Film: Negroes With Guns
”I just wasn’t going to allow white men to have that much authority over me.”
- Robert Williams
“I advocated violent self-defense because I don’t really think you can have a defense against violent racists
and against terrorists unless you are prepared to meet violence with violence
and my policy was to meet violence with violence.”
- Robert Williams
"Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power is the raw and unsanitized story of perhaps the most misunderstood civil rights leader in the movement.
Robert Williams, often dubbed the “violent crusader,” intended his philosophy of armed self-defense to work in tandem with non-violent resistance.
Instead, that philosophy became the catalyst for a national showdown between two opposing philosophies of the civil rights movement.
In August 1961, Freedom Riders came to Monroe, North Carolina-Williams’ hometown-to prove that passive resistance rather than armed self-defense
would defeat the local Klan and improve race relations. But on August 27th all hell broke loose.
By the end of the day, Freedom Riders had been bloodied, beaten, and jailed and Rob Williams was on the run from the FBI.
Featuring a jazz score by Terence Blanchard (Barbershop, the films of Spike Lee),
Negroes with Guns combines modern-day interviews with rare archival news footage and interviews to tell the story of Williams,
the forefather of the Black Power movement and a fascinating, complex man who played a pivotal role in the struggle for respect, dignity and equality for all Americans"
More here and here
To Dr. King's criticism of his policies of self-defense, Williams replied,
"Nowhere in the annals of history does the record show a people delivered from bondage by patience alone."