Robert Franklin Williams Page 3

  who had been head of the county medical department drove

  forty miles to testify in Dr. Perry's behalf, declaring that

  when Dr. Perry had worked in the hospital he had refused to

  file sterilization permits for the County Welfare Department

  on the ground that this was contrary to his religious beliefs.

  But he was convicted, sentenced to five years in prison, and

  the loss of his medical license.

  The Kissing Case

  In October, 1 958, two local colored boys, David Simpson, aged 7, and Hanover Thompson, aged 9, were arrested on the charge of rape which is punishable in North Carolina

  by death.

  This was the famous "Kissing Case." What had happened was that David and Hanover got into a game of "cowboys and Indians" with some white children one afternoon.

  After a while, the white girls in the group suggested they

  play "house." One of the little white girls, Sissy Sutton, sat

  on Hanover's lap and suddenly recognized Hanover as her

  old playmate. Hanover's mother worked for Sissy's mother

  21

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  and until Hanover reached school age his mother had taken

  him with her when she went to work at the Sutton house.

  When this little girl discovered that Hanover was her

  old playmate she kissed him on the cheek. Later on in the

  afternoon she ran home and told her mother how she had

  seen Hanover and how she was so happy to see him again

  that she had kissed him.

  Sissy's mother got hysterical when she heard this and

  called the police. Before the two boys had even gotten home

  they were arrested and thrown into the county jail. If a person is arrested for rape in North Carolina he is not permitted to see anyone for a period of time while the police investigate. Therefore the police didn't notify the boys' parents.

  A few days later when we finally found out what had

  happened and where the two missing boys were, we tried to

  get help. But the national office of the NAACP wouldn't have

  anything to do with the case because it was a "sex case." A

  seven-year-old white girl had kissed a nine-year-old Negro

  boy on the cheek and the national office didn't want any part

  of it.

  The children were sent to the reformatory soon after

  they were arrested. I called the civil rights lawyer, Conrad

  Lynn, and he came down from New York. First thing, he went

  to talk with Judge Hampton Price, who had passed sentence.

  The Judge said to Lynn that he had held a "separate

  but equal hearing." Lynn asked him what he meant by a

  "separate but equal hearing." And the Judge told him how

  on the morning of the trial he had called in Mrs. Sutton and

  her daughter, and Mrs. Sutton had made a statement, and

  they were sent home. Then in the afternoon the two Negro

  mothers were summoned to the Judge, and their boys were

  brought in. Then the Judge said to Lynn, "I told them what

  Mrs. Sutton had told me and then since they were guilty-I

  sent them up for fourteen years at the reformatory."

  The NAACP national office still wasn't doing anything

  about the case but an English reporter who was a friend of

  Lynn's visited the reformatory and sneaked out a photograph of the boys, which appeared along with a story on the front page of the Dec. 15, 1958, London News Chronicle. Then

  22

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  all of Europe got wind of the case and there were protest

  demonstrations in London, Rotterdam, Rome, and Paris.

  Only then did many American newspapers begin to express

  "concern" about the "Kissing Case."

  At the end of December, 1 958, Dr. Perry, Conrad Lynn,

  and I were called to New York by Roy Wilkins and he offered

  me a job in Detroit if I'd leave Monroe. I flatly refused his

  offer.

  By now so much pressure was building up abroad and

  even in the U.S.A. that the NAACP national office entered the

  case-this case that had until now involved such dreadful

  sexual implications. In late January there was a hearing, but

  the children were sent back to the reformatory. Meanwhile,

  world pressure was mounting . An example is that of the petition signed by the 1 5,000 students and faculty at a Rotterdam, Holland, high school named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The petition called for the release of the children

  and it was sent to Mrs. Roosevelt.

  Somebody said something, finally, to President Eisenhower, and finally he said something to our then Governor Hodges, and on Feb. 1 3, 1 959, the children were released.

  "We Will Meet Violence with Violence"

  In 1 969 Mrs. Georgia White, a Negro mother of five children who worked in a Monroe hotel as a maid, was kicked down a flight of stairs into the lobby of the hotel by a white

  guest. He said he kicked Mrs. White down a flight of stairs

  because she had been making too much noise while working

  in the corridor and had'disturbed his sleep. When we asked

  for an indictment, the chief of police, A. A. Mauney, refused

  our request. Finally when we threatened to take legal action

  by bringing in NAACP lawyers, he relented and placed this

  man under a $ 75 bond. Even though this white defendant

  subsequently failed to appear in court for his trial, he was

  not convicted.

  That same day there was another colored woman in

  court, Mrs. Mary Ruth Reid. Mrs. Reid was eight months

  24

  AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY

  pregnant. She was the victim of an attempted rape by a white

  man who came to her house, drove her from her house, and

  then beat her. He caught her while she was trying to escape

  down the main highway and knocked her to the ground. Mrs.

  Reid's six-year-old boy was running along the side and when

  the white rapist beat his mother the boy picked up a stick

  and started hitting the man over the head with it while his

  mother escaped. She went to a neighbor's house and her

  neighbor called the police and gave her aid. The neighbor

  was a white woman and she came to court that day with Mrs.

  Reid. She came and testified that she had seen the defendant

  chasing Mrs. Reid and that Mrs. Reid had come to her house

  in an excited and hysterical state, without shoes, and with

  her clothes torn from her. This testimony required considerable courage on the part of Mrs. Reid's white neighbor.

  During the trial the defense attorney arranged for the

  defendant's wife to sit at his side as if she were also involved

  in the case. Then the defense attorney appealed to the jury.

  He said, "Judge, Your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of

  the jury, you see this man. This is his wife. This woman, this

  white woman is the pure flower of life. She is one of God's

  lovely creatures, a pure flower. And do you think this man

  would have left this pure flower for that?" And he made it

  appear as if the colored woman was actually on trial. Then

  the defense ended by saying, "It's just a matter of whether

  or not you're going to believe this woman or this white man.

  Judge, Your Honor, this man is not guilty of any crime. He

  was just drinking and having a little fun." The man was acquitted.

  Mrs. Reid had several brothers who had wante
d to kill

  her white attacker before the trial began. But I persuaded

  them not to do anything. I said that this was a matter that

  would be handled legally, that we would get a lawyer-which

  we did. We brought a lawyer all the way from New York who

  wasn't even allowed to take the floor in court. So I was responsible for this would-be rapist not being punished.

  The courtroom was full of colored women and when

  this man was acquitted they turned to me and said, "Now

  what are you going to do? You have opened the floodgates

  25

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  on us. Now these people know that they can do anything

  that they want to us and there is no prospect of punishment

  under law and it means that we have been exposed to these

  people and you're responsible for it. Now what are you going

  to say?" I told them that in a civilized society the law is a

  deterrent against the strong who would take advantage of

  the weak, but the South is not a civilized SOciety; the South

  is a social jungle. So in cases like this we have to revert to

  the law of the jungle; it had become necessary for us to create our own deterrent. I said that in the future we would defend our women and children, our homes and ourselves

  with our arms. That we would meet violence with violence.

  My statement was reprinted all over the United States.

  What I had said was, "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 next day i n an interview with the Carolina Times I

  again pointed to the lack of protection from the courts. I

  said, "These court decisions open the way to violence. I do

  not mean that Negroes should go out and attempt to get revenge for mistreatments or injustices . . .

  " I made this statement again on the same day over a Cincinnati radio station.

  Later that evening in a telecast interview in Charlotte I again

  made clear that I was speaking of self-defense when the

  courts fail to protect us.

  Since the principle is so obvious, I couldn't understand

  the commotion my statement aroused or why it should receive so much national pUblicity. Two years previously, when we had shot up the Ku Klux Klan in self-defense, not a

  single white newspaper in America reported the incident.

  We were only serving notice that we would do more of the

  same, that Negro self-defense was here to stay in Monroe. So

  I didn't feel we were doing anything new. I realize now that

  we were establishing a principle, born out of our experience,

  which could, and would, set an example to others.

  Looking back, it is clear that racists made a big error in

  publicizing our stand. Even though it has caused me and my

  26

  AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY

  family a great deal of suffering, the result has been to force

  a debate on the issue. It also shook up the NAACP considerably out of its timid attitudes and forced an official reaffirmation from the NAACP of the right of Negroes to selfdefense against racist violence.

  27

  Chapter 3

  Ih. Itru •••• for NllltancY

  In the laacp

  Until my statement hit the national newspapers the national office of the NAACP had paid little attention to us. We had received little help from them in our struggles and our

  hour of need. Now they lost no time. The very next morning

  I received a long distance telephone call from the national

  office wanting to know if I had been quoted correctly. I told

  them that I had. They said the NAACP was not an organization of violence. I explained that I knew that it was not an organization of violence. They said that I had made violent

  statements. I replied that I made these statements as Robert

  Williams, not as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They said that because I was an official of the organization anything that I said would be considered NAACP policy, that we were too close together. I asked them why if we were so close together they hadn't

  come to my rescue all this time when I had been the unemployed victim of the Klan's economic pressure and when I had had all of my insurance canceled as a poor insurance

  risk. I asked them why they didn't then consider our closeness.

  Suspension, Distortion and Re-election

  In the next few hours Roy Wilkins of the NAACP suspended me from office. I didn't learn about it from the na-28

  THE STRUGGLE FOR MILITANCY IN THE NAACP

  tional office. I first heard of it when Southern radio stations

  announced and kept repeating every thirty minutes that the

  NAACP had suspended me for advocating violence because

  this was not a means for the solution of the race problem

  and that the NAACP was against Negroes using violence as a

  means of self-defense.

  Our Union County NAACP was one of the few interracial

  branches in the South. We had some white pacifist members,

  and when I was suspended they sent a telegram to the national office stating that they were white Southerners and that they were pacifists, but they protested my suspension

  on the ground that they understood the problems in the

  community and that the national office did not. This telegram was never made public by the NAACP. And not a single paper ever printed the fact that ours was an interracial

  branch and that even Southern white pacifists supported my

  position.

  Nevertheless, this all developed into a national debate.

  We found out that there was no provision in the NAACP consititution to justify or authorize this hypocritical action by Roy Wilkins. I demanded some sort of hearing. Wilkins

  turned the matter over to the NAACP's paternalistic Committee on Branches, and in New York City on June 3, 1 959, they conducted what turned out to be a trial where I fought the

  suspension. The committee ruled that I was to be suspended

  for six months' time, after which I would automatically be

  reinstated.

  I didn't think of doing anything more about the suspension; there was a more important matter at hand. As a result of the trial I was more convinced than ever that one of our

  greatest and most immediate needs was better communication within the race. The real Afro-American struggle was merely a disjointed network of pockets of resistance and the

  shameful thing about it was that Negroes were relying upon

  the white man's inaccurate reports as their sources of information about these isolated struggles. I went home and concentrated all of my efforts into developing a newsletter that would in accurate and no uncertain terms inform both Negroes and whites of Afro-American liberation struggles taking place in the United States and about the particular 29

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  struggle we were constantly fighting in Monroe. The first

  Issue of The Crusader came off the mimeograph machine

  June 26, 1 959.

  Then at the last minute I decided to appeal the committee's decision to the NAACP's 50th National Convention which was meeting in New York that July. The national office

  found it necessary to issue a special convention pamphlet

  attacking me. This pamphlet tried to confuse my demand

  that Negroes meet violence with violence as a means of selfdefense with the advocacy of lynch law. In its own way the national office contributed to the erroneous impression


  played up by the racist press that I was agitating for race

  war and the indiscriminate slaughter of white people.

  My suspension was upheld by the convention delegates, many of whom either felt or were pressured into seeing the vote as a question of publicly supporting or disavowing the NAACP national leadership. But on the real issue at hand, delegate sentiment forced the national leadership to support the concept of self-defense. The preamble to the resolutions passed by that convention read, " . . . we do

  not deny but reaffirm the right of an individual and collective

  self-defense against unlawful assaults."

  While I was suspended, the people in my branch voted

  to make my wife president to serve in my place. And at the

  end of the six months, instead of going back into office automatically, I held an election because I didn't want the NAACP

  national office to think that they were doing me any special

  favor. We had the election and I was re-elected unanimously.

  The national office of the NAACP was determined to

  keep within the good graces of a lot of the influential Northern whites who were disturbed by our militancy. They maintained an indifferent attitude to our branch. We had a charter and that was all. We were unable to secure assistance from them in any of our school integration cases and our sit-in cases.

  In 1 960 we started a sit-in campaign. We became the

  thirteenth town in North Carolina to start sit-in demonstrations. Though the NAACP wasn't taking notice, our sit-ins proved that self-defense and non-violence could be success-30

  THE STRUGGLE FOR MILITANCY IN THE NAACP

  fully combined. There was less violence in the Monroe sitins than in any other sit-ins in the South. In other communities there were Negroes who had their skulls fractured, but not a single demonstrator was even spat upon during our

  sit-ins. We had less violence because we had shown the willingness and readiness to fight and defend ourselves. We didn't appear on the streets of Monroe as beggars depending

  upon the charity and generosity of white supremacists. We

  appeared as people with strength, and it was to the mutual

  advantage of all parties concerned that peaceful relations be

  maintained.

  While the demonstrations were taking place I was arrested and finally sentenced to serve thirty days on the chain gang. The NAACP was supposed to handle my case.