Robert F. Williams: Memories of A Child

Robert F. Williams

1925-1996

In 1936, Robert F. Williams witnessed the beating of an African-American woman by a white policeman in Monroe, North Carolina. Watered by hate and love...bitterness and empathy...anger and good will...the seeds of a grassroots revolution sprouted...Robert was only 11 years old. The policeman, "infamous" Jesse Alexander Helms (and father of racist Sen. Jesse Helms), was an intimidating brute of a man who "had the sharpest shoes in town and didn't mind using them."

Monroe, NC Protest

Robert describes the scene:

 "He beat her, dragged her off to the nearby jailhouse, her dress up over her head, the same way that a cave man would club and drag his sexual prey...her tortured screams as her flesh was ground away from the friction of the concrete..the emasculated black men hung their heads in shame and hurried silently from the cruelly bizarre sight."

Seared into his memory, Robert Williams grew out of the racist soil of Monroe, North Carolina to become one of the most influential, radical, and marginalized Civil Rights leaders of the era. "We" have perfectly and purposely forgotten him in "our" selective narrative/ positive memories of Civil Rights. But, hopefully we know better...if we truly study history, we will realize that the Civil Rights Movement was always alive in the heart of the rural south, the industrialized north, the classroom, the church, the "colored section", the sweet innocence of a child...