The Memoirs of Robert and Mabel Williams: African American Freedom, Armed Resistance, and International Solidarity

Born in Jim Crow–era Monroe, North Carolina, Robert F. Williams and Mabel R. Williams were the state’s most legendary African American freedom fighters. Their leadership in Monroe marked the beginning of a lifelong pursuit of freedom and justice—not only for Black people in the United States but for oppressed populations around the world. Their activism anticipated major developments in the civil rights and Black Power movements, including Malcolm X’s call to resist oppression “by any means necessary,” the rise of the Black Panther Party, and Black solidarity with Third World liberation movements. Robert chronicled his early experiences in Monroe in his classic 1962 book Negroes with Guns and completed a draft of his memoir, While God Lay Sleeping, shortly before his death in 1996. Mabel began writing her own memoir before her passing in 2014. Their family selected John H. Bracey Jr., Akinyele K. Umoja, and Gloria Aneb House to…