by Revolution
had gone on had a lready started the picket line. There were
three or four thousand white people milling around the pool.
All the city officials were there, including the Mayor of Monroe. They had dark glasses on and they were standing in the crowd, which kept screaming. Then the chief of police came
up to me and said, "Surrender your gun." I told him that I
was not going to surrender any gun, that the guns were legal,
and that the mob was dangerous; if he wanted those guns he
could come to my house and get them after I got away from
there. Then he said, "Well, if you hurt any of these white
people here, God damn it, I'm going to kill you!" I don't know
what made him think that I was going to let him live long
enough to shoot me. He kept saying, "Surrender the gun!"
while the white people kept screaming.
The City Councilman reappeared and said that the tension was bad and that there was a chance that somebody would be hurt. He conceded that I had a right to picket and
he said that if I were willing to go home he would see that I
was escorted. I asked him who was going to escort us home.
He said "the police." I told him that I might as well go with
the Ku Klux Klan as go with them. I said I would go with the
police department under one condition. He asked what that
was. I told him I would take one of the students out of my
car and let them put a policeman in there and then I could
rest assured that they would protect us. And the police said
they couldn't do that. They couldn't do that because they
realized that this policeman would get hurt if they joined in
with the mob.
The officials kept repeating how the crowd was getting
out of hand; somebody would get hurt. I told them that I
11
NEGROES WITH GUNS
wasn't going to leave until they cleared the highway. I also
told them that if necessary we would make our stand right
there. Finally they asked me what did I suggest they do, and
I recommended they contact the state police. So they contacted the state police and an old corporal and a young man came; just two state patrolmen. Three or four thousand people were out there, and the city had twenty-one policemen present who claimed they couldn't keep order.
The old man started cursing and told the people to
move back, to spread out and to move out of there. And he
started swinging a stick. Some of the mob started cursing
and he said, " God damn it, I mean it. Move out." They got
the message and suddenly the crowd was broken up and
dispersed. The officials and state police knew that if they
allowed the mob to attack us, a lot of people were going to
be killed and some of those people would be white.
Two police cars escorted us out; one in front and one
behind. This was the first time this had ever been done. And
some of the white people started screaming "Look how they
are protecting niggers! Look how they are taking niggers out
of here!"
As a result of our stand and our willingness to fight, the
state of North Carolina had enforced law and order. Just two
state troopers did the job and no one got hurt in a situation
where normally (in the South) a lot of Negro blood would
have flowed. The city closed the pool for the rest of the year
and we withdrew our picket line.
This was not the end of the story of our struggle in
Monroe in 1961. By a quirk of fate the next episode involved
the Freedom Riders and their policy of passive resistance.
The contrast between the results of their policy and the results of our policy of self-defense is a dramatic object lesson for all Negroes. But before I go on to that I have to describe
how our policy of self-defense developed and how the Negro
community in Monroe came to support my conclusion that
we had to "meet violence with violence."
The story begins in 1955 when, as a veteran of the U .S.
Marine Corps, I returned to my home town of Monroe and
joined the local chapter of the NAACP.
12
Chapter 2
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
An IAACP Chalter Is
aeborn In fIIllltancY
• • • •
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
My home town is Monroe, North Carolina. It has a population of 11,000, about a quarter of which is Negro. It is a county seat (Union County) and is 14 miles from the South
Carolina border. Its spirit is closer to that of South Carolina
than to the liberal atmosphere of Chapel Hill which people
tend to associate with North Carolina. There are no trade
unions in our county and the southeastern regional headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan is in Monroe.
There was also, at the time of my return from the Marines, a small and dwindling chapter of the NAACP. The Union County NAACP was a typical Southern branch-small,
not very active, dominated by and largely composed of the
upper crust of the black community-professionals, businessmen and white-collar workers.
Before the Supreme Court desegregation decision of
1954, the NAACP was not a primary target of segregationists.
In many places in the South, including Monroe, racists were
not too concerned with the small local chapters. But the Supreme Court Decision drastically altered this casual attitude.
The Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils made it
their business to locate any NAACP chapter in their vicinity
and to find out who its officers and members were. Threats
of violence and economic sanctions were applied to make
13
NEGROES WITH GUNS
people withdraw their membership. Chapters, already small,
dwindled rapidly.
A Veteran Returns Home
When I got out of the Marine Corps, I knew I wanted to
go home and join the NAACP. In the Marines I had got a taste
of discrimination and had some run-ins that got me into the
guardhouse. When I joined the local chapter of the NAACP it
was going down in membership, and when it was down to
six, the leadership proposed dissolving it. When I objected,
I was elected president and they withdrew, except for Dr.
Albert E. Perry. Dr. Perry was a newcomer who had settled
in Monroe and built up a very successful practice. He became our vice-president. I tried to get former members back without success and finally I realized that I would have to
work without the social leaders of the community.
At this time I was inexperienced. Before going into the
Marines I had left Monroe for a time and worked in an aircraft factory in New Jersey and an auto factory in Detroit.
Without knowing it, I had picked up some ideas of organizing
from the activities around me, but I had never served in a
union local and I lacked organizing experience. But I am an
active person and I hated to give up on something as important as the NAACP.
So one day I walked into a Negro poolroom in our town,
interrupted a game by putting NAACP literature on the table
and made a pitch. I recruited half of those present. This got
our chapter off to a new start. We began a recruiting drive
among laborers, farmers, domestic workers,
the unemployed and any and all Negro people in the area. We ended up with a chapter that was unique in the whole NAACP because of working class composition and a leadership that was not middle class. Most important, we had a strong representation of returned veterans who were very militant and who didn't scare easy. We started a struggle in Monroe and
Union County to integrate public facilities and we had the
support of a Unitarian group of white people. In 1957, with-
14
AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY
out any friction at all, we integrated the public library. It
shocked us that in other Southern states, particularly Virginia, Negroes encountered such violence in trying to integrate libraries.
We moved on to win better rights for Negroes: economic rights, the right of education and the right of equal protection under the law. We rapidly got the reputation of
being the most militant branch of the NAACP. Obviously we
couldn't get this reputation without antagonizing the racists
who are trying to prevent Afro-Americans from enjoying
their inalienable human rights as Americans. Specifically, we
aroused the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan and a showdown developed over the integration of the swimming pool.
The Ku Klux Klan Swings into Action
As I explained in the last chapter, the swimming pool
had been built with Federal funds under the WPA system and
was supported by municipal taxation. Yet Negroes could not
use it. Neither the Federal government nor the local officials
had provided any swimming facilities for Negroes. Over a
period of years several of our children had drowned while
swimming in unsupervised swimming holes. When we lost
another child in 1956 we started a drive to obtain swimming
facilities for Negroes, especially for our children.
First, we asked the city officials to build a pool in the
Negro community. This would have been a segregated pool,
but we asked for this because we were merely interested
in safe facilities for the children. The city officials said they
couldn't comply with this request because it would be too
expensive and they didn't have the money. Then, in a compromise move, we asked that they set aside one or two days out of each week when the segregated pool would be reserved for Negro children. They said that this too would be too expensive. Why would it be too expensive, we asked.
Because, they said, each time the colored people used the
pool they would have to drain the water and refill it.
They said they would eventually build us a pool when
15
NEGROES WITH GUNS
they got the funds. We asked them when we could expect it.
One year? They said "No." Five years? They said "No," they
couldn't be sure. Ten years? They said that they couldn't be
sure. Finally we asked if we could expect it within fifteen
years and they said that they couldn't give us any definite
promise.
There was a white Catholic priest in the community
who owned a station wagon. He would transport the colored
youth to Charlotte, N.C., which was twenty-five miles away,
so they could swim there in the Negro pool. Some of the city
officials of Charlotte saw this priest swimming in the Negro
pool and they wanted to know who he was. The Negro supervisor explained that he was a priest. The city officials replied they didn't care whether he was a priest or not, that he was
white and they had segregation of the races in Charlotte. So
they barred the priest from the colored pool.
Again the children didn't have any safe place to swim
at all-so we decided to take legal action against the Monroe
pool.
First, we started a campaign of stand-ins of short duration. We would go stand for a few minutes and ask to be admitted and never get admitted. While we were preparing
the groundwork for possible court proceedings, the Ku Klux
Klan came out in the open. The press started to carry articles about the Klan activities. In the beginning they mentioned that a few hundred people would gather in open fields and have their Klan rallies. Then the numbers kept going up.
The numbers went up to 3,000, 4,000, 5,000. Finally the Monroe Enquirer estimated that 7,500 Klansmen had gathered in a field to discuss dealing with the integrationists, described
by the Klan as the "Communist-Inspired-National-Association-for-the-Advancement-of-Colored-People." They started a campaign to get rid of us, to drive us out of the community,
directed primarily at Dr. Albert E. Perry, our vice-president,
and myself.
The Klan started by circulating a petition. To gather signatures they set up a table in the county courthouse square in Monroe. The petition stated that Dr. Perry and I should be
permanently driven out of Union County because we were
16
AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY
members and officials of the Communist-NAACP. The Klan
claimed 3,000 signatures in the first week. In the following
week they claimed 3,000 more. They had no basis for any
legal action, but they had hoped to frighten us out of town
by virtue of sheer numbers. In the history of the South in
days past, it was enough to know that so many people
wanted to get rid of a Negro to make him take off by himself.
One must remember that in this community where the press
estimated that there were 7,500 Klan supporters, the population of the town was only about 1 2,000 people. Actually, many of the Klan people came in from South Carolina, Monroe being only fourteen miles from the state border.
When they discovered that this could not intimidate us,
they decided to take direct action. After their rallies they
would drive through our community in motorcades and
honk their horns and fire pistols from the car windows. On
one occasion, they caught a colored woman on an isolated
street corner and made her dance at pistol point.
At this outbreak of violence against our Negro community, a group of pacifist ministers went to the city officials and asked that the Klan be prohibited from forming these
motorcades to parade through Monroe. The officials of the
county and the city rejected their request on the grounds
that the Klan was a legal organization having as much constitutional right to organize as the NAACP.
Self-Defense Is Born of Our Plight
Since the city officials wouldn't stop the Klan, we decided to stop the Klan ourselves. We started this action out of the need for defense because law and order had completely vanished; because there was no such thing as a 1 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution in Monroe,
N.C. The Local officials refused to enforce law and order and
when we turned to Federal and state officials to enforce law
and order they either refused or ignored our appeals.
Luther Hodges, who is now Secretary of Commerce,
was the Governor of North Carolina at that time. We first
1 7
NEGROES WITH GUNS
Robert coaching wife Mabel on firearm use and gun safety in
Cuba, ca. 1962.
Arms in Perry living room in Monroe, North Carolina. Dr. Perry at
right; others from left to right are John H. Williams, Lorraine
Williams Garlington, and Edward Williams.
18
AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY
Guards at Dr. Perry's home with odd assembly of weapons.
appealed to him. He took sid
es with the Klan; they had not
broken any laws, they were not disorderly, he said. Then we
appealed to President Eisenhower but we never received a
reply to our telegrams. There was no response at all from
Washington.
So we started arming ourselves. I wrote to the National
Rifle Association in Washington which encourages veterans
to keep in shape to defend their native land and asked for a
charter, which we got. In a year we had sixty members. We
had bought some guns too, in stores, and later a church in
the North raised money and got us better rifles. The Klan
discovered we were arming and guarding our community. In
the summer of 1957 they made one big attempt to stop us.
An armed motorcade attacked Dr. Perry's house, which is
situated on the outskirts of the colored community. We shot
it out with the Klan and repelled their attack and the Klan
didn't have any more stomach for this type of fight. They
stopped raiding our community. After this clash the same
city officials who said the Klan had a constitutional right to
organize met in an emergency session and passed a city ordinance banning the Klan from Monroe without a special permit from the police chief.
19
AN NAACP CHAPTER IS REBORN IN MILITANCY
At the time of our clash with the Klan only three Negro
publications-the Afro-American, the Norfolk Journal and
Guide, and Jet Magazine-reported the fight. Jet carried
some pictures of the self-defense guard. Our fight occurred
two weeks before the famous clash between the Indians and
the Klan. We had driven the Klan out of our county into the
Indian territory. The national press played up the Indian
Klan fight because they didn't consider this a great threatthe Indians are a tiny minority and people could laugh at the incident as a sentimental joke-but no one wanted Negroes
to get the impression that this was an accepted way to deal
with the Klan. So the white press maintained a complete
blackout about the Monroe fight.
After the Klan learned that violence wouldn't serve
their purpose they started to use the racist courts. Dr. Perry,
our vice-president, was indicted on a trumped-up charge of
abortion. He is a Catholic physician, and one of the doctors