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Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power
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About this ebook
This book tells the remarkable story of Robert F. Williams--one of the most influential black activists of the generation that toppled Jim Crow and forever altered the arc of American history. In the late 1950s, as president of the Monroe, North Carolina, branch of the NAACP, Williams and his followers used machine guns, dynamite, and Molotov cocktails to confront Klan terrorists. Advocating "armed self-reliance" by blacks, Williams challenged not only white supremacists but also Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights establishment. Forced to flee during the 1960s to Cuba--where he broadcast "Radio Free Dixie," a program of black politics and music that could be heard as far away as Los Angeles and New York City--and then China, Williams remained a controversial figure for the rest of his life.
Historians have customarily portrayed the civil rights movement as a nonviolent call on America's conscience--and the subsequent rise of Black Power as a violent repudiation of the civil rights dream. But Radio Free Dixie reveals that both movements grew out of the same soil, confronted the same predicaments, and reflected the same quest for African American freedom. As Robert Williams's story demonstrates, independent black political action, black cultural pride, and armed self-reliance operated in the South in tension and in tandem with legal efforts and nonviolent protest.
Historians have customarily portrayed the civil rights movement as a nonviolent call on America's conscience--and the subsequent rise of Black Power as a violent repudiation of the civil rights dream. But Radio Free Dixie reveals that both movements grew out of the same soil, confronted the same predicaments, and reflected the same quest for African American freedom. As Robert Williams's story demonstrates, independent black political action, black cultural pride, and armed self-reliance operated in the South in tension and in tandem with legal efforts and nonviolent protest.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 15, 2009
ISBN9780807899014
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Author
Timothy B. Tyson
Timothy B. Tyson is senior research scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, adjunct professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, and author of The Blood of Emmett Till.
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Reviews for Radio Free Dixie
Rating: 4.318181818181818 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
22 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is a fantastic read about a particularly amazing person, and the horrific circumstances of the Jim Crow South. It takes as its thesis that the traits of the Black Power movement in the 70s existed indigenously within the black freedom struggle throughout the 50s and 60s, despite the popular narrative of Civil Rights history. The thesis is framed by a biography of Robert F Williams, a surprisingly uncompromising and militant black liberation leader whose chapter of the NAACP was one of the only chapters to embrace poor blacks, and organize for self defense against marauding Klansmen. The popular narrative is that Black Power was an aberration, that the Civil Rights struggle was tainted by troublemakers, and that some of the worst injustices of the Jim Crow South included being forced to sit in the back of the bus. The reality is that the roots of Black Power were being practiced (not even pioneered) by Williams in the 50s and 60s as well, and that blacks witnessed or fell victim to vigilante brutalization encouraged and empowered by white supremacist law enforcement that maintained an order where blacks were subhuman.Breathtaking descriptions of mob violence against peaceful demonstrations leading into car chases and fire fights are made all the more intense because the reader is forced to acknowledge that this isn't a movie: That shootouts with the Klan, or threats of the same were regular occurrances for Williams.Given the popular narrative's carefully sculpted ignorance of the indigenous nature of black militancy in their liberation struggle, this book is required reading.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The biography of Robert F. Williams by Timothy B. Tyson provides a microcosmic picture of the odyssey that the African American freedom movement passed through during his lifetime: survival during the overwhelming hegemony of white supremacist groups prior to World War II, the significance of the War for inspiring black consciousness, the development of nonviolent resistance to Jim Crow, the struggles of the Black Power movement, and the sometimes tenuous but improved accommodation of the races after the turbulent Sixties.Williams’ journey began with a seminal event in his life: as an eleven-year-old boy in 1936, he witnessed Jesse Helms, Sr., a policeman in Monroe, North Carolina, accost a black woman on the street, beat her, and drag her off to be raped. He never forgot the violence and the abuse, nor the laughter of white spectators. This, more than any other event, informed the future politics of Robert Williams.Williams joined the army during World War II, but felt bitter over both the racism in the service, and the irony of blacks risking their lives abroad for “democracy” when they had no freedom at home. His unwillingness to be pushed around by white men in the army resulted in a stockade sentence, but at his hearing he said, “I told them that I was black, and that prison did not scare me because black men are born in prison. All they could do was put me in a smaller prison.” In the prison he felt proud, he later wrote, because “they would have preferred to have me as a nigger than locked up, but I preferred to be locked up than to be what they considered a nigger.”Returning black veterans faced racial violence because whites were outraged at the idea that fighting alongside them in the war somehow gave blacks equal rights, or that they could now presume to be “as good as any white people.” Further, as Tyson avers, “behind the virulent opposition to racial equality was the ever-present shadow of miscegenation that undergirded white determination to preserve segregation.” What was good for the white goose was never good for the black gander. Thus, as Tyson reports, “the violence across the South immediately after the war produced dozens of dead, hundreds of injured, and thousands of terrified citizens for whom the protection of the law meant little or nothing.” After 1945, the Cold War ironically marked a sea change for the struggle for equality, as America desired to prove the moral superiority of “democracy for all” to the Communist world. On the one hand, agitating against racial discrimination was now seen as aiding and abetting the Communist cause. On the other, the U.S. was interested in countering negative publicity vis-à-vis the Communists. Egregious behavior by southern white supremacists still characterized the South, however, and Robert Williams strove to do something about it. He organized other black veterans in an attempt to protect the black citizens of Monroe from the very active Ku Klux Klan. He clashed with the NAACP about his use of defensive tactics; “nonviolence,” he contended, “depended on the conscience of the adversary; “rattlesnakes,” he observed, “were immune to such appeals, as were many Southern white supremacists.” What Williams advocated, then, was the principle of “armed self-reliance.” He did not agree with Black Power groups that violence was an end, or even a means, to racial justice. Rather, he saw it as just a necessary component of self-defense because protection by the law was not available to blacks in the South. He constantly tweaked the leadership of the country on its hypocrisy. When Adlai Stevenson defended the Bay of Pigs incident to the U.N. on the grounds of Cuba’s oppressive regime, Williams sent him a telegram:“Please convey to Mr. Adlai Stevenson: Now that the United States has proclaimed support for people willing to rebel against oppression, oppressed negroes of the South urgently request tanks, artillery, bombs, money and the use of American airfields and white mercenaries to crush the racist tyrants who have betrayed the American Revolution and Civil War. We also request prayers for this undertaking.”Williams was forced to flee to Cuba and later China after a race riot in Monroe during which he organized an armed defense. As in many instances in the South, the victims were blamed for the outbreak and perpetuation of violence. While abroad, Williams began broadcasting “Radio Free Dixie” every Friday night, to provide encouragement and support to Southern blacks. He was finally allowed back in the U.S. after the Nixon Administration made its rapprochement with China, and was able to live out his life quietly in Michigan until his death from Hodgkin’s disease in 1996.Throughout his life, Robert Williams fought FBI harassment (which included threatening potential employers not to hire him because he advocated the “Communist” idea of “equality”); he fought white supremacists in his community who tried to kill him and his family; he fought the national black leadership for trying to ostracize him for what they considered to be inflammatory tactics; and he fought the national white leadership for not taking a moral stand to help their own citizens live peaceful lives.Tyson argues that Williams’ life and influence among other black leaders in the Civil Rights Movement demonstrates that the relationship between the nonviolent and aggressive philosophies of resistance are more complex than commonly believed. The current version of history served up to America that stresses the centrality of the nonviolent protest “idealizes black history, downplays the oppression of Jim Crow society, and even understates the achievements of African American resistance. Worse still, our cinematic civil rights movement blurs the racial dilemmas that follow us into the twenty-first century.”Tyson wants us to know that the toppling of Jim Crow was a complicated matter, and that nonviolence alone probably could not have accomplished it. He wants us to know that “there existed among African Americans an indigenous current of militancy, a current that included the willingness to defend home and community by force.” He wants us to be aware that blacks, whenever possible, did in fact strive to protect their homes and their families even when it could mean serious injury or death. Robert Williams would have been amazed and elated over the results of the 2008 presidential election. His courage and inspiration were surely pivotal in making this day happen. We can only hope he was watching somewhere, and rejoicing.