Robert Franklin Williams, born on this day in 1925, was an American civil rights leader and author known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and being a proponent of armed self-defense within the black community. He succeeded in integrating the local public library and swimming pool in Monroe, and helped gain support for gubernatorial pardons for two young African-American boys who had received lengthy reformatory sentences in what was known as the "Kissing Case of 1958."

At a time of high racial tension and official abuses, Williams promoted armed Black self-defense in the United States. Williams obtained a charter from the National Rifle Association and set up a rifle club to defend black people in Monroe from Ku Klux Klan, once driving them out of his neighborhood with gunfire.

After allowing a white couple to take refuge in their home during race riots, the local police indicted Williams for kidnapping the couple, forcing him to flee the country and take up residence in Cuba as a guest of Fidel Castro. While there, he ran a radio program called "Radio Free Dixie" with Castro support. In 1966 Williams moved to China where he became a friend and advisor to Mao Zedong.

In 1969, he returned to the United States and adopted more moderate political views. In 1996, Williams died of Hodgkin's Lymphona in Grand Rapids, Michigan.


Hola Camaradas :fidel-salute-big: , Our Comrades In Texas are currently passing Through some Hard times :amerikkka: so if you had some Leftover Change or are a bourgeoisie Class Traitor here are some Mutual Aid programs that you could donate to :left-unity-3:

The State and Revolution :flag-su:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

The Conquest of Bread :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:

Follow the ChapoChat twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:

Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:

!genzedong@hexbear.net :deng-salute:

!agitprop@hexbear.net :allende-rhetoric:

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!neurodiverse@hexbear.net :Care-Comrade:

  • coeliacmccarthy [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    In February 2016 the bottom of my beard was maybe 5% white. It is now 75% white.

    This fuckin country is aging me so fast. The very air is corrosive. I can hear my telomeres crackling as they crumble away

    i die with america

  • longhorn617 [any]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    My favorite lib brain political opinion is when they are like "I don't agree with their tactics" for black civil rights leaders who didn't believe in non-violence but they also won't shut up about the founding fathers. The Black Panthers were infinitely more justified in rebelling against the government than a bunch of land-owning, slave-owning, rum-smuggling, tax-evading white men.

    And by favorite I mean infuriating.

  • thelastaxolotl [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    4 years ago

    “As far as I can tell, the American democracy, I feel, deceives its people into voting, but neither the government nor the people actually govern. It’s the transnational corporations who govern, whether with the Democrats or with the Republicans.”

    -- Evo Morales :evo:

  • poke_dex [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    we live in hell https://twitter.com/pareene/status/1365112233362137090?s=20

    to simplify: If the vice president says, "parliamentarian is wrong," you need 60 votes to overrule her. So 40 votes to keep minimum wage increase in the bill and 50+1 to pass it. If Sinema or Manchin sink the whole thing over it there's literally no hope for passing anything.

    :elmofire:

  • Lil_Revolitionary [she/her,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Woman: I am married now. Please refer to me with the prefix "Mrs" and also my last name is different

    Society: This is based and tradpilled

    Different Woman: I am transgender. Please refer to me with the pronouns "she/her" and also my first name is different

    Society: What the fuck

  • Ghghghz [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I feel like all I do is come on to the megathread and give out about my renting situation but some good news finally. My landlord attempted to raise my rent for the coming month and gave me only 3 days notice. I contacted the tenant-landlord dispute board and they told me she has to give me 90 days written notice before she increases my rent. I emailed her and told her I'll be paying her the previously agreed on amount, not the new rent she wants me to pay. So that's a small victory

  • adfsadfsadfsadf [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The saddest part of Les Misérables is what Victor Hugo thought the 20th century would be like.

    Yes, instruction! Light! Light! all comes from light, and all returns to it. Citizens, the nineteenth century is grand, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then there will be nothing more like old history.

    Men will no longer have to fear, as now, a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations with the armed hand, an interruption of civilisation depending on a marriage of kings, a birth in the hereditary tyrannies, a partition of the peoples by a Congress, a dismemberment by the downfall of a dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting head to head, like two goats of darkness, upon the bridge of the infinite.

    They will no longer have to fear famine, speculation, prostitution from distress, misery from lack of work, and the scaffold, and the sword, and the battle, and all the brigandages of chance in the forest of events. We might almost say: there will be no more events.

    Men will be happy. The human race will fulfil its law as the terrestrial globe fulfils its; harmony will be re-established between the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate about the truth like the star about the light.

    Tweet

    I quoted a bit more than is in the tweet.

      • MichoganGayFrog [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Same! I find regardless of strain it gives me a big get up and go kinda high. I used to live on a farm and grew a LOT of weed. I'd get up and have fresh picked fruit and veggies and eggs from our chicken pals with coffee and bourbon, I'd then take my bigass wooden Gandalf looking pipe and the rest of my bourbon and do a day of farmwork. Shit ruled

      • AlephNull [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I always seem to lose half of it in handling. Went with compressing into pucks for storage, followed by crumbling into oil/fat for consumption

        • quartz242 [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          The grinder I got has a little wedge in the collection bin which has worked well so far.

        • MichoganGayFrog [they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I have it pressed down pretty good, pan super low heat, wrap in foil and add some weight for a couple seconds and you're good. I've got a stupid amount of hash and normal weed as well, I'm just gathering and ripping kief for a fun novelty but it got me pretty ripped