Born: February 26, 1925, Monroe, NC

Education: High school graduate, Monroe, NC; attended Johnson C. Smith University

Died: October 15, 1996, Grand Rapids, MI

Malcolm X asserted that “Robert Williams was just a couple years ahead of his time.” Rosa Parks, speaking at Williams's funeral, commended him “for his courage and his commitment to freedom. The work that he did should go down in history and never be forgotten.”

He represented the tradition of black self-determination. His ex-slave grandfather was a Republican newspaper editor and equal rights advocate who owned a gun, which Williams inherited. Battling a white mob during the Detroit race riot (1943) and European fascism in the armed forces, he knew how to defend himself using guns. He did so on returning to Monroe, North Carolina, where he headed the local NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan terrorized blacks. Forming a rifle club, he espoused “meeting ‘violence with violence’” in 1959. The NAACP then suspended him for violating its peaceful protest policy. Pursued by state police for inciting a Monroe race riot (1961), he fled alternately to Cuba, North Vietnam, and China. From exile, his Radio Free Dixie broadcasts and The Crusader journal denounced capitalism, racism, and imperialism. Returning in 1969, he helped organize “to eliminate prostitution, police brutality, and political corruption” (Stephens, 2003, p. 675) by nonviolent means but never renounced the human right of armed self-defense.