Robert Franklin Williams Read online

  Many Southern racists consider white women a form of insulation because of the old tradition that a Negro is supposed to be intimidated by a white woman and will not dare to

  offend her. White women are taken along on Klan raids so

  that if anything develops into a fight it will appear that the

  Negro attacked a woman and the Klansman will of course be

  her protector. Mrs. Stegall was brought along as insulation

  by her husband. They were trying to see what defenses we

  were preparing for that night.

  The Negroes out on the street were raging. Some of

  them had been beaten in town. Some of their children were

  missing and some children were in jail. As soon as the Stegails' car entered our street it was recognized and stopped at gunpoint less than a block away from my house. I was in the

  house at the time receiving telephone calls from all over

  town: calls from parents crying about their children who had

  participated in this demonstration; calls from Negroes reporting that they were beaten and asking what should be done, what action to take; calls from Negroes volunteering

  to fight, Negroes offering to join in armed groups so they

  could defend the community. When I wasn't on the phone I

  was out in the back of my house setting up a defense line

  before nightfall.

  When the Stegalls were stopped, they were taken out of

  their car and brought into my yard. Someone called me out

  of the house and I came out and saw all these people milling

  around the Stegalls. I realized how angry these people were

  48

  SELF-DEFENSE PREVENTS A POGROM

  and I saw the circle closing in around the Stegalls. I knew

  that if just one person lost control of himself the Stegalls

  would be killed. I started driving the crowd away from them,

  forcing the crowd out of reach.

  Then Mrs. Stegall said, "We've been kidnapped!" She

  kept repeating this. I said, "Lady, you're not kidnapped. You

  can leave when you get ready but you got to go through this

  crowd and these people are angry." She stood up and looked

  at the crowd and she said, "You should take us out of here.

  You could take us out. If you took us out of here they

  wouldn't bother us. " I said, "Lady, I didn't bring you here

  and I'm not going to take you away. You knew that all these

  people would be here; you know how rioting has been going

  on in the town and you should have known better than to

  come into a place like this where the people are angry and

  upset like this. We are too busy now trying to defend our

  homes. I'm trying to set up a defense line and I don't have

  time to bother with you. That's your problem."

  While we were standing there talking, an airplane flew

  over us. The airplane probably was either from the Klan or

  the Sheriff's Department. They use plenty of light planes and

  we were constantly getting calls threatening to bomb us

  from the air since my house was too well guarded to get us

  from the ground. So when this plane swooped over the

  house about fifteen men armed with high-powered .30-caliber rifles opened fire. Mrs. Stegall had been very indignant and arrogant, but as soon as she saw this she realized how

  serious the situation was, that these people were angry and

  really meant business. She started shaking all over and almost became hysterical. Then a car with white men drove by, firing, and about twenty fellows fired back and you could

  see flames where the bullets struck the car. Mrs. Stegall

  could see this.

  I started into the house and the crowd began screaming

  that the Stegalls should be killed. When I started walking up

  the front steps Mrs. Stegall was right up against me, walking

  right up against my body and her husband was right up

  against her. They followed me on into the house while all

  these people were still screaming that they should be killed.

  49

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  One man was begging for somebody to give him a gun and

  let him, please, let him kill them.

  Some of the people in this crowd I had never seen before. Negroes were coming from out of the county, they were coming from other towns or calling long-distance on the telephone offering to join in the defense group that was being formed. But all the people who had been regularly affiliated

  with me and in the guard were in the back of my house because that was where we were assembling and checking out our weapons and ammunition for the night. The street

  crowd consisted of Negroes who had become angry and involved. They didn't belong to any organization, to any one group. They were just armed private citizens who were fed

  up with oppression.

  I went to the telephone and my wife gave the Stegalls a

  seat. When I came back the woman kept repeating, "If you'll

  take us out of here we'll be all right. " And I told her again

  that I didn't have time to take her out. I told her that if I had

  been caught in her community under similar conditions I

  would already be dead. I said, "You see, we are not half as

  cruel as your people." And she admitted that I was right. She

  told me that she was a church-going Christian and that she

  wanted to help us and she wished there was something she

  could do. And I told her that her husband could help us. And

  he said he didn't know what he could do since he wasn't well

  known around Monroe, that they lived in Marshville. She

  kept saying, " You're Robert Williams!" and I told her, "Yes."

  She said, "Well, I never met you before, but I heard a lot of

  talk about you." And I said, "It was all bad." And she said,

  "Yes, I must admit that it was all bad, but you're not the type

  of fellow they say you are. You seem to be a good fellow.

  You're much better than I thought."

  The telephone rang again. It was the chief of police,

  A. A. Mauney. He said, " Robert, you've caused a lot of race

  trouble in this town, but state troopers are coming. In thirty

  minutes you'll be hanging in the courthouse square."

  He hung up. Someone else called and said there was a

  news flash on television that troops were being sent to surround the town. Another woman called and said that she 50

  SELF-DEFENSE PREVENTS A POGROM

  saw troops moving in and that the highway patrol was parking its cars behind the jailhouse. This was confirmed by a radio flash. Then one of our fellows called me to the door. I

  went out into the street and looked around. Both ends were

  being blocked off by police cars. I realized they were trying

  to trap me into waiting until the state troopers got there. I

  told Mabel, my wife, that we had to leave. I said she didn't

  have time to take anything, just to get the children. I called

  Julian Mayfield who had left just after the Stegalls followed

  me in, and told him about the state troopers moving in

  around my area, advising him to leave Monroe immediately

  so that if something happened to me, someone would be free

  to tell the world the story. Then we left.

  In Right But Not a Fugitive

  Most people think that we left because we were fleeing

  an indictment. But the possibility of an indictment hadn't

  even occurred to me at that time. Remember, I left Monroe

  knowin
g I had saved the lives of the Stegalls. We were fleeing

  because of the attitude of the state, because of the attitude

  of the chief of police, because of the lack of law. We didn't

  learn about the indictment until we were in New York and

  heard it flashed on radio and television. When we left North

  Carolina we headed directly for New York. In the beginning I

  thought that we would stay there; that we would stop over

  in Harlem and from there we would immediately start a campaign to tell the world about the ruthless racist oppression that was taking place in Monroe. It was for this reason that I

  had left North Carolina. Only from outside the state could I

  organize a publicity campaign that would bring help to the

  Negroes and Freedom Riders so hopelessly outnumbered in

  Monroe. I had left North Carolina only after the chief of police had called me and told me that the state troopers were coming and that in thirty minutes I would be hanging in the

  court house square. I remembered the words of Hugh B. Cannon when I had appealed to him for protection under law for the missing Freedom Rider. The Governor's aide told me

  51

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  that he didn't give a damn about anyone, that we had asked

  for violence and now we were going to get it. He wanted to

  know then "why I wasn't dead yet!" I didn't think then that

  anything legal was involved.

  The first I knew of the indictment was in New York when

  I heard over the radio that there was an all-points alarm out

  for me and that I had been indicted for kidnapping the StegaIls by the Union County Grand Jury.

  The FBI claims that it entered the case because I was

  an indicted fugitive from justice in interstate flight to avoid

  prosecution. But technically the FBI is wrong, because I left

  Monroe early that night-about 9 o'clock. When the grand

  jury indicted me sometime late the next day, I was already

  in New York. I certainly didn't cross the North Carolina state

  line as an indicted fugitive.

  But this technical error in the Federal charge that was

  made against me so that I might be "legally" hounded

  throughout the whole United States is not at all surprising

  when one thinks of the complete falsity of the state kidnapping charge. It is very important to note what happened immediately after I left Monroe. I was indicted on the testimony of two policemen (there is no court record that the Stegalls

  ever appeared before the grand jury). Then, with the warrant issued, my house was raided by about a hundred officials of the state, the Federal government, and the local police armed with machine guns, rifles, riot-guns and tear

  gas. They didn't know that I had already left. They couldn't

  believe that I had got away.

  When I read about the grand jury indictment in the New

  York papers, it was accompanied by interviews of reporters

  with Mrs. Stegall. I don't know what Mrs. Stegall finally told

  the grand jury, if she ever did appear before them. But I do

  know she couldn't keep her story straight for the reporters

  and she never told the same version twice.

  I read stories in The New York Post and The New York

  Times the following day reporting that when they had questioned Mrs. Stegall she said that I had chided the crowd for kidnapping her and her husband. Yet she turned around in

  the next paragraph and said that I was responsible because

  52

  SELF-DEFENSE PREVENTS A POGROM

  I was the ringleader of these people. Next I read that she

  claimed that they had been tied up in my house and held at

  gunpoint and that when I left the house they were still there.

  But after saying that they were tied up, then she turned

  around and said that they were released by me unharmed

  and left an hour and a half later.

  Meanwhile, she was claiming various reasons for being

  in the colored community in the first place. In one paper she

  said they were taking a short cut. For another paper she said

  that they were lost, that they didn't know where they were

  going. But no highway runs through our community. This

  was a dead-end street almost a mile from the highway that

  the Stegalls would use to get back to Marshville. Any person

  who knew the county could not possibly get lost there. The

  Stegall woman also told one reporter that the house I lived

  in, the house that I was born in, had been sold to my father

  by her father and that she had once lived there herself. In all

  these stories it was always Mrs. Stegall doing the talking and

  Mrs. Stegall's picture that you saw. They never had Mr. Stegall, who was a known Klansman, saying anything.

  I also read a report where Mrs. Stegall was quoted by

  the Charlotte Observer as saying "that Williams only pretended that he was trying to help us." Well, how would she know? One of the best proofs that I was helping them is the

  fact that they were unharmed and still alive. And they know

  this.

  53

  Chapter 6

  III III

  Ihe Monroe Case:

  ConsDlracy a.alnst the le.ro

  III III III

  What has happened and continues to happen in Monroe, N.C., illustrates an old truth: that words used in common by all men do not always have a meaning common to all men. Men have engaged in life-or-death struggles because

  of differences of meaning in a commonly-used word. The

  white racist believes in "freedom," he believes in "fair trial,"

  he believes in "justice." He sincerely believes in these words

  and can use them with great emotion because to the white

  racist they mean his freedom to deprive Negroes of their

  basic human rights and his courts where a "fair trial" is that

  procedure and "justice" that decision which upholds the

  racist's mad ideal of white supremacy. On many desperate

  occasions when our constitutional rights were denied and

  our lives were in danger, we called on the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate the Monroe situation, to protect our lives and to restore our constitutional rights-in other words, to administer justice. And they always refused

  our request.

  The Department of Justice­

  "Extremely Dangerous and Schizophrenic"

  The U.S. Justice Department is showing itself as abetting the conspiracy in Monroe against Negroes by the Ku 54

  THE MONROE CASE: CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE NEGRO

  Klux Klan. After we had left Monroe the U.S. Justice Department, in collaboration with the chief of police, A. A. Mauney, released 250,000 "wanted" circulars. In these circulars they

  describe me as "schizophrenic." In describing me as schizophrenic they do not say who had psychoanalyzed me. Do they mean I was analyzed as being schizophrenic by Monroe's semi-illiterate chief of police?

  The Justice Department released these vicious posters

  describing me as "extremely dangerous." But they failed to

  cite any substantiating facts. They failed to cite any criminal

  record. They failed to cite any cases that could justify this

  charge. They failed to tell what harm I had ever done to anyone. This was because they knew that these things were lies.

  Now, how could the Justice Department of the United States

  do this? How could it mean well? How could it be an impartial investigative body, spreading such vicious lies throughout the United States without any investigation of the facts, without inv
estigating the source of these malicious lies?

  In their posters were such "facts" as that I had a scar

  over my right eye, a scar to the left of my nostril and a scar

  on my left leg. All of this is untrue, but these ridiculous lies

  about nonexistent scars helped to create a picture of the

  "razor-fighting nigger," of someone "extremely dangerous."

  All this means that the U.S. Justice Department has joined

  forces with the Ku Klux Klan. They were so sure that I would

  not escape that they were prematurely justifying what they

  considered was going to be a legal lynching at the behest of

  the United States government. They had said I would not

  hesitate to shoot. This was to justify someone shooting me

  if I had been taken into custody.

  When I fled to Canada they also passed these same

  posters on to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And in

  Canada, interestingly enough, they never mentioned the fact

  that race incidents had occurred in North Carolina, or that

  the only crime that I was guilty of was the crime of fighting

  for human rights in the South. There is plenty of proof of

  this. Since the sit-in demonstrations started in the South,

  over 5,000 Negroes have been arrested for struggling for

  their rights. Almost all of the militant leaders in the South

  55

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  have spent some time in jail for no more than asking for their

  Constitutional and human rights.

  The Justice Department was afraid that the Canadians,

  who are not as prejudiced as white Americans, would understand what this case was really all about and refuse to cooperate. They had to make it appear-and this is the work of the United States government through its agency, the U.S.

  Justice Department-that I was a common criminal who had

  kidnapped for ransom. They created the impression that I

  was hiding in Canada and was heavily armed.

  Again the question is: Where did this information come

  from? Did the U.S. Justice Department go to the same chief

  of police that I had asked them to indict? The same chief of

  police against whom I had filed an affidavit? The same chief

  of police that they knew had been my enemy and the enemy

  of Negroes and a friend of the Ku Klux Klan since 1 956? Did

  they go to a Klan-sponsored chief of police to ask him for