Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power / Edition 1

by Timothy B. Tyson

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807849231
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/05/2001
Edition description:	1
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Timothy B. Tyson is senior scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and adjunct professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author of Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story and coeditor of Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction
On Trembling Earth

"The childhood of Southerners, white and colored," Lillian Smith wrote in 1949, "has been lived on trembling earth."[1] For one black boy in the small town of Monroe, North Carolina, the first tremor came on a warm September afternoon in 1936.

Emma Williams had sent her eleven-year-old son, Robert, to the post office downtown shortly after one of the regular Friday prayer meetings that met at her home. He was a thick-chested, round-faced, almost cherubic youngster with chestnut-brown skin and a ready smile. "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" still echoed in his ears as he walked from Boyte Street toward the railroad. As Robert crossed the gravel railroad bed, he met a black man walking the tracks, clutching a pint of whiskey and singing, "Trouble in mind, I'm blue / But I won't be blue always / Because the sun is gonna shine in my back door someday." The boy smiled to himself and headed on toward the courthouse square in the middle of Monroe, not suspecting that what he would witness there would shake his whole world.[2]

Walking down Main Street, Williams watched a white police officer accost an African American woman. The policeman, Jesse Alexander Helms Sr., an admirer once recalled, "had the sharpest shoe in town and he didn't mind using it." His son, U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, remembered "Big Jesse" as "a six-foot, two hundred pound gorilla—when he said `smile,' I smiled."[3] Eleven-year-old Robert Williams looked on in terror as Big Jesse flattened the black woman with his huge fists, then "dragged her off to the nearby jailhouse, her dress up over her head, the same way that a cave man would club and drag his sexual prey." Williams recalled "her tortured screams as the flesh was ground away from the friction of the concrete." The memory of this violent spectacle and the laughter of white bystanders haunted him for decades. Perhaps the deferential way that the African American men on the street responded was even more deeply troubling. "The emasculated black men hung their heads in shame and hurried silently [away] from the cruelly bizarre sight," Williams recalled.[4]

Knowledge of such scenes was as commonplace as coffee cups in the American South that had recently helped to elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For the rest of his life, Robert Williams repeated this searing story to friends, readers, listeners, reporters, and historians. In the late 1950s, Williams used the story to help inspire African American domestic workers and military veterans of Monroe to build the most militant chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the United States. He preached it from street corner stepladders to eager crowds on 7th Avenue and 125th Street in Harlem and to Muslim congregants in Malcolm X's Temple Number 7. He bore witness to its brutality in labor halls and college auditoriums across the United States. It contributed to the fervor of his widely published debate with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960 and fueled his hesitant bids for leadership in the black freedom struggle. Its merciless truths must have tightened in his fingers on the night in 1961 when he fled Ku Klux Klan terrorists and a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) dragnet with his wife and two small children, a machine gun slung over one shoulder. Williams revisited the bitter memory on platforms that he shared with Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong. He told it over "Radio Free Dixie," his regular program on Radio Havana from 1962 to 1965, and retold it from Hanoi in broadcasts directed to African American soldiers in Vietnam. It echoed from transistor radios in Watts and from gigantic speakers in Tiananmen Square. The childhood story opens the pages of his autobiography, "While God Lay Sleeping," which Williams completed just before his death on October 15, 1996.

To be sure, one moment in one life rarely changes history. But we can find distilled in the anguish of that eleven year old historical realities that shaped one of the South's most dynamic race rebels and thousands of other black insurgents: African American cultural resilience; white racial violence; the perilous intersection of race, gender, and sexualized brutality; the persistent national failure, a century after the fall of slavery, to enforce equal protection of the laws; and the physical and psychological necessity for African American self-defense. That moment marked Robert Williams's life, and his life marked the African American freedom movement in the United States.

This is the story of one of the most influential African American radicals of a generation that toppled Jim Crow, created a new black sense of self, and forever altered the arc of American history. Robert F. Williams shadows these pages, a troubled intellectual, a fiery prophet, a courageous grassroots leader whose outbursts sometimes came back to haunt him, but the inner wellsprings of his mind and spirit are probably not to be found here. Though this is a biography, it is as much the story of a political movement—and a political moment—as it is the portrait of a political man. The life at its center is as important for the truths it reveals as for the things it accomplished.

The life of Robert Williams teaches us that the African American freedom movement had its origins in long-standing traditions of resistance to white supremacy. His story underlines the decisive racial significance of World War II. Both his victories and his defeats reveal the central importance of the Cold War to the African American freedom movement, giving black Southerners leverage to redeem or repudiate American democracy in the eyes of the world. Likewise, these struggles reveal the crucial impact of sexuality and gender in racial politics. His defiance—and that of thousands of other black activists—testifies to the fact that, throughout the "civil rights" era, black Southerners stood prepared to defend home and family by force. The life of Robert F. Williams illustrates that "the civil rights movement" and "the Black Power movement" emerged from the same soil, confronted the same predicaments, and reflected the same quest for African American freedom.

As if to dramatize the point, Rosa Parks, whose refusal to surrender a bus seat in Montgomery in 1955 had come to symbolize the nonviolent civil rights movement, mounted the pulpit of a church in Monroe, North Carolina, on October 22, 1996. The body of Robert F. Williams lay before her, dressed in a gray suit given to him by Mao Zedong, his casket draped in the red, black, and green Pan-African flag favored by the followers of Marcus Garvey. She was delighted, Rosa Parks told the hundreds of mourners, to find herself at the funeral of a black leader who had died peacefully in his bed. She told the congregation that she and those who walked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama had "always admired Robert Williams for his courage and his commitment to freedom. The work that he did should go down in history and never be forgotten."[5]

Table of Contents

Introduction: On Trembling Earth
Chapter 1. The Legacies
Chapter 2. Wars for Democracy
Chapter 3. I'd Rather Die and Go to Hell
Chapter 4. The Kissing Case
Chapter 5. Communist Front Shouts Kissing Case to the World
Chapter 6. The Sissy Race of All Mankind
Chapter 7. Crusaders
Chapter 8. Cuba Libre
Chapter 9. When Fire Breaks Out
Chapter 10. Freedom Rider
Conclusion: Radio Free Dixie
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Popular and academic cultures share a deeply-rooted tendency to either marginalize or demonize African American self-assertion. This thoughtful, eloquent book, much more than a biography, offers us a chance to re-examine some of the assumptions that have long undermined our national discourse on race. It turns out that Rosa Parks and the gun-toting Robert Williams are not so far apart, a fact that cannot be explained in the context of the traditional civil rights paradigm."—Charles Payne, Duke University, author of I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition in the Mississippi Freedom Struggle

Timothy Tyson has written a compelling story that needed to be told and now needs to be read by all who care about race, courage, and humanity. Robert Williams was an inspiration to many and a threat to others; Tyson gives him his proper due."—Julian Bond

A richly researched, carefully written book that provides a compelling analysis of the 1950s roots of Black Power in Monroe, North Carolina. Timothy Tyson's insightful and provocative study of Robert F. Williams's militant resistance to white supremacy is at once complex and straightforward, and yet always profoundly moving. This is an important book, and it makes a valuable contribution to American social history, African American history, and black studies."—Darlene Clark Hine, Michigan State University, coauthor of A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America

Radio Free Dixie is a monumental book. It is impossible to conceive of the postwar black freedom struggle without Robert Williams. And yet, most histories barely mention the man. Timothy Tyson's profound biography rewrites the history of the African American struggle for democracy, unearthing its most militant streams and revealing its deep relationship to revolutions around the world."—Robin D. G. Kelley, New York University, author of Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression

Tim Tyson's Radio Free Dixie is a spellbinding narrative that analyzes the making of black manhood in an era that bridged Jim Crow and civil rights. Through the life of Robert Williams, Tyson provides a stunning reappraisal of non-violence as a civil rights strategy, putting gender and class at its center. Tyson proves the continuity of African American resistance and white supremacy over a century. And he gives us a hero. Robert Williams is a giant abroad in the land of Jesse Helms."—Glenda E. Gilmore, Yale University, author of Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920

Radio Free Dixie is a valuable and needed addition to the literature of the modern African American freedom struggle. For many activists of my generation, Robert F. Williams was a heroic, yet little understood, civil rights leader who attracted controversy when he challenged first the national NAACP leadership and then the United States government. Tyson has ably and vividly supplied the missing chapters of Williams's remarkable odyssey as an agitator in the South and fugitive rebel in the Third World."—Clayborne Carson, director, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project

Radio Free Dixie is a superb biography, one that will change the way we think about the black freedom struggle of the 1950s and early 1960s. Tyson eloquently portrays Robert F. Williams as an activist ahead of his time. Occupying the ideological territory between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, Williams led nonviolent protests while developing a philosophy of self-defense that at times bordered on a call to armed insurrection."—John Dittmer, DePauw University, author of Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

This wonderful book will help the younger generation understand the depths of terror and repression which African Americans were exposed to and the courage, intelligence, resourcefulness, and irreplaceable role of one of its truly great working class leaders."—Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Rutgers University

Julian Bond

Needs to be read by all who care about race, courage, and humanity.

Editorial Reviews

A book that powerfully conveys the life and voice of one of the key personalities of the modern civil rights struggle. ("American Historical Review")

Tyson has written, with compelling prose and great insight, an excellent biography as well as a definitive history of armed self-defense doctrines in the civil rights movement. ("The Journal of Southern History")

Tyson sharpens our historical focus, demonstrating just how crucial self-defense, guns, and nonviolence were to the successes of the black freedom struggle. ("Village Voice Literary Supplement")

Tyson's firecracker text crackles with brilliant and lasting images of black life in the Carolinas and across the South in the 40s, 50s and 60s. ("Publishers Weekly")

Written in lucid and confident prose with a solid reliance on first-hand accounts, "Radio Free Dixie" presents an engaging portrait of one man's continuous struggle to resist political and social oppression. ("Emerge")

From the Publisher

Will change the way we think about the black freedom struggle of the 1950s and early 1960s.
—Quarterly Black Review

John Dittmer

A spellbinding narrative that analyzes the making of black manhood in an era that bridged Jim Crow and civil rights.
— Quarterly Black Review

Glenda E. Gilmore

A compelling story that...needs to be ready by all who care about race, courage, and humanity. Robert Williams was an inspiration to many an a threat to others; Tyson give him his proper due.
— Julian Bond

Quarterly Black Review

Stunning. . . . Radio Free Dixie presents an engaging portrait of one man's continuous struggle to resist political and social oppression.

Emerge

[A] radiant biography. . . . Tyson is that rarest of writers a successful scholar who can actually tell a compelling story in clear, even handsome language. . . . Tyson sharpens our historical focus, demonstrating just how crucial self-defense, guns, and nonviolence were to the successes of the black freedom struggle.

Village Voice Literary Supplement

Tyson's main achievement, in addition to conquering the problem academics have in writing readable prose, is to put Williams's Black Power ideology and actions into the larger context of the era--the Cold War, the nonviolent civil struggle, and the questions of gender and sexuality in racial politics. This is an interesting book about a captivating personality during a fascinating time of recent history.

Detroit Free Press

Tyson's firecracker text crackles with brilliant and lasting images of black life . . . across the South in the '40s, '50s and '60s. . . . Tyson successfully portrays Williams as a troubled visionary, a strong, stubborn and imperfect man, one who greatly influenced what became the Black Power Movement and its young leaders.

Publishers Weekly

Meticulously researched. . . . [and] magisterially argued.

Journal of American History

A sympathetic, absorbing portrait of one of the most influential and controversial African-American leaders of the twentieth century. . . . A remarkable, often harrowing, account of the civil rights movement and some of the people that made it possible. . . . A book that powerfully conveys the life and voice of one of the key personalities of the modern civil rights struggle.

American Historical Review

[An] excellent book. . . . Timothy Tyson has done Williams, and scholars of 20th century world radicalisms, a great service with Radio Free Dixie. . . . Definitive in its coverage of Williams's life between his birth in North Carolina in 1925 and his exile to Cuba in 1961.

Against The Current

Tyson has written, with compelling prose and great insight, an excellent biography as well as a definitive history of armed self-defense doctrines in the civil rights movement.

The Journal of Southern History

To some, the civil rights radical Robert Williams's philosophy of armed self-defense was the very antithesis of Martin Luther King's nonviolent resistance. However, each man represented a wing of the growing civil rights movement, and both grasped and skillfully wielded the political leverage that the dynamics of the Cold War afforded the civil rights cause. After a stint in the army during WWII, Williams returned to his hometown in Monroe, N.C., where he built a uniquely militant NAACP chapter and attracted international attention to racist hypocrisy. When eventually forced by Ku Klux Klan vigilantes and an FBI dragnet to abandon his activities and flee the U.S. with his family in 1961, he found safe harbor in revolutionary Cuba, where he produced Radio Free Dixie, a program of politics and music broadcast to America. Written with the cooperation of Williams and his family, Tyson's firecracker text crackles with brilliant and lasting images of black life in the Carolinas and across the South in the '40s, '50s and '60s. Liberally peppered with quotes from Williams, many taken from his unpublished autobiography, While God Lay Sleeping, as well as from interviews and radio tapes, the book is imbued with the man's voice and his indefatigable spirit. An assistant professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the co-editor of Democracy Betrayed, Tyson successfully portrays Williams as a troubled visionary, a strong, stubborn and imperfect man, one who greatly influenced what became the Black Power Movement and its young leaders. Photos. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly