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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview K-0266, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Mabel Williams paints a vivid picture of segregated Monroe, North Carolina, detailing the subjugation that ate away at African Americans' sense of self. Among those who resisted was Williams's husband, Robert, the descendant of a long line of assertive African Americans, who slept with a pearl-handled revolver under his pillow. Williams remembers Robert for much of this interview, describing how his militant, assertive conviction in racial equality clashed with the rigid segregationist mentality in Monroe. Unable to assimilate in the way that many African Americans did, Robert earned the ire of white city fathers, who prevented him from finding employment in a quest to injure him and his family and undermine his masculinity. The local newspaper stopped printing his letters, one of his only safety valves for expressing the frustrations that gave him migraine headaches. But these efforts at stifling Robert's activism failed; he only grew more determined to resist white supremacy, arming himself and training fellow African Americans in armed self-defense. Guns became an important part of the Williamses' lives, whether on Robert's hip or on the seat of the car next to Mabel. Thus protected, Robert organized demonstrations to desegregate an all-white swimming pool, and even ran for mayor. Williams eventually left not only Monroe, but the United States altogether. This interview is a detailed account of the life and work of one civil rights activist who believed in violent resistance in a time of nonviolent protest.
Mabel Williams, wife of civil rights activist and advocate of armed self-defense Robert Williams, remembers her husband's efforts to overturn segregation in Monroe, North Carolina, in the 1960s.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is David Cecelski, Southern Oral History Program, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is another in the Listening for a
Change series. It's August 20th 1999. I'm in Monroe, North Carolina.
Today I'm interviewing Mrs. Mabel Williams. I was just saying who I was
and saying that I was interviewing Mabel Williams in Monroe, North
Carolina. And maybe you'll see me looking down here some. And it's not
because I'm distracted. I'm watching a little thing that measures, tells
me the sound quality is coming through. I might just get a little closer
to you. And I warned you that we'll maybe start out with questions
And if you were visiting a class of young people who wasn't familiar with the story. What would you tell them and where would you begin?
Well, they don't know anything about—
On the way in there yesterday their teacher told them that you and Robert were freedom riders and that they were going to be there to talk about that. But other than that all they've read is Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.
Yes, yes, yes. I think I would start by explaining to them what kind of
a society I grew up in. Like I would tell them what I consider the story
of Monroe. The fact that when I was—when I was in elementary and high
school, the situation was that we had different communities. We had a
black community and a white community. And I lived on one side of town
and the white people lived on the other side of town.
They didn't really mean—they weren't really worried about you committing crimes?
No, no, no.
Be a little more specific. What kind of boundaries were they afraid you would cross?
I was always to say, "Yes, ma'am", "No, ma'am" to white people because
at any time they may get angry and maybe slap me because I was being
sassy. So I was told. We were in a society where there were rules for
white people and rules for black people. And black people had to stay in
their place. And our parents tried to teach us a place to stay in to
keep us from running into trouble with white people. When we would go
into stores in the downtown area passing through the stores, we were
always told, "Don't ever have your hands in your pockets." Or, "When you
go in the store make sure you're going in there to buy something and
have your money in your hand." And even if they—even if they would—some
of the people in the stores would say that you did something or give you
the wrong change, we were not to argue with them because we could get
ourselves into trouble and they didn't
Was that a white elementary school?
A white elementary school. But it never occurred to me to go there because I knew that that was a white school and that I was not supposed to be there. In our schools we had books. Most of the books that we had in our schools had the names of white children in them. Because what they would do in North Carolina, in Monroe, was when they would get new books for the white schools, they would give us the old books from—. And so, you know, you had to write your name in a book when you got it so that you were responsible for that book for the rest of the year. So very seldom did we ever get a brand new book. We got used books all the time that were—had already been used by the white school. All our teachers were black. And they, too, tried to encourage us to stay in our places so that we didn't get in trouble with the white people both going and coming to school. And so we abided by that because those were the rules that we were accustomed to. But then not all black folks felt like that I found out later.
Felt like—?
Like we had a place and we had to stay in that place. Some black folks like my husband's family, I later learned, were kind of radical. And they didn't think that we were inferior at all. But I don't suppose that my parents thought that we were inferior but they were not about to assert themselves in any way that would make white folks think that they were equal either. But there were other people who said, "Oh well, you know, yeah. We're just as good as anybody." And they didn't—. I suppose they didn't teach the kids on the—the other kids like my husband's family, they didn't teach them that you must be subservient. They never taught them to be subservient. And my parents taught me to be subservient to white folks. But when I met Robert, I found out that not all black folks were subservient—had that attitude of being subservient to white folks. And that was a struggle for me to recognize that I had—that my so-called place was not just a colored place. It was—that I should have—I had as much right to have a place in the world as any other human being. And it was not easy for me to overcome the training that my parents had put into me, you know; and the society that had produced the kind of attitude that I had. Eventually, I did overcome that and I'm happy I did. But it was a hard struggle along the way to do that.
It was something that was based on experience, too. What happened to people that stepped out of their place in Monroe when you were a girl? What were your mama and daddy afraid of? I don't mean as a child. I don't mean—. Moving past the eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve-year old. But what happens to—
Oh well, there had been lots of incidents that you could—. You know, I'd
hear the older people talking about—especially with the boys.
So your father had a line, too. He wasn't completely—.
That's right. He wasn't—
I mean it might not have been out there where robbers—
Right, right.
But he had a line in the sand—
That's right. Yeah. He was my stepfather and he worked at—he worked on the railroad. And he was definitely a person who was going to protect his home. But he always tried to teach us to not run afoul of any white folks if we could help it. And I don't know what the history of his family had been. They came out of Catawba, South Carolina, down in that area. And—
Rough country?
Yeah. And so—but anyway, he always—. He believed, my parents both believed, in education and they wanted us to get a good education. And they always wanted us to get a good education so that we could get a job, good job so that we wouldn't have to depend on white folks for a living. My mother was a domestic. She worked for the Belk family.
The Belk family?
The Belk family. In fact my name, Mabel, came from one of the Belk girls. Yes. So looking back on that I remember she was a domestic even before she worked for the Belk family. But my real father was a chauffeur for the Belk family and that's how the name came about when he was serving as a chauffeur for them.
You're—you haven't forgiven—you haven't really—you haven't forgiven white Monroe for the way they were when you were a girl.
I'm still working on trying to forgive Monroe for what they did to my family and to black people in general. And I don't think white Monroe has come to terms with what they did for—to black people. And what they did, you know, to us as individuals. But what they have done to black people over the years. I don't think they have come to terms with that.
Would you mind talking about that a little bit? Aside from your family, Mabel, and what happens in '61 and before. But just to the extent to the people who you grew up and what that society did to black families, black children.
Where do you start?
Yeah.
Where do you start?
Another
Well, following the thing that—.
In our community, we had a tight-knit community. And I was perfectly happy to be with my people. And that's why I can understand from some standpoint, you're a product of your own upbringing. And I didn't have any desire to be integrated into another society because I was perfectly happy with my black ministers, my black teachers, my black friends. And I was satisfied there. And I didn't know, or didn't feel the hurt of the limitations that we were on. I could see that my mother was working for pittance. And there are a lot of things that we didn't have.
For one of the richest families in the state.
Right, right. But we were—she made our home life so pleasant, so
wonderful, that I wasn't able to see how—the hurt that she was feeling,
except that I could hear it in her voice. And I could hear it when they
were discussing—-when the adults would be discussing what was going on
or what had happened. Let me tell you an incident. She was working
for—before she worked for the Belk family she was working for a family—.
I remember the name. It was a—his name was Turner Stevens. And he worked
for the hardware company.
He was a teacher at the school or—?
No, he was not. He had—. I don't remember when—. I remember he had a bus that he used to pick up people to take to our Sunday school classes at the Elizabeth Baptist Church. I remember people saying that he had taught at a college and tried to start a little college in Monroe. So I don't know.
So when he was doing these things, was it part of Sunday school or was it—?
Yeah. He would do that as a part of Sunday school. Yeah.
When Robert and I first got married I got a job working at the Ellen Fitzgerald Hospital.
The black—or, no—
It was a hospital where black people were in the basement, admitted to
the basement of the hospital. And white people were on the upper level.
I learned a lot there. I learned a lot about this society there because
I worked there in different capacities. I worked there as a nurse's
aide. And I worked there a maid.
And even at that time you did not just say—you know
I was accepting to it because I was very grateful to have a job at that time. However, I began to see the differences that I had not seen before because as a maid I had to go on all floors of the hospital for cleaning. And when I went on the—. I don't remember if it was the second or the third floor. And I went into the—. No. I wasn't allowed into the nursery itself. But there was a nursery there with nurses working inside the nursery with masks on. And the babies were put in the nursery and then taken out of the nursery by a nurse, and taken to the mothers when they were, you know, after the babies were born. While on the basement floor, the babies were taken away from the mothers by nurses or nurse's aides. They even allowed us to do that. And they were taken into the utility room where we washed out the bedpans and emptied the bedpans into the utility room. And as a maid I began to see that. And that was just horrible. I remember—
Pretty hard to forget.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. We're talking about little children who are being exposed to germs that could be life threatening. The needles that were being—we put in this autoclave or whatever it was called, to sterilize. We'd take them in there after the doctors or nurses had used them. We'd take them into this utility room to sterilize them. Well that's where the babies were. The bedpans with the waste matter we'd take into the utility room and that's where our blacks babies were in that utility room. So that became one of the most hurtful things that I encountered.
And you had a baby at that time, didn't you?
No. I was expecting a baby. I was expecting a child.
And you were thinking—?
Yes, yes. My children were born at home, thank God, with black doctors.
At the time, if I remember correctly, I don't know if they didn't allow
black doctors in the hospital or that the black doctor—we only had one
black doctor at the time. And that was Dr. Creft—or that he just didn't
go in the hospital. Before that hospital was abandoned, he did go there.
And Dr. Perry did go there. Dr. Perry who became one of our civil rights
fighters, did go in that basement and did work with those patients in
that hospital. But they never—that society never did change that—the
position of black people in that hospital. When that hospital was—as far
as I
It didn't matter downstairs?
It didn't matter downstairs. And to this day I feel that that was a form of genocide. I feel that that was a form of genocide that they were actually using to curb our population or to—. Because they just didn't care. They just didn't care. And I'm not so sure that that mentality is not still there because I still don't get the feeling that they're caring about what happens to us anymore.
It's a very deep-rooted thing.
Yes. And, it's very hurtful.
One of the reasons that I feel such—not a hatred, a dislike for Monroe as a place. But I know it's not just Monroe as a place. I realize that intellectually, but coming back to Monroe and reliving some of those incidents and knowing what happened—
Passing places that—
Yes.
Other people just look at it and pass by and maybe think no more about
it. I remember the incident when my mother was working for the Belk
family. And she had been working for the family—I guess she'd been
working for the family—I don't know how many years. But there was one
daughter in the family and her name was Sarah. And I used to love to go
to the Belk home. And Sarah would give me toys and she'd go in—. She had
dollhouses with all this little miniature furniture in it, and stuff,
you know. And she would go in and—everybody called me Little Miss Mabel,
including her, Little Miss Mabel, you know. And she would go in her
dollhouse and give me stuff: little chairs and little miniature stuff.
And sometimes her mother would come in and say, "Well now, you've given
Miss Mabel enough now. That's enough. Don't give her anymore. That's
fine."
Did your daddy work for the Belks, too?
My father who passed away when I was not two years old. Yeah. But then my stepfather worked for the railroad, yeah. So we were able to—. We had a better economic situation once we were with my father who worked for the railroad. But, at the same time, because my mother came into the marriage with three children, she felt an obligation to help to support the family. And so she continued to work the whole time.
Oh, yes, yes. And when I'd go to the Belk store even the white sales
people would refer to me as Little Miss Mabel rather than Mabel because
they didn't want to disrespect the Belk family. And she would take me
herself to the store to buy the things. And I was privileged to have
that connection with her that she was going to give me that stuff. But
then I would get teased from the kids at school because of it, you know.
So, then coming out of that environment and marrying Rob, and he's
determined. He's been off to the Army and back. And he has encountered
all kinds of discrimination
At
Yes. He read constantly. He was constantly—. We had a library of books. And a lot of times when we had very little money a part of that money was spent for buying another book, you know, because he really had an inquiring mind. And trying hard to understand what was going on. And I think Robert had a basic—. He had a basic belief that once people got to know each other and accepted each other on—accepted each other's—our differences and our likenesses, and understanding that we were all human beings. He had a basic belief that people would come around that that we could live in peace and harmony, you know. He even thought that the government was going to come in our side. From the time I married him until the time that we returned from China, I believe that he had a basic belief that there had to be good people in this government that were going to stand up for what was right because he always wanted to stand up for the right thing. And he felt like other people would join in, good people. And because Monroe did not join in—
They just weren't with it.
They just were not—. And they didn't believe like that. They didn't
really believe that way. They didn't really believe that the government
Way beyond Monroe.
Yes.
That's not what you found in—
That's not what I found in Monroe. And I haven't seen that seed of good developing. It may be here. And I hope to God one day I'll find it and look at those people and say, "Here is the seed that is developing and growing in Monroe that is a part of the human family that realizes that we are all brothers and sisters in the final analysis.
And we're all—"
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
There'd be a little statue of Robert and you up at the courthouse and probably in the museum at the center for tolerance and struggle. I see a lot of signs about Williams Memorial.
Well, we—. It doesn't have to be—it really doesn't have to be a Robert Williams Memorial. It doesn't have to be but the seeds that he planted in my mind, in my family's mind, in a lot of people. I think those seeds have to be nourished and hopefully, eventually, there will be some young white Monrovians who will catch that seed, nurture that seed and let it grow in Monroe. And then we can feel—I can feel better about Monroe. I haven't seen that yet. And I really hope and pray that it will come in my lifetime.
Yeah. I was going to get to this later. But we can go back to it. But that is something that interests me is how you think in looking back on everything that you and Robert, too, would want his legacy to be—y'all's legacy to be remembered. And not those in Monroe, but beyond, too.
Yes, beyond Monroe. I—
What's the images of kind of Robert and y'all that are—but people don't talk as much about kind of the meanings of a life.
What did it all mean and what was the struggle all about. And the fact that, you know, people like to blow up the fact that Robert was a violent man or believed in violence.
That's right. He makes a great poster, you know what I mean. I'm not against that.
And that was a part of what happened. It wasn't that he was—. He was not
a non-violent person. Well, no, he was a non-violent person. He didn't
believe in doing violence himself to others other than in defense of his
own. And I think that his stance on violence—violence self-defense. Let
me put it that way. I think his stance on violent self-defense did more
for the civil rights movement than people want to believe. Because once
those evil people out there found that they couldn't do violence and be
immune to violence then they didn't do as much violence as they did when
they knew they were doing it with immunity. And that nobody was going to
prosecute them or—. They weren't going to have to pay any price if they
killed. There used to be a saying, "kill a nigger, buy another one", you
know, during slavery times.
Or burn your tobacco barn.
That's right. So I think that that part of Rob's stance in saying, "Just this far and no further", played a big role in letting not only the racist bigots in the local area know that they had to make changes. But let the power structure know that they had to really move to do some protection or else the country would suffer for it, and fall apart. So—
Yes.
—particularly
Here in Monroe or all over? I think it—
Maybe both.
Yeah. I think it affected the black community all over because at last
it made them see that, "Well, no, we don't need to accept this lying
down and doing nothing. We need to stand up and when we stand up and
say, 'no,' we have a greater impact." If we look at—. This is a story
that Robert liked to tell all the time. You go by a school and it's a
Martin Luther King school. And a little black child says to his mother,
"Mama, who is a Martin Luther King?" The mother replies, "Martin Luther
King was a civil rights man. He was a great leader of the black people.
He loved his people. And he led them in a non-violent fight, struggle.
And as a result of that now we have integration
Who's going to want to pattern themselves after those people? Not
anybody. No—. And now you look out there. Who's leading? Who's leading,
you know. What kind of leadership do you have? Who wants to step in
those footsteps? Nobody. But then you've got a Robert F. Williams who—as
he liked to say, "Went home to Mt. Vernon"
Surrounded by his family.
Yes. Surrounded by his family and loved ones, and so forth and so on.
Had a long life.
Had a long life, long fruitful life. Loved his people, struggled for people, fought for his people not only nationally, not only in North Carolina. Not only in Monroe, let's say, not only in North Carolina. Not only in the United States, but all over the world. Went all over the world and continued to struggle for his people and then went home to become a gentleman farmer, you know. So hey, maybe, maybe this is the kind—. That's the kind of example that should be out there in front of, not only black children, but white children as well. Hey, if you take the side of the people and you struggle for the best interests of the people—
The side of good.
And the side of good. And hook your self to that star. Then your life is worthwhile. And that's the legacy that I would like to see for the Robert F. Williams' story. That's the legacy that I'd like to see.
And it goes beyond, I mean, you're right. It goes way beyond like the gun thing.
Yes, way beyond that.
Because it's a—. That, I mean, guns to capture a young person's imagination.
Yes, yes, yes.
In a way that having a milkshake poured in your head at a lunch counter does not.
Right. Of course.
But it's something else, don't you think when a child hears about Robert
standing up for himself in this way or any of the other people that you
think of
Yes.
But one sees something more behind that. And what do you think someone's going to see? What was behind the shotgun? What kind of—what would be good to see in Robert?
I think they would see a person who really knows that one person can make a difference. One person standing up can definitely make a difference. In not only his life but in the lives of other people. And that that one person—. Rob believed that we all had that responsibility. That everybody's born for something. Everybody is here for a purpose. And that we—. Some people live their lives and they just eat, and sleep and die and never do anything. They don't have any causes. They don't have any purpose. And they think that there is no purpose. Maybe the purpose is just to get money, have a good time, play.
They certainly don't have anything that they're willing to die for.
Nothing that they're willing to die for. But you should have something that you're willing to die for that gives you a reason to live.
That's a nice way to put it.
And I think that that was the legacy, one of the legacies that he left. And I remember one newspaper article during the time that Robert had said about self-defense. One newspaper article came out and said that he was advocating the indiscriminate killing of white babies in their cribs. Now you know that was horrible. Making people think that this man—. Here's a crazy man out here who is trying to get all the white folks killed. That was just to mobilize white folks against him. And against what was going on that was really the right thing in the society to be happening at the time. So—
Where did he get that kind of—?
I think it was passed down through his grandmother, his grandfather and
all the way down from slavery. His grandmother came out of slavery
literate, knowing how to read and write. Having been the offspring of a
white slave master and a black slave. His grandfather came out of
slavery knowing how to read and write. And determined to teach their
children that they were as good as anybody on this earth. And that they
should stand up for what was right and good. And I think that's another
thing that the white south, and white Monroe especially, has not lived
up to. I remember I was talking to Robert's brother right before I came
here. He still lives in Detroit and he's eight years old. And he
remembers going into Sechrest Drug Store in Monroe, and one of the
clerks coming up to his daddy. He was a little boy with his daddy. And
the clerk came up to his daddy and said, "John you know we're cousins."
This white clerk said to Robert's father, "John, you know we're cousins.
But don't tell
They don't want to treat people like family.
They don't want to treat people like family. And they refuse to acknowledge the fact that they're family because we're so different because we have that one bit of black blood, you know, that makes us black.
Right. So you think—. Robert had this way back and his grandmother, I understand, was his special—
Oh yeah, was his special person that he loved and taught him about world events and got him interested in reading newspapers early on. And, yeah, she was a very—-. And handed him a rifle that his grandfather had used way back, and a musket-loaded rifle, which I still have.
Do you?
Yes, yes.
That's
Yes. So his brother also told me that his grandmother looked white. And
he said one day a white insurance man came by and said to his
grandmother, "Are you the only white family in this nigger
neighborhood?" And said she looked at him and said, "Don't you ever say
that to me again. I am not white. I am black. And this is not a nigger
neighborhood. This is a black neighborhood."
Good for her. Lucky he didn't get shot.
Yes. He's lucky he didn't get shot. I remember reading some report when one of Robert's aunts was visited by the FBI. And he wrote that she was more—she was worse than Robert after Robert had left Monroe. She said, "Well this is a no-good town." And she should've burned the damn town down. That was one of the direct descendants of this grandmother, her daughter, who made that—. Aunt Cora. She was really a wonderful person, too. But, yeah, he got—. He had a tradition of struggle and of anger at the society for refusing to recognize people as people. And I think that's—. Robert didn't like to talk about it. His older brother John would talk about it. But Robert didn't like to talk about that connection. So he wouldn't talk about it very much. But his older brother would.
I wonder why not?
I told him that he wanted to deny that portion of his—that German
stubborn portion of his heritage. And he would only claim the black
portion
Everybody
Yes.
And, of course, how we treat our kin as well. I mean that's—. You're not
southern if you don't, I mean,
Yeah, yeah. I—one of the presidents now, one of the old presidents they have found that—
Jefferson.
It's Jefferson that has these two descendants that they did the DNA and found out. Oh yeah. But they said they still won't allow them to be a part of the home place. They can come to the reunion but they still—. So it's not just a Monroe thing.
Apparently they're starting to look at Washington now.
Yes.
Now they can do this DNA thing to answer questions about George Washington as well.
Yes, yes, yes. So.
No surprise.
No surprise, no surprise. So—but that does not negate the fact that
there still has to be ongoing struggle. There still has to be ongoing
struggle in order to overcome all of the evils of the past. And I think
because our capitalist society at this stage is so—. We have so engaged
all of our people, black and white and all, into materialism that it is
becoming more and more difficult to have any meaningful human struggles,
social struggles that tie people together—that tie people together. And
it gets back to those people who have
Yes, yes, yes. But I'm—
Yes. And one of the things for me personally is that I think this whole
experience of my life has taught me that where we are in the world today
there is no set solution out there. That the—there's no ism that's going
to do it. It is not coming out of any political, specific political
force that's out there right now. It's something that's going to come
out of something that we don't even have control over. But we know that
once we identify with it that it's going to come. And I think it has to
do with spiritual. We're in kind of a spiritual warfare. And I think
that that's where the solution is coming from. I'm wondering if our
country, our beloved country, this time is on the edge of the
Roman—where the Roman Empire was before it went plummeting down. A lot
of people don't like to think about that, you know. But everything
lives—everything born lives and dies, right? And we would be blind if we
didn't know that societies do the same thing.
Right.
And we're looking
Not much there. All they're doing is grasping and grasping and grasping.
Yeah, terrible wrong.
No.
And people have to, like I said, they have to make a choice, you know. Do they want to be a part of the mean-spirited evil forces that are going on? Or do they want to be a part of the solution, you know. It's like the civil rights song, "What Side Are You On?" Hey, come on.
You want to take a little break?
Yes, please.
When is the first moment—we've talked about what Monroe was like.
Yes.
We've talked about the way black people were kept in their place. What were the first signs the first time there were chinks in the wall? When was the first time you saw a black person stand up to Monroe? Stand up and not end up in jail or worse.
Right, right, right. Hmm.
Was Robert the first or were there things before Robert that you remember?
I was trying to think if there were any incidents before Robert. Robert was such a major part of my life that it's very difficult to think of life before Robert. But—
You were just a young thing.
Right, right. Nothing comes to mind right away.
Okay.
I remember after Robert and I got married. And one thing that brought
the realization to me that this, you know, I was in a different
situation was when Robert was writing letters to the editor. And I don't
remember what the first letters were about. But I remember Robert's
father—. Well, first of all, Robert's father telling me in front of
Robert, said, "You know that man thinks he ought to be president—he
ought to
Yeah.
That was something. My father called me one day and said—when we were
visiting he said—"You need to tell Robert to stop calling these people
billy goats." And I said, "What are you talking about?" Somebody had
told him that Robert wrote in the paper that these Monroe white folks
were billy goats. And I couldn't understand what it was he was talking
about. He said, "They are bigots."
Oh, I like that. I like that.
But his rejection of the way people were treating him and his coming
home and talking about it. Because he was out there trying to get
employment, trying to get his G. I. bill thing together, trying—. And he
was running into all kinds of problems and he would come home and talk
about it. And tell me what was going on, you know. And the things that
he had faced during the day whether it be at the veterans' place where
he was trying to get his veterans' allotment. Or, I think they call it a
52/20 or something like that that you get twenty dollars for fifty-two
or fifty-six weeks,
What did he—what did Robert look like?
What did he look like?
That's a hard question to ask of you.
Oh, yes.
In
He was a very handsome, tall dashing young man. To me he was very handsome and he was—
A little bit older than you.
Yes, he was—. In fact he was, what, seven years older than me. He and my
sister, and his best buddy were all classmates. My sister was seven
years older than me. That was my brother, between my sister and me—the
brother that I told you died of tuberculosis—and—. But my sister and I
were great friends even though she was seven years older than I. And I
spent lots of time at her place. So that's how Robert and I got
together. She had married Robert's best friend who was Kenneth Redford.
So when Robert came home from the military and he was there, in and out
a lot. And I was there and in and out a lot. That's how we got together,
yeah.
And how did he carry himself at that time in his life because it was more than looks, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
He was just—he was just an outstanding—. He stood out in a crowd. He was very proud and self-assured, you know, and muscular.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Would some people call him haughty
No, I don't think anybody called him haughty. But he was a little
standoffish because he rejected a lot of the social norms that even the
black people had, especially black middle-class people who thought that
because they had an education that they were a little better than some
of the regular working people. And he took pride in debating them and
pulling them down, and you know, letting them know that, you know, if
you didn't have your degree, you couldn't prove to me that you—
I wondered about that because
Yeah. He was very private in a way. In his own way. He was a very private person. And really shied away from a lot of social interaction. Loved classical music, listened to it all the time when he was writing, or even reading or studying.
Yeah, yeah. And, well, he loved all kinds of music, but that was—. He would listen to classical music when he was real young. And during the first years of our marriage he was that way. He was very much family oriented. He was very close to his family. But he was not a social, real, real sociable person at the time when we first married.
What did he do to blow off steam, to recreate or did he?
He was not a very sports-minded person, so he did not engage in sports. I guess he was a self-entertaining person, more intellectual than physical. He liked to go hang out with the boys and talk.
At the barbershop—
The VFW or anything like that?
Yeah, little places like that, um-hmm. Get together with his friends and—
He seems to have almost like a philosophical
I think so. I think so. I think he started developing his philosophical outlook very early. Well before I knew him. And kind of, I guess, measured everything by that point of view, you know, the philosophy that he had already developed in his own mind.
You thought he was sweet.
Oh yes, handsome, good-looking, sweet, loving. Oh yes. I fell madly in love with him. And, of course, my mother was terrible upset and my father, too, because I was a high school student and they wanted me to finish school and go to college. My sister had finished Spellman College, and was already out and had a job teaching. And so that was supposed to be my next move. I was supposed to follow in her footsteps, you know, and do that. But when I fell in love with Robert that was out the window for a while.
What
No. They didn't have anything against him personally except they thought
he was too old for me. And that they didn't want—they felt like I was
throwing my life away to give up everything for him, you know.
This is an unfair question, but what do you think a twenty-three or four year old Robert Williams saw in you?
I really don't know. And I can't answer that question except that in later—
Out of sixteen years he
Right, right. In later years I—when we would talk and I'd look at some of the development that had gone on before and think about his girlfriends that he'd had before. I think at twenty—what was it twenty-three, twenty-one—I think he was ready to choose a wife. I really do. And I think he was attracted to me biologically, as well as—
Yeah. And I was a little wild. That's the way he—he described me as
wild. I didn't describe myself as wild. But he described me as a little
wild because I always did walk fast. And very outgoing, loved
basketball, played basketball all the time. Got in a lot of trouble
because I played basketball. We didn't have a gym. We had to walk all
the way to Camp Sutton from here. Camp Sutton is down about two or three
miles outside of Monroe. That's where the
Right.
And then leaving there and going to—out to practice basketball and walk back this way and back home. So, usually I'd leave home early in the morning to go to school and when I'd get home it'd be after dark, in the evening, you know.
Your mama didn't like that?
Oh, she didn't like that at all. And she'd really get on me about that.
Did you play on a team?
Oh yeah, I played on a team. In fact Robert's brother was our assistant coach for a while. His older brother, the one that I told you is eighty.
John?
Yeah, John. He had come home from the Army and he worked with us as assistant coach for our girls—girls and the boys, too. And we used to travel all around: Concord, Wadesboro, playing. And I was one of the star forwards on the team.
Were you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Enjoyed that tremendously. And even after we got married for a while I went back and I played basketball when I was back in school. Robert didn't like that so well. He'd, " You don't need—a married woman don't need to be out there playing basketball." Finally I had to give that up. But, yeah, I was really an all-out athletic person. And I loved school. I loved my teachers and I loved the subjects. And I was a good student as well. I think maybe Robert might have—. He didn't know a lot about me, but in our conversations I think he might have seen some potential that I didn't even see in myself at the time. So that's the best I can answer that question.
And you saw it in him?
Yes, yes.
And he was a great teacher. Eventually he was a great teacher. Of course,
we had our problems like any young couple will have. And especially the
fact that here I am a person who was trying to accommodate the status
quo. And here was this man that I had married who was always out there
questioning the status quo and protesting against it. And not being able
to conform the way I could conform. I could accept it and walk away. I
could walk away from the conditions like in the basement of that
hospital. I could walk away and accept the fact that I was given a job,
and that I was allowed to learn some things on that job that would, you
know, be helpful to me. But I could walk away from that and walk into
another job that was just as segregated, but maybe would give me a
little bit more money and a little bit more opportunity. And knowing
that this is—it's a job. It's a way of living. I can help support the
family. But he was not able to do that. And especially when he was in a
position where he had gotten a job.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Other than the situation being the enemy, you know. And that created a lot of friction with me and him, as well as in the society because I, at that time, could not accept a lot of that either, you know. Well, you know, everybody, all of the black people have to make accommodations with—in order to make a living, you've got to make accommodations.
Right.
And he would make accommodations for as long as he could. But he
couldn't keep his mouth shut about it. He would say, "Okay, I got this
job. Wonderful. I got this job. That's wonderful." But the first time he
encountered a situation—. He didn't hide his talents under the bushel.
If he saw somebody who was supposed to be his superior and that superior
asked him a question, he let it be known right away that he knew more
about it than his superior did. And that got him in trouble a lot of
times, you know. Because a lot of times you
Especially once you had the children.
Yes, yes, yes, especially then, yeah. And he was very—. He was a good daddy, a good father. He taught the boys a lot. And they learned a lot. They learned a lot from him.
When was the first time that Robert went beyond in Monroe—when was the first time he went beyond the letter writing or standing up maybe to one person on the job.
That came when he became president of the NAACP. I think that must have
been around '56 or sometime when all of the local
That was it.
That was it. And after that, "I just couldn't help it. I just couldn't help it." He got fired, you know. And I don't remember what happened after that. But every time Robert would enroll somebody else in the NAACP he would warn them, "Don't tell anybody that you belong, especially the people that you work for, you know. You can tell your other friends. But don't tell the people that you work for that you've joined."
So all these people, the professional people leave and Robert's left—
With hardly anybody and he just went and recruited among just ordinary common folks on the street. He liked to tell the fact that his first members came from the poolroom. He went into a pool hall. And his mother had been a very deeply religious woman, you know. Had warned him. She was always afraid that her children would turn out to be gamblers or drunkards. She would warn them to stay out of the pool hall because they gamble in the pool halls. So Robert didn't even play pool, you know. He didn't play any kind of cards. And he didn't hang around the pool halls and places. But he said he was passing one one day and he said, "Well I wonder if I can maybe get these fellows to join." He went in there and started talking to them. And he said he wrote up his first members on the pool table.
That's good.
Yeah. So after—
That's right. That's right. And I think that may have been a part of the militancy of that. Not only did he write up regular people, street people. He wrote up maids and cooks. And so we knew what was going on in a lot of the houses of the white power structure because they had maids and cooks in there who were members of the NAACP who'd come back and tell us. I remember one particular incident where Robert was going on trial for something. I don't know if that was the sit-in case or what it was. But the maid for the judge said that the judge came in that morning at breakfast and said, "Oh honey—" to his wife. "Oh honey, I'm going to be a big man today." And she said, "Why? What's going to happen?" He said, "I'm going to send that nigger Robert Williams to prison." And she came back and told us about what he had said. Now he had made his decision and the court hadn't even started. But he knew he was going to send Robert—he going to convict him already, you know.
So—
So I guess the NAACP with the ordinary people and then what happens then?
Then they started—. He was really the—. He was the leader and they tell
him, "You do what you have to do." So he would go to different places in
the name of the NAACP and try to get jobs for people, you know, get them
to hire. I remember the place, Allen Overall. Boy he worked—they worked
on Allen Overall for years to try to get them to hire black people. He
even wrote to Washington in
That's where Reagan got his trickle down theory.
Yeah, yeah. And then they will, you know—
No. That's all right. Then they will benefit from it, you know, from that standpoint. I don't remember when it was that—. Whether it was before the NAACP or after the NAACP that we had the—Rob had joined the Civic League, which was also an organization that at that time was working with the city council. They had a Negro Civic League that would—. Well, at first it was supposed to be a civic league that was made up of all members of the community, black and white. And—but actually what they would do is when they got ready to have meetings they would call in these members of the Civic League. And most of them were what we called Uncle Tom. And they would go along with everything that the city fathers would propose, like the trickle down stuff, and not protest anything. Well, once Rob joined that Civic League it almost—. I don't remember if it tore up or what happened. But they stopped calling on the Civic League so much. But I think that was his introduction to the Unitarian Universalist Church. It was a Unitarian church at that time.
And the local white—one of the local white people was Ray Shoot was the
head of the Unitarian church. And he was—had
So we'd laugh about that, you know. But we would visit them on a social basis. And he and Robert would just sit and talk for hours and hours.
That's very unusual.
Yeah. It was very unusual in this—
That day.
Yeah, for that day. And finally he invited us to become members of the
Unitarian church. And before then Robert would go to the Unitarian
church. And they invited them—Ray did. Ray Shoot invited him there to
speak on two or three occasions. And he'd go and speak. And then he
invited him to become a member. Well, then when Robert accepted and
decided to join, I never will forget, Ray Shoot told us that there was a
judge, Judge Williams. Now everybody in town knew the judge was an
alcoholic. But every Monday morning he was sending black men to prison
for being drunk. Okay? Judge Williams made the remark according to—it
was either Ray or some of the other Unitarians who told us that he said,
"He'd be damned if he was going to belong to a church where they had a
nigger." So he resigned when they accepted Rob into the Unitarian
fellowship. It was not a church. It was a fellowship.
Yeah, sure. Even better than a real university
Yes, yes. And it also was helpful in dealing with the children and
trying to instill some values in them, you know. So—but the Unitarian
church, also. That experience started to—. People, when the people found
out that Robert was associated with the Unitarian church, that brought
on a lot of other kinds of—. Well, you know, we don't want to have
anything to do with this nigger, you know. Mr. Shoot tried as best he
could to help Robert get established in a good paying job two or three
different times. One time he got a really good job. They were going to
make him this or they were going to—. Oh, this new factory was moving in
because all these factories were moving in from the north. And they were
going to make him a dye man in an industry down in—it was outside of
Wadesboro, in Anson County somewhere. But, the city fathers got to them
and they got rid of Rob in a—. At first they started—. The man who was
supposed to teach him was a German. And he was, of course, secretive
about his guise and so forth. But he was willing at first to teach Rob.
But then when the city fathers got involved, all of a sudden, the only
thing Rob could do was empty the garbage.
Black farmers.
Um-hmm, black farmers. We never did have a—we didn't starve to death.
People would come and give us, bring us stuff. They'd go shopping and
bring stuff to help us out as well. And one thing that I point out to a
lot of black women today when I'm talking to them about—the situation we
talk about. We talk about the male chauvinism and all that. And—but one
of the tools that this system has always used, and they used in Monroe.
I can always get a job. They'd always open up and let me work. And I
didn't always understand why I could get a job and he couldn't get a
job, you know. Or I could get a job and keep it and he couldn't get a
job and keep it. I didn't always understand that. I understand the
techniques, the tactics now. How that undermines the unity of the family
because he's supposed to be the head of the family. The husband's
supposed to be the head of the family traditionally to support his
family. But it undermines his manhood when he can't do that. It
undermines his manhood. So that also creates a lot of problems. Created
a lot of problems for us, but not, you know.
And so—
What was the first time that—. Well actually I was trying
The kissing case had a lot of momentum to it. And, you know, helped to
move it along. But I'm trying to remember and I'm not very good at
chronological dates and the sequences because now that I look back over
it it just kind of melts together. But, so, I remember Rob going to
Cuba. And he went along with several black writers and artists: Leroy
Jones and some of the other artists. And while down there learning about
what was going on with the Cuban revolution. But then we had already
started publishing "The Crusader" before then. So I'm trying to
remember.
I'm surprised they ever did.
Yeah, yeah. They did, but the closer he came to identifying problems
that
Well, Tim was actually reading to me from last night the first edition.
Oh really? Okay. All right.
One of the interesting stories that I liked—and it was—you had a piece on an elderly neighbor.
Mama Stitt.
That's right.
Yes, yes.
That was the very first—. It was a two-part thing. The first part was in—. I think your son John came home and then you wrote it. And it said that Mrs. Stitt was telling stories about slavery.
Yes.
And you
That's wonderful. I'm happy to hear that because it had totally slipped my mind. But, yes. And she was a very interesting lady and she told us all kinds of stories about how—what had happened to her during slavery. And there was another lady that also lived between us and Miss Stitt. Miss Stitt lived on the corner and we lived down on the middle of the block. There was another lady, Mrs. Ola Roddy, who also told us about things that had happened to her right after slavery. And what had happened to her family during slavery. So we did get—have the benefit of that oral history from those two neighbors.
What was your role in "The Crusader?"
No, go right ahead. No, no, just go ahead. I—besides writing a column I
had to do the corrections—the English and all that on Robert's work, the
editing of his work. And type up the—. Because we put it out on a
mimeograph machine, you know. I had to type up the stencils and then
help to run them
Well you were a writer, too. What did you try to—what was kind of the—how did you approach your column? What was it called?
Looking—was mine "Looking Back," I believe. Or—I think mine was "Looking Back." And I talked about historical stuff, things that had happened. I talked about some of Rob's family history that we had found out about, some people that I had interviewed. We got news clippings from all over. People recognized that here is a protest newsletter and they would send us stuff. And sometimes I would go through that and pull out things that were, you know, good for our newsletter at the time. Had to find fillers so we'd have to go—. We relied a lot on people like Nat Turner and those kinds of real revolutionary type people who were sincere about struggle and so forth. We talked about issues or things that were going on in the community. And sometimes he would tell me, "Well, you write about that." So, those were the kind—some of the things that I did.
Well it sounds like you've come a long way as a person. I mean from a sixteen year old to doing this as a—. You're really part of a husband and wife team.
Yes, yes, yes. We were a team. We were a team and we worked together as
a team. During the height of the struggle for survival when the Klan was
threatening to wipe us all out, I organized the ladies and we had a
phone club so that when things were
Can you step into that time when things were so, I guess you could say
that
Are you talking about the last time or when we first organized the rifle clubs and all that?
From the beginning.
The beginning?
Yeah.
It was early on after Robert became the president of the NAACP. And he was becoming known in town as the president of the NAACP. Other people who were on jobs and who were members of the NAACP would tell us that, you know, these folks were saying they're going to do this to you. They're going to do that to you. They're going to wipe out the family. They're going to kill Rob, you know, and all that kind of stuff. And then we began to get telephone threats, telephone threats. And at that time I started to realize that this is serious business. These folks mean business. They do to.
They would call and talk to Rob or—?
They would call and talk to whomever answered the phone and threaten to do us harm, you know. They would talk to children, to the children, or Daddy John or me or whomever.
And they'd say, "If Rob keeps doing this we're going to kill you or do you—."
We're going to kill you or blow up your house, and all that kind of stuff. So, Daddy John, who was Rob's father, always kept a twelve-gauge shotgun in his house at the door. And I remember he didn't always keep it at the door. He had one and he kept it in his room in his closet. But I remember one day when he pulled that twelve-gauge shotgun out and said, "We're going to keep this at the front door because if the bastards come over here after us, we're going to—we may have to use it." Well that was—by that time Robert was going down to help protect Dr. Perry's house, whom they had threatened that they were coming in and going to blow him away.
Because
Yes.
Because—.
Because he had been accused of doing an abortion on a white woman. And
had been, not only accused, but they convicted him of doing an abortion
even without a fetus to prove that there was an abortion. And even
though he was a Catholic who had refused to do abortions even for local
black people or anybody else. And, who usually, generally, did not even
serve white customers. But because this woman had no—so little money,
and needed medical attention he let down his guard and
How did Rob
Dr. Perry was—. Rob was the president of the NAACP, and Dr. Perry was the vice-president. So whenever official protests went out to the city council or whomever, it went out as Rob Williams, president, Dr. Albert E. Perry as vice-president. And so Dr. Perry, he was just a part of our movement. And everybody thought—not everybody—. Most of the white people thought that because Dr. Perry was a doctor that he was the one who was the brains behind the protest movement. At one time a man wrote a letter to the editor in the Monroe Enquirer Journal, and said, "What we ought to do is get that Robert Williams, bring him downtown and lock him up and make him write something." Because they didn't believe Robert had the capability of writing the articles with the depth that he was writing. Some people said, "Well, that J. Ray Shoot is the one that's writing all the articles." You know. And they're saying that he was writing and hiding behind Robert or some white man, or maybe Dr. Perry. So anyway, they saw the two of them as a threat and so.
That's when y'all started to have things about
Yes, yes, yes, yes. The Klan made a run or two it seems to me. I'm trying to remember. It seems to me that they made a run past Dr. Perry's house and shot—some shots were fired. And that's what made the men organize to go to defend Dr. Perry's home.
And what did they do?
The trenches and stayed up all night—and in the trenches they had sandbags. And our friend, Father MacAvoy would come and stay all night. He was a great friend of Dr. Perry's, too. In fact, Dr. Perry was the one who introduced Robert, I think, to Father MacAvoy. He said, "You all do the shooting and I'll do the praying." And he'd stay up all night and read scripture and walk around, and bring coffee to the fellows.
This wasn't just one night.
Oh no. This went on for weeks on end. And he would be there, you know.
Dug trenches?
Yeah. They had trenches and sandbags. And made Malotov cocktails that they were going to use against any vehicles that people would come in, you know.
And the Klan was fairly strong in Monroe?
Oh, yes. The Klan was very strong. The Klan was having rallies all over. Catfish Cove was on the rise. Catfish Cove was, oh, he was having all kinds of rallies around Monroe. One rally they reported that they had five thousand people out at the rally. And Rob and Dr. Perry and a few of the other fellows went out to some of those Klan rallies. And were there on the scene and I think it kind of unnerved the Klan people when they did. But, that was what kind of brought on the rifle club. We organized a rifle club. And got a charter through the American Rifle Association.
What did the rifle club do?
We practiced shooting. We were all members. I was a member as well. We taught the kids how to shoot. We'd—we got our charter. We'd have our little meetings. And that was the backbone of our defense group.
And it was like a NRA type thing.
It was affiliated. It was a branch of the National Rifle Association.
That
They didn't know for sure because when Robert sent off for the charter he had himself as an author. He had Dr. Perry as a doctor. He had some of the—. Oh, he had one of our officers, McDowell, as a businessman. He had, I think, the women he put down housewives. And he put construction, contractor for the construction workers. And we got our first charter like that. And it's really fun. The year that Rob passed away, the National Rifle Association wanted him to come to Texas to speak about how we survived in the south with guns.
He was going to but his cancer got the better of him and he was unable
to go. But he sent a message to them, which they read. And I have a tape
that they—. At their anniversary celebration they talked about Robert
Williams and how his rifle club allowed them to survive in the racist
state of North Carolina.
I bet it did.
Oh yeah. And we were just tickled to death that they did that.
I like that.
I'm sure when we joined and the years after then, had they known we were a black group, they would have revoked our charter.
I think they would have too.
I'm sure they would have. But in the later years when they were under
such attack for guns, they came up with the fact that they were proud of
the fact that, "Well, if it hadn't been for guns in North Carolina, that
man would have been dead", you know.
That's great.
"If he hadn't been affiliated with the rifle association."
Because they knew that black people were at the point where they were demanding their equal rights. They were at the point of requesting but actually struggling to get the equal rights. And they knew that if a large number of black people should take up arms that they would either have to officially come down and that it may lead to a civil, kind of civil war. And they didn't want to—that to happen. So they were going to do everything that they could. First of all, they didn't want to give in and give the rights up. But they knew much better than we did that all of that political power had to be backed up. They were backing their political power up with guns. And the only thing that was going to take it away from them, or threaten, threaten it, was the fact if black people took up guns, too. So, I think that was the reason they were so afraid, you know. So they were going to nip that in the bud if they possibly could. And keep black people from even thinking about resorting to resistance, not even, nothing aggressive, just resisting what they were doing keeping that power through the gun that they had. They had control of the police department and of the state troopers, the National Guard. And they didn't intend to release that power. And they felt that that was a threat to the power.
Do you think that men were more threatened than by those guns than by the non-violent protest—
Oh yes.
Including y'all's, I mean. There was something about blacks and guns that—
That's right. That's right. They felt more threatened by that because
that would mean that they would have to meet black men on
How did—as time went along—
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
Do you have to—
Oh yes. Some nights we were fortunate if we were able to get four hours
sleep. And we slept in shifts at home because the threats—the telephone
threats, the hate mail—stuff would come through the mail saying what
they were going to do. People on the street—. I remember one time a
little boy—his name was Prentice Robinson, I believe, was beaten up by
some white men. They thought he was Rob's son. They beat him up
downtown. Our kids had to—. We had to restrict their activities. They
couldn't go to the movies anymore. And they couldn't go out with the
kids and play on Saturdays and play like other kids did because that was
after the—. It was known that Rob had kids and that they were in danger.
We had applied for them to go to what is now East Elementary School. And
the boys—. We talked it over with the boys and they agreed to do it. And
so we tried to get them into that school. And that in itself is a real
experience that I will never forget. Sitting in the school board meeting
and the superintendent who was a white superintendent. Always the
What he said.
Yeah. Whatever he said, that's it, you know. But—
So you really had to almost fortify the house.
Um-hmm, yes. And people would come after threats that we would think that might be—they might be really coming. We'd call and people would come from our rifle club group and sit up with us. Take turns, sleep on the floor, sleep on the couch. But somebody would stand guard on the porch. So, yeah, we went through a period when that was going on all the time. And at one time we got calls around the clock. Just nuisance, you know, just to keep you awake and to disturb you. And you'd answer and they wouldn't say anything, you know, whatever. So all those kinds of things were going on.
But did the Klan ever come into the neighborhood?
Oh yeah. They came into the neighborhood on several occasions. I
remember one night they came—some of them came into the neighborhood.
And the fellows got out into the street and shot above the cars. And you
could hear cars screeching and flying everywhere. And they went out of
the neighborhood. And I don't recall them ever coming back again after
that. Yeah, yeah. We had lots of support of the neighbors in the
community because they were very proud of the fact that Robert was
standing up. And he was getting the young people to stand up with him.
We had a youth group that the ones who were picketing the pool, who
wanted to see a change, those young boys and girls, mostly the young
boys, had been fighting each other before they got involved in the civil
rights movement. They had the Quality Hill Gang fighting against the
Green Street Gang. And them against the New Town Gang. But when they got
involved in civil rights they all started working together and having
good relations. And the gang stuff went down. The older fellows taught
them
What were the big
Yes, that was the big one. That was the big one.
But if you had to
I think the biggest thing was the educating of the people, the black people. And the raising of the awareness of the need to struggle even though we didn't have a lot of victory victories at that time that you could say, "Oh well, we won the right to do this. Well we won the right to go the library because the mayor said he didn't read anyway." Or didn't use the library anyway. So little things like that. But I think the biggest impact was the fact that people began to say, "Yes, we do need to stand up. Yes. We do need to struggle."
Yes, yes.
Yeah. It may sound like that. But everybody in the neighborhood who knew Robert, and knew his family, and knew his activity knew that Robert cared about his people.
And they rose to the situation.
They rose to the situation especially the old women. Robert always was a
person who would go and sit, and talk with the older people and learn
from them, and listen to them. And they knew that. They knew that. I
remember a Mrs. King was one of his mother's best friends. His mother
passed away the year we were married. But her best friend was Mrs. King
who lived right down the street near us. And she came and told him one
day, or he went down there and she told him, said, "The FBI came down
here saying they wanted to give you a job. And wanting to know about
your activities. And I told them that if they wanted to know anything
about you to go up there and ask you or your Daddy or some of your
people. That I wasn't about to tell them anything." She said, "I don't
know what them people were up to. They said they were from the FBI and
they were getting ready to give you a good job."
And who was the lady that hid weapons?
His aunt, the older lady. The one I told you the FBI said she was worse than him. Oh, no. She did, too.
Oh yes. But Mrs. Crowder who was a neighbor a couple of doors below us, when we went back to Monroe, Rob and I came back to Monroe, Mrs. Crowder had some of those guns in her attic that had been there. She had hid some of the guns in her house.
She was a domestic or—?
Just a domestic, an older lady, a lady who had been in the community for years, church-going. All of these people were Christian church-going people.
And she was hiding weapons for Rob?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for the community.
For the community.
For the community because she felt that if that community had to—. If
the Klan came—. Those people were really—. Our people were really fed up
with the crap that the Klan had been intimidating them with for all
these years. I remember one family. I think you saw me speak to a young
man this morning. A young man who came in. He's in the military now. No,
he's retired from the military. He used to be one of our neighbors. And
his grandma told us stories about their family down in Georgia and how
they had been run out by the Klan. They had been run out of Georgia, her
husband, just for speaking up. They had run all the way from Georgia and
had settled in North Carolina. Well, needless to say, they certainly
didn't want to see the Klan come into our community and do what they had
done in Georgia. So—and most of these men who had worked on the railroad
were really—I'll say mentally—they were not—they were impacted by the
racism of the white workers on the railroad. And how it impacted our
community. They could see how they white men had no respect for us. And
the fact that most of the black men who worked on the railroad were—they
could never get a job as say a boilermaker. But they would get the job
as a boilermaker helper.
What I'm trying to understand
Yeah, yeah.
And that maybe the people were ready, but –
Well you know at a time when Robert first got to be the president of the NAACP some of his old classmates and school mates would cross the street uptown to keep from speaking to him.
Well, right. That's what you were talking about
Right. And they were afraid. But the older people, the older people were the ones in our neighborhood. They were the ones who were most supportive it seems to me. I mean the older, old folks. I'm not talking about the ones of Robert's age. I'm talking about these old people who were just fed up with the crap that the white folks had put them through all these years. And when they saw this young man who was a product of their community. The son of Emma Williams who was one of the known Christian women in their community. That they had prayer meeting at his house, you know. And here is this young man that Emma had taught to respect us and to come and bring in wood and coal for us. And do chores around the house. And now he's down there raising a family and he's teaching his boys to come and work for us and help look out for us. Come and read to us if there's something—if we have some papers we don't understand. Call Robert Williams, he'll come down and explain them to you, you know. Those kinds of things. Those are the people that I'm talking about in our community that were—they weren't afraid of Rob.
That's very interesting.
And they would get so angry when they knew that the police were harassing him, or somebody, you know the Klan was trying to harass him.
How would they show their support? Some of them would
Yeah. But that was the—that's not the norm. But they just never broke
off any relationship. You know, they would visit, or call for us to come
and visit. Fix food for us on occasion. Call us down to come. "Come. I
fixed a
Yeah. But, like I said, that was the older people. And they knew that Rob was not teaching anything that was detrimental to them or even teaching the young people anything detrimental. And sometimes if the kids were getting out of line, they'd call Rob to talk to them, you know. So that's the way that went.
There was one incident that I wanted to go into with some detail.
It—some of it you were involved in, and some of it, I know you were an
eye witness
I remember that as I told you before I lived on Quality Hill, or across the railroad tracks from New Town where the larger black community lived. And I remember a young, one of my neighbors drowned in a mud pool, mud puddle swimming out on Quality Hill. That same summer two or three other young black boys had drowned in mud puddles in, you know, trying to learn how to swim or just going swimming. You know, hot down here—
Cow ponds and things like that.
Yeah. Right. And so Robert and—. Robert had said, "Well, this is just
outrageous. We've got this pool down here." I don't know how he found
out that the pool was built by the WPA with federal dollars. "You've got
this pool down here supported by tax dollars. And it's restricted to
white only." And he said,
Did y'all not really think of it as—
No, no. We just thought they could set aside a day. I think Robert thought that the city fathers would do that. When he went before them and presented that to, "Well what about setting that aside?" I think at first they just said some time, so that the black kids could come in and swim. He really, at that time, I don't think he even thought that they would say no. But when they said no, they couldn't do that because every time the black kids swam they would have to drain the pool before the whites could use that again.
Did they explain that? Did they have any argument that this was just—?
No, because black people had been in it. That was enough. At first
they—. At first he didn't ask for a day. He asked, "Could you build a
pool in our neighborhood?" That's what they asked, separate but equal,
right? Didn't even have to be equal. We're just asking for a separate
pool. "No. Can't do that." The city council, city recreation
department—"We can't do that. We don't have the money." Then they went
back and asked, "Well, if you don't have the money to build a pool in
our neighborhood could you set aside some time when our kids can use the
pool that you have? Because, after all, it was built with federal funds
and it is tax supported by the recreation committee of the city. And
after all, black people do pay taxes." And
And what were they—they'd be—
Our young people and Rob would get together and they'd go down to the pool and picket around the pool.
Signs and everything?
With signs, yes. Signs and—. This pool's built with federal funds. We have a right to swim. Open up the pool and let us swim once a week, or whatever. I don't even remember all of the signs. Maybe the newspapers recorded. I'm sure they did record some.
Did you go down there some?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But most of the time when I was down there—. I
didn't picket. I was in the car with guns.
Yes, yes, yes. I was always there in the car. Not always, but part of the time I was there in the car. And each time that I was there in the car there was a gun in the car with me. And—
And you were just—
Just sitting there waiting and, you know.
In case the situation arose.
Um-hmm. When we had to protect the kids and get them out of there. My
youngest son was—. I think my older son was allowed to go down and
picket with the kids as well. So—. At that time, you know, guns were
legal as long as they were not concealed in North Carolina. So we had
the guns on the seat.
I'm sure they noticed them, too.
Oh yes. Yes. I'm sure they did. So—.
And during that time did I tell you that Rob had run for mayor?
I never heard that.
You never heard that? He ran for the mayor of Monroe.
That's not in the book either, I don't think.
I don't recall whether it is or not. But he ran for mayor of Monroe. And
then the night of the counting of the votes, went downtown by himself
with his guns on to watch them count the votes. And I got on the phone
and called the rifle club members and told them. And so by the time they
got through counting the votes there was a group of black men down
there.
With guns.
With guns waiting for him to finish looking at the—. He said, "Well I didn't want anybody to put their lives on the line for me." So he wouldn't tell anybody he was going. But I told them he was down there by himself.
And he wore his guns where people could see them?
Yeah. He wore them in a holster on his hip.
Only one?
Oh yeah. Sometimes he would wear two guns.
Was this
Legal by—
Would that be typical for Robert at that time? He'd go around with a gun through town, wearing a piece.
He didn't do that often because most of the time he just had it in the car. But when he started getting threats, then he started doing that. Especially when they had a Klansman on the courthouse square getting petitions and Dr. Perry out of town. A Klansman with a table on the courthouse lawn.
So would Robert wear a holster?
Uh-huh. Robert went up to this Klansman who was getting petitions and
asked him, said, "Well, who is this Robert Williams? Do you know him?"
And he said, "No, I don't know him." "But he's a dangerous man. Caused a
lot of problems here in Monroe and we want to get rid of him." And
Robert told him, said, "Well, I'll tell you who Robert Williams is. I'm
Robert Williams. And if you're planning to run me out of town, it's
going to take more
So back to the pool. So the protest goes on. It goes on for a long time or—
Over a period of weeks. And maybe protest one day and not go back for a week.
How did people react to the pool—?
At first it was just a giggly kind of thing. The people would come out of the pool, and look and laugh. And—but, then the pool officials would get scared and close the pool. And then they would have to come out and leave. And so, strangely enough, we had a young woman visiting us from Japan, an exchange student who Rob had met when he was on speaking tour as—for the Friends of Cuba. And she had wanted to come south to see what the civil rights movement was about. She was a political science teacher. By the way, she has remained friends over these years.
Has she?
Yes, yes. I just had contact with her a couple of months ago. And she came down. Robert had told her, "Yes. You can come to Monroe and we'll let you see what it's all about." He took her around to places and sent her on her own to places to get information about what she wanted to know about. Strangely enough, during that time, because the Japanese are—. I don't know for what reason but they were looked on as white.
I always wondered how that got decided.
I don't know how that got decided either. But she went inside the pool
while we were outside protesting.
That would have been interesting.
And she was a guest in our house but they never knew that. She was inside the pool. And she had gone down and they had allowed her to interview officials. And she found out how they felt about us. And they were just really candid about those old Negroes over there and what they're doing, you know. And that was also very interesting.
Very interesting.
Very interesting. She wrote about it in Japan. She became a political
history—political science professor. And with her expertise on African
American studies, of course.
I assume that this was not just a reaction to the pool protest. This was—.
These people had built up a lot of frustration.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
And Robert—
Because at one time the governor sent a black man, a Dr. Larkins, in who was the governor's Negro. Sent him into Monroe to find out what Robert wanted. And Robert gave him the ten-point plan that the NAACP and civic league all had agreed on, which included jobs and, which included equal pay, and which included integration of the schools. And either the provision of a pool or the setting aside of days that black kids could use the pool. Ten points. And Robert told Dr. Larkin, "What I want is the ten-point plan implemented." And Dr. said, "I didn't come down here to find out what your ten points are. I want—the governor wants to know what you want, individually. What you want." And Robert told him again, "I want what my people want. And my people want this ten point plan." And so when they found out—when the governor found out that Robert was not going to sell out the movement—
He couldn't be bribed. Then that's when all hell broke loose. And these
people started to say, "Well we got to kill him. He's not going to give
in." Even the NAACP after they had suspended him for saying that we
needed to defend ourselves, they sent a man down and told him that if he
would renounce his
What happens then?
Then, three attempts that I know about on his life. I was behind him in cars twice.
Can you tell me a little bit about that? The first couple I know
Yes, yes, yes.
Could you tell me about what happened?
We were on the way to the pool. Robert—. The kids had been taken to the pool. Robert had gone to get, pick up some more kids. And then Mrs. Johnson and I, one of our co-workers—
Aselee. We were behind—. Rob was in the car with one of the kids. And we
were in the car behind Rob. Of course we had our pistols on the seat.
And we were going down this road, Roosevelt Boulevard. Got to the place
where
And just watching.
And just watching. And I was standing—. I was in the car pointing to
what was going on in front of us, and they were just standing there
laughing, you know. That was one time when they tried to kill him. But
he was able to maneuver and get away. And I think what happened is the—.
I think he said that the car seat jammed on the rifle, else he would
have been able—he would have had to kill somebody who was trying to kill
him. Then when he tried to get the people arrested who had done that the
policeman Mooney, told him, "Well you go get him and bring him in and
we'll consider arresting him." Well, now you know, even though Rob knew
who it was, had he gone on his property to try to get him and bring him
in, he would have been killed right then. So, that was one of the
situations.
That was at—
That was at Hillltop, yeah. That was—. And we were behind him at that time.
They—
In a different car.
They stopped his car?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And were there a lot of white people out there?
Yeah. It just seems like hundreds and hundreds.
Was it—
And the police were just directing traffic and pretending they didn't see it until he stepped out with the rifle. And when he stepped out with the rifle and they found out he was armed, then they came running and tried to disarm him at that place. And he would not be disarmed. And finally they had to—they let him out of there because he was armed and they weren't about to disarm him. So he was able to escape that time.
All he had was a rifle?
He had a rifle. But then the young kid on the other side had his Luger. I believe it was his Luger. And when the policeman went to the side of the car and was going to shoot Rob in the back, the kid put the gun out the window and told him, "If you pull that trigger you're dead." And he backed up. That cop backed up and fell in the ditch. But then, fate, I guess, was with us. God was with us. Those prayers that his mother and my mother and everybody else had had and the neighbors protected, protected us.
And the young people had been well-trained. That took a lot of restraint.
Yes it did.
Not to shoot first and then—
Not to shoot, yes.
To let the situation play out
Yeah, a lot of kids would have just gone on and shot. And then all of them would have been killed at that time. They would have been wiped out. They would have been wiped out. God is good.
And you said there was a third time?
That was going down Morgan Mill Road one time. And it seemed that Rob—I think Rob outran them. They weren't able to stop him. We were just going down Morgan Mill Road to the pool.
What was the occasion that the deputy took—stopped Rob's car when it had no lights?
That was after they had butchered up his car. You know when I told you they were jamming his car that time. They knocked out one of his headlights. So I think it was the following Saturday or the Saturday following that. We had just put out "The Crusader." And we were out distributing it. And he was going down one of the back streets near Winchester Avenue. And he was going down Fairley Avenue. And it was about dusk dark. And the police pulled him over and told him that he was under arrest for driving a vehicle with—. That he didn't have any lights on. And he said, "Well it's not dark yet. Why would I be having lights on?" And they said, "Well, it's time for you to have your lights on. And since you don't have your lights on we're going to arrest you and take you to town." And so somehow he was able to convince them that, "Well, let me drive my car. And I will drive the car on and then I'll follow you and I'll go on." And that was down Fairley Avenue. And our street, Boyd Street, ran into Fairley Avenue. And when he got to our street, the police had already passed Boyd Street. He turned in. And then he turned into our driveway.
Now, he didn't think they were going to take him to jail or what—?
Oh yeah. He felt that what they were getting ready to do—and we all felt, knew, that what they were getting ready to do was set him up for a lynching for that night. And so he wasn't about to go to that jail with them. He convinced them somehow that he would follow them to jail. And then he turned off and came into the, our driveway. And I heard the tired screeching and all that.
You were inside the house?
I was inside the house. And I knew something was up. I didn't know what
had happened. But I came out with the shotgun. And he jumped out of the
car, his car, and tried to—was trying to get our dog loose because our
dog was a German Shepherd and he was bad. And I was standing there with
the shotgun. So that's when the police came up and they jumped out of
the car. And they were saying they were going to take him to jail. And I
said, "Do you have a warrant?" And they said—. They backed up and they
saw me with the shotgun. And, so, I said, "If you don't have a warrant,
you're not taking him anywhere." And so
What was Rob doing at this time?
He was trying—he was struggling with the dog because the dog was raging against the chain, you know. And then, well, once he saw that the police were all—they were getting scared, and I handed the shotgun to him. And they really flew them.
I bet they did.
Later on one of the neighbors said, oh, that's the first time they'd
ever seen the police run that fast out of a neighborhood.
Did they arrest Rob?
No. And they never did come back. They never did come back. But we got
our gun club together that night because we felt like they were coming
back. I told the man, "Well, don't come back unless you got a warrant."
I think we're about—I'm about running out of things.
Okay.
But, didn't you get a—? Didn't you just want to like run off to Canada or something like that long before you actually had to leave?
Yes, yes.
Didn't you get tired of having to live—?
I did get tired of it. I was scared to death.
Did Rob?
There were times when he was just disgusted with it all and would have liked to have gone away. And he got the opportunity to travel, to do speaking—
END OF INTERVIEW