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A southern black community's struggle to defend itself against racist groups.
This book tells the remarkable story of Robert F. Williams--one of the most influential black activists of the generation that toppled Jim Crow and forever altered the arc of American history. In the late 1950s, as president of the Monroe, North Carolina, branch of the NAACP, Williams and his followers used machine guns, dynamite, and Molotov cocktails to confront Klan terrorists. Advocating "armed self-reliance" by blacks, Williams challenged not only white supremacists but also Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights establishment. Forced to flee during the 1960s to Cuba--where he broadcast "Radio Free Dixie," a program of black politics and music that could be heard as far away as Los...
Williams was a compassionate man. He was an intelligent American citizen and Korean war veteran, who claimed his right of American citizenship. Acutely aware of the broken promises of the US government, he remained fully invested in the rights, privileges, and responsibilities the Constitution guaranteed all of its citizens. As many of his contemporaries now confess, Williams’s strength and appeal, as explained by his second son, John Williams, was his uncompromising stance and determination to act on the American dream he imagined for social, economic, and political equality for African Americans. The skills he acquired as a journalist and propaganda specialist were key to his political d...
"The story of Robert F. Williams shows that independent black politics, black cultural pride, and "armed self-reliance" operated in tension and in tandem with legal efforts and nonviolent protests.Radio Free Dixie reveals that both the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement, often portrayed in clashing terms, grew out of the same soil, confronted the same predicaments, and reflected the same quest for African American freedom."
The 2008 Photo Illustrated Edition of Robert Carl Cohen's 1972 biography of Robert Franklin Williams, advocate of armed self-defense in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and prophet of ghetto uprisings and a Socialist Revolution. The story of how an easily contented youngster who dreamed of becoming a poet was transformed into an archenemy of the U.S. power structure. Included in these pages are historically significant events such as Williams' talks with Fidel Castro and Mao Tse-Tung, details of the infighting within the Cuban Communist Party, his meeting with Che Guevara, and impressions of life in China during the first years of the "Great Cultural Revolution." This new edition is illustrated with previously unpublished photos of Williams & his wife, Mabel, in exile in Cuba and Africa. KIRKUS REVIEWS: "The education of one Black man you should not miss, and certainly cannot dismiss."
Black America's leading advocate of guerilla warfare
Curtis J. Austin’s Up Against the Wall chronicles how violence brought about the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, dominated its policies, and finally destroyed the party as one member after another—Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Alex Rackley—left the party, was killed, or was imprisoned. Austin shows how the party’s early emphasis in the 1960s on self-defense, though sorely needed in black communities at the time, left it open to mischaracterization, infiltration, and devastation by local, state, and federal police forces and government agencies. Austin carefully highlights the internal tension between advocates of a more radical positio...
The Law of American State Constitutions provides complete coverage of the legal doctrines surrounding, applying to, and arising from American state constitutions and their judicial interpretation. Using specific examples, Professor Williams provides legal analysis of the nature and function of state constitutions by contrast to the federal Constitution, including rights, separation of powers, policy-based provisions, the judicial interpretation issues that arise under state constitutions and the processes for their amendment and revision. Reference is made to history and political theory, but legal analysis is the primary focus. The Law of American State Constitutions provides an important analytical tool that explains the unique character and the range of judicial interpretation of these constitutions, together with the specialized techniques of argument and interpretation surrounding state constitutions. This is the first book to present a complete picture of the current body of state constitutional law and its judicial interpretation.