“Non-violence is a very potent weapon when the opponent is civilised, but non-violence is no match or repellent for a sadist.”
Robert F. Williams is rightly remembered for his militant stance on Black armed self-defense — a stance distilled in those iconic photographs, like the one above, where he is poised to fight back, pistol cocked and ready, or through the title of his autobiography, Negroes with Guns (1962). Of course, for Williams , armed self-defense was more than a stance or a pose. His armed confrontations with cops, crackers, and the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina are not only legendary, but they were also strategically effective actions in the battle for African American civil rights.
Importantly, Williams was also a theoretician of armed self-defense. Williams was an intellectual, one whose arguments for violence were as considered and thoughtful as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s arguments for non-violence. Take, for example, Williams’ 1959 essay “Can Negroes Afford to be Pacifists?”, published in the pacifist journal Liberation: An Independent Monthly . (Liberation published a response from King in the next issue, and was the first to publish “Letter from Birmingham Jail ” a few years later). The essay provides a theoretical rationale for self-defense based, not only on Williams’ own experiences, but also on his unsentimental and lucid understanding of the nature of US racism buttressed by state power.
His conclusions are both strategic and moral. “Non-violence is a very potent weapon when the opponent is civilised,” he says, “but non-violence is no match or repellent for a sadist.” The whites committing savage violence against the African American community, in other words, could not be civilized: “The Southern brute respects only force.”
For Williams, the call by African American leaders for non-violence is not merely contradictory, but corrupted and compromised. He argues that advocates of non-violence take an individualist, almost personal approach to violence while they are largely silent on the organization of violence on an industrial scale through war, mass destruction, and genocide in the name of national interests.
William’s position on violence has resonance today, as does his theoretics of armed self-defense. Below, we reprint the essay “Can Negroes Afford to be Pacifists?”
Can Negroes Afford To Be Pacifists?
Robert F. Williams
In 1954 I was an enlisted man in the United States Marine Corps. As a Negro in an integrated unit that was overwhelmingly white, I shall never forget the evening we were lounging in the recreation room watching television as a news bulletin flashed on the screen. This was the historic Supreme Court decision that segregation in the public schools was unconstitutional. Because of the interracial atmosphere, there was no vocal comment. There was for a while complete silence. I never knew how the Southern white boys felt about this bulletin. Perhaps I never will, but as for myself, my inner emotions must have been approximate to the Negro slaves’ when they first heard about the Emancipation Proclamation. Elation took hold of me so strongly that I found it very difficult to refrain from yielding to an urge of jubilation. I learned later that night that other Negroes in my outfit had felt the same surge of elation.
On this momentous night of May 17, 1954, I felt that at last the government was willing to assert itself on behalf of first-class citizenship, even for Negroes. I experienced a sense of loyalty that I had never felt before. I was sure that this was the beginning of a new era of American democracy. At last I felt that I was a part of America and that I belonged. That was what I had always wanted, even as a child.
I returned to civilian life in 1955 and the hope I had for Negro liberation faltered. I had returned to a South that was determined to stay the hand of progress at all cost. Acts of violence and words and deeds of hate and spite rose from every quarter. An attitude prevailed that Negroes had a court decree from the “Communist inspired court”, but the local racist had the means to initiate the old law of the social jungle called Dixie. Since the first Negro slaves arrived in America, the white supremacists have relied upon violence as a potent weapon of intimidation to deprive Negroes of their rights. The Southerner is not prone to easy change; therefore the same tactics that proved so successful against Negroes through the years are still being employed today. There is open defiance to law and order throughout the South today. Governor Faubus and the Little Rock campaign was a shining example of the Southern racists’ respect for the law of the land and constituted authority.
The State of Virginia is in open defiance of federal authority. States like my native state of North Carolina are submitting to token integration and openly boasting that this is the solution to circumvention of the Supreme Court decisions. The officials of this state brazenly slap themselves on the back for being successful in depriving great numbers of their coloured citizens of the rights of first-class citizenship. Yes, after having such great short-lived hope, I have become disillusioned about the prospect of a just, democratic-minded government motivated by politicians with high moral standards en forcing the Fourteenth Amendment without the pressure of expediency.
Since my release from the Marine Corps I could cite many cases of unprovoked violence that have been visited upon my people. Some, like the Emmett Till case, the Asbury Howard case and the Mack Parker incident , have been widely publicized. There are more, many many more, occurring daily in the South that never come to the light of the press because of a news blackout sponsored by local racist officials.
Laws serve to deter crime and to protect the weak from the strong in civilised society. When there is a breakdown of law and the right of equal protection by constituted authority, where is the force of deterrent? It is the nature of people to respect law when it is just and strong. Only highly civilised and moral individuals respect the rights of others. The low-mentality bigots of the South have shown a wanton disregard for the well-being and rights of their fellowmen of colour, but there is one thing that even the most savage beast respects, and that is force. Soft, polished words whispered into the ears of a brute make him all the more confused and rebellious against a society that is more than he can understand or feel secure in. The Southern brute respects only force. Non-violence is a very potent weapon when the opponent is civilised, but non-violence is no match or repellent for a sadist. I have great respect for the pacifist, that is, for the pure pacifist. I think a pure pacifist is one who resents violence against nations as well as individuals and is courageous enough to speak out against jingoistic governments (including his own) without an air of self-righteousness and pious moral individuality. I am not a pacifist and I am sure that I may safely say that most of my people are not. Passive resistance is a powerful weapon in gaining concessions from oppressors, but I venture to say that if Mack Parker had had an automatic shotgun at his disposal, he could have served as a great deterrent against lynching.
Rev. Martin Luther King is a great and successful leader of our race. The Montgomery bus boycott was a great victory for American democracy. However, most people have confused the issues facing the race. In Montgomery the issue was a matter of struggle for human dignity. Non-violence is made to order for that type of conflict. While praising the actions of those courageous Negroes who participated in the Montgomery affair, we must not allow the complete aspects of the Negro struggle throughout the South to be taken out of their proper perspective. In a great many localities in the South Negroes are faced with the necessity of combating savage violence. The struggle is for mere existence. The Negro is in a position of begging for life. There is no lawful deterrent against those who would do him violence. An open declaration of non-violence, or turn-the-other- cheekism is an invitation that the white racist brutes will certainly honour by brutal attack on cringing, submissive Negroes. It is time for the Negro in the South to reappraise his method of dealing with his ruthless oppressor.
In 1957 the Klan moved into Monroe and Union County. In the beginning we did not notice them much. Their numbers steadily increased to the point where in the local press reported as many as seventy-five hundred racists massed at one rally. They became so brazen that mile-long motorcades started invading the Negro community. These hooded thugs fired pistols from car windows, screamed, and incessantly blew their automobile horns. On one occasion they caught a Negro woman on the street and tried to force her to dance for them at gun point. She escaped into the night, screaming and hysterical. They forced a Negro merchant to close down his business on direct orders from the Klan. Drivers of cars tried to run Negroes down when seen walking on the streets at night. Negro women were struck with missiles thrown from passing vehicles. Lawlessness was rampant. A Negro doctor was framed to jail on a charge of performing an abortion on a white woman. This doctor, who was vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, was placed in a lonely cell in the basement of a jail, although men prisoners are usually confined upstairs. A crowd of white men started congregating around the jail. It is common knowledge that a lynching was averted. We have had the usual threats of the Klan here, but instead of cowering, we organised an armed guard and set up a defence force around the doctor’s house. On one occasion, we had to exchange gunfire with the Klan. Each time the Klan came on a raid they were led by police cars. We appealed to the President of the United States to have the Justice Department investigate the police. We appealed to Governor Luther Hodges. All our appeals to constituted law were in vain. Governor Hodges, in an underhanded way, defended the Klan. He publicly made a statement, to the press, that I had exaggerated Klan activity in Union County—despite the fact that they were operating openly and had gone so far as to build a Klan clubhouse and advertise meetings in the local press and on the radio.
A group of non-violent ministers met the city Board of Aldermen and pleaded with them to restrict the Klan from the coloured community. The city fathers advised these cringing, begging Negro ministers that the Klan had constitutional rights to meet and organise in the same way as the N.A.A.C.P. Not having been infected by turn-the-other-cheekism, a group of Negroes who showed a willingness to fight, caused the city officials to deprive the Klan of its constitutional rights after local papers told of dangerous incidents between Klansmen and armed Negroes. Klan motorcades have been legally banned from the City of Monroe.
The possibility of tragedies striking both sides of the tracks has caused a mutual desire to have a peaceful co-existence. The fact that any racial brutality may cause white blood to flow as well as Negro is lessening racial tension. The white bigots are sparing Negroes from brutal attack, not because of a new sense of morality, but because Negroes have adopted a policy of meeting violence with violence.
I think there is enough latitude in the struggle for Negro liberation for the acceptance of diverse tactics and philosophies. There is need for pacifists and non-pacifists. I think each freedom fighter must unselfishly contribute what he has to offer. I have been a soldier and a Marine. I have been trained in the way of violence. I have been trained to defend myself. Self-defence to a Marine is a reflex action. People like Rev. Martin Luther King have been trained for the pulpit. I think they would be as out of place in a conflict that demanded real violent action as I would in a pulpit praying for an indifferent God to come down from Heaven and rescue a screaming Mack Parker or Emmett Till from an ungodly howling mob. I believe if we are going to pray, we ought to pass the ammunition while we pray. If we are too pious to kill in our own self-defence, how can we have the heart to ask a Holy God to come down to this violent fray and smite down our enemies?
Three Centuries of Prayer
As a race, we have been praying for three hundred years. The N.A.A.C.P. boasts that it has fought against lynching for fifty years. A fifty-year fight without victory is not impressive to me. An unwritten anti-lynch law was initiated overnight in Monroe. It is strange that so-called Negro leaders have never stopped to think why a simple thing like an anti-lynch law in a supposedly democratic nation is next to impossible to get passed. Surely every citizen in a republic is entitled not to be lynched. To seek an anti-lynch law in the present situation is to seek charity. Individuals and governments are more inclined to do things that promote the general welfare and well-being of the populace. A prejudiced government and a prejudiced people are not going to throw a shield of protection around the very people in the South on whom they vent pent-up hatreds as scapegoats. When white people in the South start needing such a law, we will not even have to wait fifty days to get it.
On May 5, 1959, while president of the Union County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, I made a statement to the United Press International after a trial wherein a white man was supposed to have been tried for kicking a Negro maid down a flight of stairs in a local white hotel. In spite of the fact that there was an eyewitness, the defendant failed to show up for his trial, and was completely exonerated. Another case in the same court involved a white man who had come to a pregnant Negro mother’s home and attempted to rape her. In recorder’s court the only defence offered for the defendant was that “he’s not guilty. He was just drunk and having a little fun.” Despite the fact that this pregnant Negro mother was brutally beaten and driven from her home because she refused to submit, and a white woman neighbour testified that the woman had come to her house excited, her clothes torn, her feet bare, and begging her for assistance, the court was unmoved. The defendant’s wife was allowed to sit with him throughout the trial, and his attorney asked the jury if they thought this white man would leave “this beautiful white woman, the flower of life for this Negro woman.” Some of the jurymen laughed and the defendant went [sic]. This great miscarriage of justice left me sick inside, and I said then what I say now. I believe that Negroes must be willing to defend themselves, their women, their children and their homes. They must be willing to die and to kill in repelling their assailants. There is no Fourteenth Amendment, no equal protection under the law. Negroes must protect themselves. It is obvious that the federal government will not put an end to lynching; therefore it becomes necessary for us to stop lynching with violence. We must defend ourselves. Even though I made it known that I spoke as an individual American citizen, I was suspended by the N.A.A.C.P. for advocating violence. The N.A.A.C.P. was so fearful of the consequence of this statement that I heard about my suspension over the radio before I got an official notice. The radio announcer tried to give local Negroes the impression that the N.A.A.C.P. advocated tum-the-other-cheek-ism. The thing that struck me most was not the suspension, but the number of letters and telegrams I received from Negroes all over America who showed a readiness to fight. The Negro on the street who suffers most is beginning to break out of the harness of the non-violent race preachers. The fact that the N.A.A.C.P. had to issue a statement saying, “The N.A.A.C.P. has never condoned mob violence but it firmly supports the right of Negroes individually and collectively to defend their person, their homes and their property from attack”, is a strong indication of the sentiment among the masses of Negroes. How can an individual defend his person and property from attack without meeting violence with violence? What the N.A.A.C.P. is advocating now is no more than I had advocated in the first place. I could never advocate that Negroes attack white people indiscriminately. Our branch of the N.A.A.C.P. in Union County is an interracial branch.
It is obvious that the Negro leadership is caught in a terrible dilemma. It is trying to appease both white liberals who want to see Negro liberation given to us in eye-dropper doses; and the Negro masses, who are growing impatient and restive under brutal oppression. There is a new Negro coming into manhood [sic] on the American scene and an indifferent government must take cognizance of this fact. The Negro is becoming more militant, and pacifism will never be accepted wholeheartedly by the masses of Negroes so long as violence is rampant in Dixie. Even Negroes like King who profess to be pacifists are not pure pacifists and at times speak proudly of the Negro’s role of violence in this violent nation’s wars. In a speech at the N.A.A.C.P. convention, he said, “In spite of all of our oppression, we have never turned to a foreign ideology to solve our problems. Communism has never invaded our ranks. And now we are simply saying we want our freedom, we have stood with you in every crisis. For you, America, our sons died in the trenches of France, in the foxholes of Germany, on the beachheads of Italy and on the islands of Japan. And now, America, we are simply asking you to guarantee our freedom.” King may not be willing to partake in expeditions of violence, but he has no compunction about cashing in on the spoils of war. There are too many Negro leaders who are afraid to talk violence against the violent racist, and are too weak-kneed to protest the warmongering of the atom-crazed politicians of Washington.
Some Negro leaders have cautioned me that if Negroes fight back, the racist will have cause to exterminate the race. How asinine can one get? This government is in no position to allow mass violence to erupt, let alone allow twenty million Negroes to be exterminated. I am not half so worried about being exterminated as I am about my children’s growing up under oppression and being mentally twisted out of human proportions.
We live in perilous times in America, and especially in the South. Segregation is an expensive commodity, but liberty and democracy too, have their price. So often the purchase check of democracy must be signed in blood. Someone must be willing to pay the price, despite the scoffs from the Uncle Toms. I am told that patience is commendable and that we must never tire of waiting, yet it is instilled at an early age that men who violently and swiftly rise to oppose tyranny are virtuous examples to emulate. I have been taught by my government to fight, and if I find it necessary I shall do just that. All Negroes must learn to fight back, for nowhere in the annals of history does the record show a people delivered from bondage by patience alone.
Robert F. Williams, “Can Negroes Afford To Be Pacifists?” Liberation: An Independent Monthly 5 no. 6/7, (September 1959) 8.
source: Black Agenda Report