted a game by putting NAACP literature on the table

  and made a pitch. I recruited half of those present. This got

  our chapter off to a new start. We began a recruiting drive

  among laborers, farmers, domestic workers,
the unemployed and any and all Negro people in the area. We ended up with a chapter that was unique in the whole NAACP because of working class composition and a leadership that was not middle class. Most important, we had a strong representation of returned veterans who were very militant and who didn't scare easy. We started a struggle in Monroe and

  Union County to integrate public facilities and we had the

  support of a Unitarian group of white people. In 1957, with-

  14

  AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY

  out any friction at all, we integrated the public library. It

  shocked us that in other Southern states, particularly Virginia, Negroes encountered such violence in trying to integrate libraries.

  We moved on to win better rights for Negroes: economic rights, the right of education and the right of equal protection under the law. We rapidly got the reputation of

  being the most militant branch of the NAACP. Obviously we

  couldn't get this reputation without antagonizing the racists

  who are trying to prevent Afro-Americans from enjoying

  their inalienable human rights as Americans. Specifically, we

  aroused the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan and a showdown developed over the integration of the swimming pool.

  The Ku Klux Klan Swings into Action

  As I explained in the last chapter, the swimming pool

  had been built with Federal funds under the WPA system and

  was supported by municipal taxation. Yet Negroes could not

  use it. Neither the Federal government nor the local officials

  had provided any swimming facilities for Negroes. Over a

  period of years several of our children had drowned while

  swimming in unsupervised swimming holes. When we lost

  another child in 1956 we started a drive to obtain swimming

  facilities for Negroes, especially for our children.

  First, we asked the city officials to build a pool in the

  Negro community. This would have been a segregated pool,

  but we asked for this because we were merely interested

  in safe facilities for the children. The city officials said they

  couldn't comply with this request because it would be too

  expensive and they didn't have the money. Then, in a compromise move, we asked that they set aside one or two days out of each week when the segregated pool would be reserved for Negro children. They said that this too would be too expensive. Why would it be too expensive, we asked.

  Because, they said, each time the colored people used the

  pool they would have to drain the water and refill it.

  They said they would eventually build us a pool when

  15

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  they got the funds. We asked them when we could expect it.

  One year? They said "No." Five years? They said "No," they

  couldn't be sure. Ten years? They said that they couldn't be

  sure. Finally we asked if we could expect it within fifteen

  years and they said that they couldn't give us any definite

  promise.

  There was a white Catholic priest in the community

  who owned a station wagon. He would transport the colored

  youth to Charlotte, N.C., which was twenty-five miles away,

  so they could swim there in the Negro pool. Some of the city

  officials of Charlotte saw this priest swimming in the Negro

  pool and they wanted to know who he was. The Negro supervisor explained that he was a priest. The city officials replied they didn't care whether he was a priest or not, that he was

  white and they had segregation of the races in Charlotte. So

  they barred the priest from the colored pool.

  Again the children didn't have any safe place to swim

  at all-so we decided to take legal action against the Monroe

  pool.

  First, we started a campaign of stand-ins of short duration. We would go stand for a few minutes and ask to be admitted and never get admitted. While we were preparing

  the groundwork for possible court proceedings, the Ku Klux

  Klan came out in the open. The press started to carry articles about the Klan activities. In the beginning they mentioned that a few hundred people would gather in open fields and have their Klan rallies. Then the numbers kept going up.

  The numbers went up to 3,000, 4,000, 5,000. Finally the Monroe Enquirer estimated that 7,500 Klansmen had gathered in a field to discuss dealing with the integrationists, described

  by the Klan as the "Communist-Inspired-National-Association-for-the-Advancement-of-Colored-People." They started a campaign to get rid of us, to drive us out of the community,

  directed primarily at Dr. Albert E. Perry, our vice-president,

  and myself.

  The Klan started by circulating a petition. To gather signatures they set up a table in the county courthouse square in Monroe. The petition stated that Dr. Perry and I should be

  permanently driven out of Union County because we were

  16

  AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY

  members and officials of the Communist-NAACP. The Klan

  claimed 3,000 signatures in the first week. In the following

  week they claimed 3,000 more. They had no basis for any

  legal action, but they had hoped to frighten us out of town

  by virtue of sheer numbers. In the history of the South in

  days past, it was enough to know that so many people

  wanted to get rid of a Negro to make him take off by himself.

  One must remember that in this community where the press

  estimated that there were 7,500 Klan supporters, the population of the town was only about 1 2,000 people. Actually, many of the Klan people came in from South Carolina, Monroe being only fourteen miles from the state border.

  When they discovered that this could not intimidate us,

  they decided to take direct action. After their rallies they

  would drive through our community in motorcades and

  honk their horns and fire pistols from the car windows. On

  one occasion, they caught a colored woman on an isolated

  street corner and made her dance at pistol point.

  At this outbreak of violence against our Negro community, a group of pacifist ministers went to the city officials and asked that the Klan be prohibited from forming these

  motorcades to parade through Monroe. The officials of the

  county and the city rejected their request on the grounds

  that the Klan was a legal organization having as much constitutional right to organize as the NAACP.

  Self-Defense Is Born of Our Plight

  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 defense because law and order had completely vanished; because there was no such thing as a 1 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution in Monroe,

  N.C. The Local officials refused to enforce law and order and

  when we turned to Federal and state officials to enforce law

  and order they either refused or ignored our appeals.

  Luther Hodges, who is now Secretary of Commerce,

  was the Governor of North Carolina at that time. We first

  1 7

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  Robert coaching wife Mabel on firearm use and gun safety in

  Cuba, ca. 1962.

  Arms in Perry living room in Monroe, North Carolina. Dr. Perry at

  right; others from left to right are John H. Williams, Lorraine

  Williams Garlington, and Edward Williams.

  18

  AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY

  Guards at Dr. Perry's home with odd assembly of weapons.

  appealed to him. He took sid
es with the Klan; they had not

  broken any laws, they were not disorderly, he said. Then we

  appealed to President Eisenhower but we never received a

  reply to our telegrams. There was no response at all from

  Washington.

  So we started arming ourselves. I wrote to the National

  Rifle Association in Washington which encourages veterans

  to keep in shape to defend their native land and asked for a

  charter, which we got. In a year we had sixty members. We

  had bought some guns too, in stores, and later a church in

  the North raised money and got us better rifles. The Klan

  discovered we were arming and guarding our community. In

  the summer of 1957 they made one big attempt to stop us.

  An armed motorcade attacked Dr. Perry's house, which is

  situated on the outskirts of the colored community. We shot

  it out with the Klan and repelled their attack and the Klan

  didn't have any more stomach for this type of fight. They

  stopped raiding our community. 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.

  19

  AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY

  At the time of our clash with the Klan only three Negro

  publications-the Afro-American, the Norfolk Journal and

  Guide, and Jet Magazine-reported the fight. Jet carried

  some pictures of the self-defense guard. Our fight occurred

  two weeks before the famous clash between the Indians and

  the Klan. We had driven the Klan out of our county into the

  Indian territory. The national press played up the Indian­

  Klan fight because they didn't consider this a great threatthe Indians are a tiny minority and people could laugh at the incident as a sentimental joke-but no one wanted Negroes

  to get the impression that this was an accepted way to deal

  with the Klan. So the white press maintained a complete

  blackout about the Monroe fight.

  After the Klan learned that violence wouldn't serve

  their purpose they started to use the racist courts. Dr. Perry,

  our vice-president, was indicted on a trumped-up charge of

  abortion. He is a Catholic physician, and one of the doctors