Subject: Black Revolutionary Militancy Remembered: ROBERT F. WILLIAMS VideoDoc Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 08:10:51 -0500 From: "S. E. Anderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "Hank Williams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Folks, Tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10 pm, PBS's Independent Lens will be showing Negroes With Guns, a documentary about Robert F. Williams (no relation, sorry to say). <http://tinyurl.com/9qd3k>. Williams was an advocate of armed self defense against the Klan and other racists in the South and often butted heads with more moderate NAACP folks (Williams was president of the Monroe NC branch). He and other WWII vets used their army training to patrol and protect the Black community where they lived. I saw it at a pre-release screening a few years back and this is an extraordinary film. From what I recall, it closely follows the history laid out in Timothy Tyson's "Radio Free Dixie" book on Williams <http://tinyurl.com/arhju> rather than the Williams autobiography that it's named after. This and a few other February features on PBS are highly worth watching-- and showing to students and children-- and deserve the type of push they're giving to the Henry Louis Gates series instead. Hank -- Aquí qué pasa Power is what's happening Aquí to be called negrito y negrita Means to be called LOVE--Pedro Pietri ================================= From: Walter Lippmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> You can read much more about Rob Williams and his life and struggles at this PBS website: <www.pbs.org/independentlens/negroeswithguns>, to which great praise is due. You can listen to pristine recordings from the archives of Radio Free Dixie, the Cuba- based broadcasts which Williams made from the island in the early 1960s. Williams later broke with Cuba, though not to the right, and moved to China where he lived for several years before returning to the United States after the US resumed relations with China during the Nixon years. A fascinating story you'll want to see and tape. Walter Lippmann ALSO IMPORTANT TO KEEP IN MIND: Rob Williams' book NEGROES WITH GUNS can be found for sale on the internet. Note that there are two editions and the two are quite different from one another. The original 1962 edition published by Marzani & Munsell includes prefaces by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, novelist Truman Nelson, a wonderful cartoon by Jules Feiffer and an introductory note by Marc Schleiffer, a U.S. activist on whose taped interviews the book was based. These have all been removed from the reprinted edition of the book published in 1998 by the Wayne State University Press in Michigan. This new edition, which contains no explanation of why the other material, about thirty pages in all, was omitted. I cannot imagine budgetary considerations were what was involved, but be aware of the difference. The new edition was edited by Timothy Tyson, a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Some background info on him: http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/aas/tyson.html MUCH MORE HERE http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/negroeswithguns/radiofreedixie.html See two remarkable photos of Rob and Mabel Williams here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/07/arts/television/07negr.html February 7, 2006 Outspoken and Feared but Largely Forgotten By FELICIA R. LEE THE NEW YORK TIMES "Negroes With Guns," a 1962 manifesto about a group battling the Klan and other white terrorists in Monroe, N.C., is still a compelling title. But the story of its author, Robert F. Williams, has gathered dust. Once one of the most feared men in the country, he was an architect of the modern black power movement and symbolized a century-long debate among blacks about the need to meet violence with violence. Tonight, amid the Black History Month television programs about better-known figures and moments, comes the documentary "Negroes With Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power." The one-hour film, being shown on the PBS series "Independent Lens," is by Sandra Dickson and Churchill L. Roberts, co-directors of the Documentary Institute at the University of Florida. Mr. Williams toppled from a big stage. He was a local N.A.A.C.P. president and World War II veteran who grabbed international headlines as he advocated for oppressed Southern blacks. He agitated for black freedom while self-exiled in Cuba and China from 1961 to 1969 to evade kidnapping charges in Monroe. "Negroes With Guns," put out by a left-wing New York publishing house, was cited as inspiration by Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, and other black power leaders and is considered one of the seminal documents of that movement. "He forces us to examine our notions of patriotism and the boundaries of acceptable behavior," Ms. Dickson said in an interview about why she and Mr. Roberts chose their subject, whom they discovered while making "Freedom Never Dies: The Legacy of Harry T. Moore," about the first murder of a major civil rights leader. Through newsreel clips and interviews with family members, neighbors, historians and civil rights stalwarts like Julian Bond, the story of Mr. Williams, who died quietly in 1996 without ever meeting the filmmakers is rendered as fascinating in its own right. Edie Falco, host of "Independent Lens," asks rhetorically at the beginning of the film, "What's more American than carrying a gun?" Mr. Williams, in a suit and tie, speaking in his Southern drawl, takes on that subject early in the documentary. "If the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution cannot be enforced in this social jungle called Dixie at this time, then Negroes must defend themselves, even if it is necessary to resort to violence," Mr. Williams says evenly. The clip is from a 1959 press conference in Monroe. Mr. Williams was anguished, family and friends explain, by the dismissal of charges against a white man accused of the attempted rape of a pregnant black woman. There were witnesses, including her child. It was a common occurrence in those days. The small town of Monroe, ancestral home of Jesse Helms, the former Republican senator known for his opposition to civil rights leaders and legislation, had Klan rallies in the 50's that drew as many as 15,000 people to the region. Mr. Williams founded his armed group, the Black Guard, after seeing Klan members make a black woman dance at gunpoint "like a puppet," he says in an audiotape, heard over the film's scene of sad-faced blacks working at a Monroe poultry factory. Still, the press conference comments earned Mr. Williams a six-month suspension as an N.A.A.C.P. branch president. Headlines denounced him as a "racial zealot." In an interview in the film, Beatrice Colson says that as a young black girl in rural Monroe at the time, she and others "had mixed feelings about who this man was," because blacks feared white retaliation. He was also seen as a hero. "You become violent, we become violent," Richard Crowder, a Black Guard member, says in an interview in the film. "We weren't attacking anybody, just protecting ourselves." Timothy B. Tyson, a historian, says of Mr. Williams in the documentary, "Threatened with death, he walked down the street carrying a pistol, which would be a normal white, Southern thing to do." Dr. Tyson is a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the author of the biography "Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power." Mr. Williams was one of the first black leaders to use the cold war to embarrass the United States internationally, contrasting its claims of democratic superiority with the way American blacks were denied their rights and subjected to violence, Dr. Tyson said. For example, Mr. Williams waged an unusual letter-writing campaign in 1958 that brought international attention and ultimately freedom to two black boys, ages 8 and 10, who had been terrorized by the Klan and were about to spend their youths in reform school after one supposedly was kissed by a white girl. Glenda Gilmore, a professor at Yale who specializes in Southern and African-American history, said Mr. Williams had been neglected for decades, in part because his approach underscored the violence of white resistance to black equality. "Robert Williams is drawing on a tradition of people who always thought they should defend their homes," Dr. Gilmore said. "Often, these people were lynched or driven out of the South in the dead of night," after whites learned they were armed. "Negroes With Guns" also shows how Mr. Williams trod the traditional route of trying to desegregate lunch counters and swimming pools peacefully, despite death threats. In 1961, Mr. Williams fled for Cuba and then China with his wife, Mabel, and two young sons after he was pursued on kidnapping charges following a riot in downtown Monroe. His face flashed on television screens nationwide and on F.B.I. wanted posters. Mr. Williams always maintained that he was simply sheltering a white couple in his home from a mob. Dr. Tyson said the evidence against Mr. Williams was always flimsy. The last of the charges were dropped in 1976. "Rob had a machine gun and I had a Luger," Mabel Williams recalled of the night they fled Monroe. They feared lynching, she said. Her husband, she said, was not a Communist, a racist or anti-American, as he has sometimes been labeled. "He loved his country," she said. During their exile, the couple communicated with black leaders in the United States and shined an international spotlight on the black struggle at home. Perhaps even more important, they broadcast a music and commentary show from Havana, "Radio Free Dixie," which was heard as far away as New York and Los Angeles and throughout the South. The topics included race riots and Vietnam, accompanied by jazz and the songs of Nina Simone and others in the protest tradition. The C.I.A. expected Mr. Williams to emerge as the next radical black leader, Dr. Tyson says in "Negroes With Guns," but he did not. Dr. Tyson's book describes Mr. Williams as quietly remaining in the Detroit area, where he lived after returning from exile, working with community and black nationalist groups, speaking on campuses and at prisons. "He never played the politics of civil rights celebrity," Dr. Tyson said. "Negroes With Guns" ends with images of a slower, white-haired Mr. Williams with a bushy white beard, near the end of his life. He died of Hodgkin's disease at 71. His dream, Mabel Williams says in the documentary, was to return to Monroe and live out his days as a gentleman farmer. Although he returned for visits, he never managed to move back. Still, there are hints that the town is far different from the one Mr. Williams fled in 1961. The camera lingers on a Confederacy monument but then swings to a public swimming pool. It is full of both black and white children, laughing. * Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company =========================================================== http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/negroeswithguns/radiofreedixie.html This was really the first true radio where the black people could say what they want to say and they didnt have to worry about sponsors, they didnt have to worry about censors. Rob Williams, in a 1968 interview with journalist Robert Cohen A photo of a rectangular white 1960s-era radio; a two-handed clock on the left side and a tuning dial on the right. On Friday evenings at 11:00, radio listeners from Key West to Seattle tuned in to Radio Free Dixie, an hour-long program broadcast to the United States by Robert F. Williams and his wife, Mabel, from exile in Havana, Cuba. Radio Free Dixie, created for blacks in the South, included cutting-edge music by African American artists, news from the front lines of the black freedom movement and fiery editorials by Rob Williams that railed against rump-licking Uncle Toms and Ku Klux Klan savages. A profile of Rob Williams speaking into a silver radio microphone in a radio studio. He is wearing black, heavy-framed glasses and a suit. Williams got permission from Fidel Castrowho granted Williams and his family political asylum in Cubato begin the 50,000-watt broadcast. The radio program not only kept African Americans in the South in touch with Williams and his philosophy that blacks should arm themselves against white racists, it also introduced listeners to new music, including what became known as freedom jazz, for the songs thinly veiled appeals to unity, protest and resistance. Radio Free Dixie drew listener mail from the coast of Washington State to the ghettoes of Los Angeles to the shores of Long Island. It was even heard on Radio Hanoi in Vietnam. Eventually, CIA jamming and Cuban censorship crippled the broadcast, but WBAI in New York City and KPFA in Berkeley, California, often rebroadcast tapes of the shows. Fans also circulated bootlegs in Watts and Harlem: Every time I play my copy, one listener wrote from Los Angeles in 1962, I let someone else make another recording. That way more people will hear the story of Monroe. Filmmaker Q&A NEGROES WITH GUNS filmmakers Sandra Dickson, Churchill Roberts, Cara Pilson and Cindy Hill collectively talk about the challenge of filming the story of a still-controversial civil rights leader in the Deep South, boning up on knowledge of civil rights-era music and the desire to restore civil rights figures to their rightful place in history. What led you to make NEGROES WITH GUNS? We have a particular interest in unknown stories of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as a fascination with individuals who demonstrate considerable courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Rob Williams also intrigues us because he challenged and provoked leading mainstream civil rights leaders by refusing to acknowledge non-violent protest as the only means to achieving civil rights. His story expands this countrys popular notions of the Civil Rights Movement to include the philosophy of armed self-defense. In addition, NEGROES WITH GUNS has the great dramatic elements that a filmmaker looks forsuspense, tragedy, conflict and triumph to name a fewand a complex main character, soft-spoken but rebellious. Early on, a man confident in the right and might of the legal system and later, a man defiant in the face of what he considered the hypocrisy and repression of the worlds leading democracy. The filmmakers recount how times have, and havent changed in Rob Williams hometown of Monroe, North Carolina. Shortly after the film was completed, we screened it in Monroe, North Carolina, Williams hometown and site of the racial melee. After the screening, and to everyones surprise, the mayor of Monroe presented Robs widow, Mabel, with a key to the city. Forty-three years earlier, a Monroe city official had promised Rob Williams if he didnt get out of town, hed be hanging in the courthouse square by midnight. The Williams fled Monroe that night with city and state officials as well as the FBI in pursuit. Despite giving Mabel Williams a key to the city, Monroe has no memorial to Rob Williams, not even a street named in his honor. Why is it that many people have never heard of Rob Williams? Rob Williams was in exile, primarily in Cuba and China, from 1961 to 1969, or at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in this country. What part of Williams life did you find most fascinating and why? We were fascinated by Robs early years in Monroe, North Carolina when he decided that no matter what the cost, he would not be passive in the face of virulent racism and oppression. He was not only alienated from the white community; he was ostracized by blacks in and outside of Monroe who felt his actions threatened their way of life, their economic livelihood. What were some of the challenges you faced in making this film? Robert Williams kept everythingnewspaper clippings, copies of his political pamphlet, The Crusader, photos of his travels to Cuba, China and Tanzania, letters and personal writings. In short, he provided us with a great majority of the raw materials we needed to piece together his life story. Our challenge was to wade through the massive amounts of material and cull out the most pertinent aspects. Try as we might there were certain intriguing elements of the Rob Williams story that we wanted to include but couldnt for stylistic reasons or time constraints. One of the first things we learned was that Rob Williams hometown, Monroe, North Carolina, was also the hometown of former Senator Jesse Helms, Jr. In fact, the two men were contemporaries. The irony didnt escape us that the forefather of the Black Power Movement and one of the staunchest defenders of the Southern Way of Life grew up in the same small Southern town. In fact, during the height of the 1961 race riot in Monroe, only one reporter was able to interview Williams before he fled Monroe for eventual exile in Cubathat reporter was a young Jesse Helms working for WRAL-TV. Did you meet with any resistance in making this film? We found among older residents of Monroe, feelings still run high and are frequently divided along racial lines. Even whites sympathetic to Williams struggle for equality are quick to point out his impatience and describe what they see as his penchant for violence. We tried to interview whites that witnessed or participated in events relevant to the Williams story but only one agreed to speak with us. One white person agreed to let us use his antique car for a stylization until he found out that we were doing a film on Robert Williams. Ironically, Williams was remarkably restrained in terms of aggressive actions, despite constant threats from the Klan and others. How did you choose the music in the film? The 13 songs featured in our film were pulled from approximately 15 hours of "Radio Free Dixie" broadcasts. To use this material, we had to not only identify the song and the artista relatively easy task in some cases and quite a daunting one in othersbut also identify the specific album on which the song appeared. In some cases, we identified the songs by going back to the old play lists that Rob and Mabel kept along with the recordings. For those we could not find, we used a number of approaches, including calling on jazz and blues artists to lend their listening expertise in hopes they could identify potential artists. And last but not least, desperate phone calls to Robs widow, Mabel Williams, to see if she could make one more attempt at digging around in the bottom of the closet to unearth the album in question. True to form, Mabel came through. We selected songs from "Radio Free Dixie" broadcasts to serve as narrative devices to introduce key turning points in Robs personal and political struggles. In short, music by Otis Redding, Nina Simone and Leadbelly, among others, serves as another story element to provide content and mood. The impact of the "Radio Free Dixie" music is made even stronger through the score provided by Terence Blanchard. We felt Blanchard, an internationally acclaimed jazz composer, could capture the soul and spirit of Rob and Mabel Williams as well as the context of the times. Where did you find the archival footage used in the film? We desperately wanted to avoid using widely-viewed and thus clichéd footage of the Civil Rights Movement that would only serve to keep our viewers at arm's length. We wanted archival material that related directly to our subjects and their struggles. Much to our delight, we discovered a wealth of rare film footage and interviews. For example, our research turned up a 1964 documentary produced by a Charlotte, North Carolina television station in which Rob Williams is interviewed while living in exile in Cuba. Given the tendency of most television stations to discard outdated materials, we were thrilled to discover the station had kept a copy of the original hour-long film. As luck would have it, we also tracked down the raw interview tapes of a freelance television journalist who had conducted an on-camera interview with Williams in the late 1960s. We also found photographs taken during the height of the civil rights demonstration in Monroe. In all, we worked with close to 50 different film and photo archives around the world, as well as members of the Williams family, to piece together the visual history of Robert F. Williams. What impact do you hope this film will have? We hope to restore Rob and Mabel Williams to their rightful place as important civil rights figures who defied the white power structure without the protection of large numbers or the attention of television cameras. We also hope this story will cause people to think long and hard about what it means to be a patriot and what constitutes acceptable dissent in this country. How did you gain the trust of the Williams family? Before we began pre-production on the film, we talked with Mabel and her son, John, about what kind of film we wanted to do, that is, a piece that relied on the voices of the participants, not a narrator, to tell the story and one that gave us complete editorial control. Both granted us complete access to themselves and to relevant recordings, writings and personal letters. Mabel and John Williams never asked to see the film in progress or impose their own viewpoints. In fact, they did not see the film until it was finished and publicly screened for the first time. What period of time did filming take place and when did it conclude? Spring 2002 to Fall 2003. How did you find/obtain the "Radio Free Dixie" recordings featured in the film? The Williams family had entrusted the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan with the recordings. With the permission of the Williams and the library, we secured copies of many hours of "Radio Free Dixie" programming. The independent film business is a difficult one. What keeps you motivated? Were largely motivated by the continued opportunity to meet fascinating people, like Mabel Williams, who have shaped history or are in the process of doing so. Making films is such a creative risk; an exhilarating as well as frightening adventure, but one that ultimately makes us better people no matter the commercial or critical success of the film. Why did you choose to present your film on public television? Public television is the best forum for independent films about civil rights and social justice. The audience is an informed one, anxious to learn about new ideas and re-think conventional ones. What are your three favorite films? We all agree this may be the most difficult question for us to answer. Some of our favorite films include: When We Were Kings, Harlan County, USA, Thin Blue Line, Into the Arms of Strangers, Night and Fog, Scottsboro, Salesman and The Donner Party. What didnt you get done when you were making your film? Laundry, dishes and yard work. If you werent a filmmaker, what kind of work do you think youd be doing? The four of us who served as directors and associate directors are academics, as well as filmmakers. As disappointed as we would be not to make our own films, we would still have the great pleasure of working with graduate students who are in the process of becoming talented and creative non-fiction filmmakers. What do you think is the most inspirational food for making independent film? Cookies, hands down. . . portable, sweet, comforting and evocative of all that was good in your past and all that might be in your future. Which filmmakers have influenced your work? Barbara Kopple for her dedication to telling stories about the struggles of ordinary people to achieve dignity and respect in an often-hostile environment. Ken Burns, for resurrecting the historical documentary and making us passionate about the past. And Steven Spielberg, for his willingness to take risks and his ability to find the humanity in even the darkest moments of life. What advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers? Were somewhat sheepish about offering advice when we feel we still have so much to learn. Perhaps our only piece of wisdom might be to find a good story worth telling. What sparks your creativity? Our creativity is sparked by argumentssometimes pretty heatedamong ourselves as to what the film should be about, what it should look like, what it should sound like. The four of us have worked together for more than 15 years making films and, in the process, staying in flea-ridden hotels, eating badly and infrequently and traveling on holidays. We think this has earned us the right to speak candidly and forcefully about our views and vision. --------------------------------------- <http://blackeducator.blogspot.com> --------------------------------------- -- ___________________________________________________ Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/ Yahoo! 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