Robert F. Williams - Black Armed Guard

Black Armed Guard

The local NAACP was working to integrate the public swimming pools. They organized peaceful demonstrations, but some drew gunfire. No one was arrested or punished, although law enforcement officers were present.

Williams had already started the Black Armed Guard to defend the local black community from racist activity. At a time when gun ownership was fairly common in the South, KKK membership numbered some 15,000 locally. Black residents fortified their homes with sandbags and trained to use rifles in the event of night raids by the Klan. In Negroes with Guns, Williams writes:

• "acist consider themselves superior beings and are not willing to exchange their superior lives for our inferior ones. They are most vicious and violent when they can practice violence with impunity."
• "It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence."

Followers attested to Williams' advocating the use of advanced powerful weaponry rather than more traditional firearms. Williams insisted his position was defensive, as opposed to a declaration of war. He called it "armed self-reliance" in the face of white terrorism. Threats against Williams' life and his family became more frequent. In 1959, Williams debated the merits of nonviolence with Martin Luther King Jr at the NAACP convention. The national NAACP office suspended his local chapter presidency for six months because of his outspoken disagreements with the national leadership. He said his wife would take over his position and he would continue his leadership through her.