[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

DAVID CECELSKI:

This is David Cecelski, Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is another in the Listening for a Change series. It's August 20th 1999. I'm in Monroe, North Carolina. Today I'm interviewing Mrs. Mabel Williams. I was just saying who I was and saying that I was interviewing Mabel Williams in Monroe, North Carolina. And maybe you'll see me looking down here some. And it's not because I'm distracted. I'm watching a little thing that measures, tells me the sound quality is coming through. I might just get a little closer to you. And I warned you that we'll maybe start out with questions [unclear] elementary. But in other ways they're not. We were talking about my daughter and that generation that needs to hear about you and Robert. And if you were visiting a class of young people who wasn't familiar with the story. What would you tell them and where would you begin?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Well, they don't know anything about—

DAVID CECELSKI:

On the way in there yesterday their teacher told them that you and Robert were freedom riders and that they were going to be there to talk about that. But other than that all they've read is Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, yes, yes. I think I would start by explaining to them what kind of a society I grew up in. Like I would tell them what I consider the story of Monroe. The fact that when I was—when I was in elementary and high school, the situation was that we had different communities. We had a black community and a white community. And I lived on one side of town and the white people lived on the other side of town.

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I would tell them at that time that most of my activities were with—the vast majority of my activities were with—in my black community. I had a black minister. I had black schoolmates. And my affiliation, or my association, with whites was just very limited. And the association that I had with whites was that my parents were very protective and they taught us. They tried to teach us to protect ourselves because they were in constant fear that we would run afoul of the law or the white community and get killed.

DAVID CECELSKI:

They didn't really mean—they weren't really worried about you committing crimes?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

No, no, no.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Be a little more specific. What kind of boundaries were they afraid you would cross?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I was always to say, "Yes, ma'am", "No, ma'am" to white people because at any time they may get angry and maybe slap me because I was being sassy. So I was told. We were in a society where there were rules for white people and rules for black people. And black people had to stay in their place. And our parents tried to teach us a place to stay in to keep us from running into trouble with white people. When we would go into stores in the downtown area passing through the stores, we were always told, "Don't ever have your hands in your pockets." Or, "When you go in the store make sure you're going in there to buy something and have your money in your hand." And even if they—even if they would—some of the people in the stores would say that you did something or give you the wrong change, we were not to argue with them because we could get ourselves into trouble and they didn't

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want us to get into trouble. So we were taught basically to just stay away from white folks because that's trouble for you. Just stay away from them, you know. And so I would walk to school past the white school. The white school was about four blocks from my house. And I would walk all the way across town to the black school. And I would pass another elementary school on the way that I just walked right passed.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Was that a white elementary school?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

A white elementary school. But it never occurred to me to go there because I knew that that was a white school and that I was not supposed to be there. In our schools we had books. Most of the books that we had in our schools had the names of white children in them. Because what they would do in North Carolina, in Monroe, was when they would get new books for the white schools, they would give us the old books from—. And so, you know, you had to write your name in a book when you got it so that you were responsible for that book for the rest of the year. So very seldom did we ever get a brand new book. We got used books all the time that were—had already been used by the white school. All our teachers were black. And they, too, tried to encourage us to stay in our places so that we didn't get in trouble with the white people both going and coming to school. And so we abided by that because those were the rules that we were accustomed to. But then not all black folks felt like that I found out later.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Felt like—?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Like we had a place and we had to stay in that place. Some black folks like my husband's family, I later learned, were kind of radical. And they didn't think that we were inferior at all. But I don't suppose that my parents thought that we were inferior but they were not about to assert themselves in any way that would make white folks think that they were equal either. But there were other people who said, "Oh well, you know, yeah. We're just as good as anybody." And they didn't—. I suppose they didn't teach the kids on the—the other kids like my husband's family, they didn't teach them that you must be subservient. They never taught them to be subservient. And my parents taught me to be subservient to white folks. But when I met Robert, I found out that not all black folks were subservient—had that attitude of being subservient to white folks. And that was a struggle for me to recognize that I had—that my so-called place was not just a colored place. It was—that I should have—I had as much right to have a place in the world as any other human being. And it was not easy for me to overcome the training that my parents had put into me, you know; and the society that had produced the kind of attitude that I had. Eventually, I did overcome that and I'm happy I did. But it was a hard struggle along the way to do that.

DAVID CECELSKI:

It was something that was based on experience, too. What happened to people that stepped out of their place in Monroe when you were a girl? What were your mama and daddy afraid of? I don't mean as a child. I don't mean—. Moving past the eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve-year old. But what happens to—

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Oh well, there had been lots of incidents that you could—. You know, I'd hear the older people talking about—especially with the boys.

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The boys were really pressed on not to look at even, look at, white girls because of the—. I heard about lynchings and things like that. I didn't hear of any specific lynchings in Monroe. But just sassy—what they call sassing white folks. I had uncles and aunts who had had run-ins with the police in Monroe, and—because they had sassed police that they—. One of my aunts, I think, one time got slapped when she was standing in a line to go into the movie. She got slapped by a policeman because she had sassed him, you know. So those kinds of things our parents taught us to be—. And my father always kept his pearl handled pistol under his pillow. And we shot that pistol once a year at New Year's. And he'd even let us shoot it at New Year's. And it was my task to make up his bed. And I never—I would wonder why the pistol, you know. But he said there was always this danger that people would come into our home, come after you. That the white folks were going to come in there for some reason that they have found to get you. And so, that pistol was there for the protection of our home.

DAVID CECELSKI:

So your father had a line, too. He wasn't completely—.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

That's right. He wasn't—

DAVID CECELSKI:

I mean it might not have been out there where robbers—

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Right, right.

DAVID CECELSKI:

But he had a line in the sand—

MABEL WILLIAMS:

That's right. Yeah. He was my stepfather and he worked at—he worked on the railroad. And he was definitely a person who was going to protect his home. But he always tried to teach us to not run afoul of any white folks if we could help it. And I don't know what the history of his family had been. They came out of Catawba, South Carolina, down in that area. And—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Rough country?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah. And so—but anyway, he always—. He believed, my parents both believed, in education and they wanted us to get a good education. And they always wanted us to get a good education so that we could get a job, good job so that we wouldn't have to depend on white folks for a living. My mother was a domestic. She worked for the Belk family.

DAVID CECELSKI:

The Belk family?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

The Belk family. In fact my name, Mabel, came from one of the Belk girls. Yes. So looking back on that I remember she was a domestic even before she worked for the Belk family. But my real father was a chauffeur for the Belk family and that's how the name came about when he was serving as a chauffeur for them.

DAVID CECELSKI:

You're—you haven't forgiven—you haven't really—you haven't forgiven white Monroe for the way they were when you were a girl.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I'm still working on trying to forgive Monroe for what they did to my family and to black people in general. And I don't think white Monroe has come to terms with what they did for—to black people. And what they did, you know, to us as individuals. But what they have done to black people over the years. I don't think they have come to terms with that.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Would you mind talking about that a little bit? Aside from your family, Mabel, and what happens in '61 and before. But just to the extent to the people who you grew up and what that society did to black families, black children.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Where do you start?

DAVID CECELSKI:

Yeah.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Where do you start? [Recorder is turned off and then back on.]

DAVID CECELSKI:

Another [unclear] I think it helps people appreciate the courage and to stand up to the [unclear] system particularly [unclear] those early, early years. [unclear] I thought that was a good instinct to talk about Monroe before then you would understand about, you know, about the [unclear] .

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Well, following the thing that—. In our community, we had a tight-knit community. And I was perfectly happy to be with my people. And that's why I can understand from some standpoint, you're a product of your own upbringing. And I didn't have any desire to be integrated into another society because I was perfectly happy with my black ministers, my black teachers, my black friends. And I was satisfied there. And I didn't know, or didn't feel the hurt of the limitations that we were on. I could see that my mother was working for pittance. And there are a lot of things that we didn't have.

DAVID CECELSKI:

For one of the richest families in the state.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Right, right. But we were—she made our home life so pleasant, so wonderful, that I wasn't able to see how—the hurt that she was feeling, except that I could hear it in her voice. And I could hear it when they were discussing—-when the adults would be discussing what was going on or what had happened. Let me tell you an incident. She was working for—before she worked for the Belk family she was working for a family—. I remember the name. It was a—his name was Turner Stevens. And he worked for the hardware company.

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And I heard my mother relate a story that happened at—while she was on the job. She was telling my daddy what happened that day. And she said, "You know today, Mr. Stevens had some of his grandkids visiting. And I was serving dinner and one of the grandkids looked at me and looked at a little dog that Mr. Stevens had. And said to Mr. Stevens while looking at me, 'Uncle Turner, is Nippy's name really Nippy nigger?'" It was a little black dog. And my mother said, "I couldn't help but speak up." And I said, "No. His name is not Nippy nigger. It's Nippy Stevens." And said, the little boy got upset and said, "Uncle Turner, is it really Nippy Stevens?" And she said that Mr. Stevens said to him, "Yes, it is. Now shut-up and eat your dinner." But she said it made her know he was teaching that child hatred of black people. And had—when she was not there they called the dog Nippy nigger rather than Nippy, you know. And so those kinds of things made me know that there was hurt. She was being hurt from the society the way it was going. Well, I had a younger brother who died with tuberculosis at the age of—he was six. No. He was nine and I was six. And while my mother was working for the Stevens, I had been diagnosed as having anemia, being anemic and so we had to have milk every day. Well the milkman did not come to the black community. And so my mother would have milk delivered to the Stevens' house and she would bring it home. And on occasion, on the weekends, I would have to go walk to the Steven's house to pick up the milk and bring it back home, you know. So those kinds of things, you know, the society was just so structured that it was just racist to the core. And there were hurtful things that were happening all the time. And I could hear my father and some of his friends discussing racial incidents, but not

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necessarily all that was going on. But they were talking about how they would be insulted and how white men on the railroad would talk about black women in front on them and things like that. And that they—there was a lot of things that they just had to swallow in order to keep their jobs. And then they would really be proud when somebody would stand up even if they would have to go to jail and get beaten up. They would be proud of the fact that well at least he, you know, he resisted what was going on. But I don't think that the white society—they didn't look on us as human beings. They just did not feel that we were people who had to be considered. We were just servants and kind of nuisance people in the community, I guess. But going through high school and elementary school, I had teachers who were very dedicated black teachers. And there was one man who was a member of our church. He was a professor. Had a little college started. His name was Baxter Perry. And Mr. Perry was—he was very much a, I guess you would call him a Booker T. Washington type. He wanted us to—he encouraged all of the young black people to excel in education. And he believed in education. And he tried to instill in us a pride in being who we were as black people and the fact that we had a history. And to try to get away from the slave mentality that we had a heritage from, the slavery. And once a year we got to study black history, you know, once a year—Negro History Week at school. And we would learn about Booker T. Washington and people like that. But Dr. Perry would tell us about people like Nat Turner [Laughter] —. And Nat Turner—right—and those people: Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth and people like that. But it was done in a way—. He was always—. The white people call him that crazy Baxter Perry. And some of the black people, too, were afraid to associate with Baxter

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Perry because he was—he was teaching us about the rebels within our race who would not accept being less than a human being in the society.

DAVID CECELSKI:

He was a teacher at the school or—?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

No, he was not. He had—. I don't remember when—. I remember he had a bus that he used to pick up people to take to our Sunday school classes at the Elizabeth Baptist Church. I remember people saying that he had taught at a college and tried to start a little college in Monroe. So I don't know.

DAVID CECELSKI:

So when he was doing these things, was it part of Sunday school or was it—?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah. He would do that as a part of Sunday school. Yeah. [Laughter] And it would be interesting to go back and see what Baxter Perry—what other, you know, see about where his college was and all that. That just happened to come to mind as we were talking. But then I guess from that—looking at my early childhood from that point of view. And then getting married to Robert Williams and coming into his family, being united with his family—. When Robert and I first got married I got a job working at the Ellen Fitzgerald Hospital.

DAVID CECELSKI:

The black—or, no—

MABEL WILLIAMS:

It was a hospital where black people were in the basement, admitted to the basement of the hospital. And white people were on the upper level. I learned a lot there. I learned a lot about this society there because I worked there in different capacities. I worked there as a nurse's aide. And I worked there a maid.

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And I worked there as a cook. And I learned a lot about the hurtfulness of the segregation system at that time. In the basement of Ellen Fitzgerald Hospital, the floors were cement. The plumbing that took care of the hospital was exposed over the patient rooms. And the babies were placed in a utility room. Newborn babies were placed in a utility room where we had to empty the bedpans, and wash them out and sterilize the needles. And I can see it this day. They had a couple of bassinets they would put in there, in the utility room.

DAVID CECELSKI:

And even at that time you did not just say—you know [unclear] . Well, this is—it was accepted as just part of the general, second class racist society. Even then you were—?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I was accepting to it because I was very grateful to have a job at that time. However, I began to see the differences that I had not seen before because as a maid I had to go on all floors of the hospital for cleaning. And when I went on the—. I don't remember if it was the second or the third floor. And I went into the—. No. I wasn't allowed into the nursery itself. But there was a nursery there with nurses working inside the nursery with masks on. And the babies were put in the nursery and then taken out of the nursery by a nurse, and taken to the mothers when they were, you know, after the babies were born. While on the basement floor, the babies were taken away from the mothers by nurses or nurse's aides. They even allowed us to do that. And they were taken into the utility room where we washed out the bedpans and emptied the bedpans into the utility room. And as a maid I began to see that. And that was just horrible. I remember—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Pretty hard to forget.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah, yeah.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah. We're talking about little children who are being exposed to germs that could be life threatening. The needles that were being—we put in this autoclave or whatever it was called, to sterilize. We'd take them in there after the doctors or nurses had used them. We'd take them into this utility room to sterilize them. Well that's where the babies were. The bedpans with the waste matter we'd take into the utility room and that's where our blacks babies were in that utility room. So that became one of the most hurtful things that I encountered.

DAVID CECELSKI:

And you had a baby at that time, didn't you?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

No. I was expecting a baby. I was expecting a child.

DAVID CECELSKI:

And you were thinking—?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, yes. My children were born at home, thank God, with black doctors. At the time, if I remember correctly, I don't know if they didn't allow black doctors in the hospital or that the black doctor—we only had one black doctor at the time. And that was Dr. Creft—or that he just didn't go in the hospital. Before that hospital was abandoned, he did go there. And Dr. Perry did go there. Dr. Perry who became one of our civil rights fighters, did go in that basement and did work with those patients in that hospital. But they never—that society never did change that—the position of black people in that hospital. When that hospital was—as far as I

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know—when that hospital was—. When I left that hospital it was still that way. Black people could only be in the basement. And one of the white surgeons down there, Dr. Fulk—. Most of our people thought that, oh, he was the greatest thing since God. He was a good doctor. Everybody said he was a great doctor, a great surgeon. But I remember hearing some white nurses talking one day. And they said that Dr. Fulk said he'd just as soon work on a dog as to work on a nigger. And that was hurtful. That was very hurtful. And the white doctors who maintained offices in Monroe had separate waiting rooms, of course, for black people. And when we went to—had to have a doctor, if we didn't go to a black doctor, and went to a white doctor, we had to go in separate waiting rooms. And they would wait until they had waited on all their white customers, patients, before they would wait on us. So that was another way of seeing that something's wrong here, you know. And I—that began to—it was just so hurtful to see what was happening to our people. They allowed nurses aides and maids in the Ellen Fitzgerald Hospital waiting on the black people there to do injections, and all kinds of things that when I was on the white floor only, I found, only licensed nurses could do.

DAVID CECELSKI:

It didn't matter downstairs?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

It didn't matter downstairs. And to this day I feel that that was a form of genocide. I feel that that was a form of genocide that they were actually using to curb our population or to—. Because they just didn't care. They just didn't care. And I'm not so sure that that mentality is not still there because I still don't get the feeling that they're caring about what happens to us anymore.

DAVID CECELSKI:

It's a very deep-rooted thing.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes. And, it's very hurtful.

DAVID CECELSKI:

The reason that you—

MABEL WILLIAMS:

One of the reasons that I feel such—not a hatred, a dislike for Monroe as a place. But I know it's not just Monroe as a place. I realize that intellectually, but coming back to Monroe and reliving some of those incidents and knowing what happened—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Passing places that—

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Other people just look at it and pass by and maybe think no more about it. I remember the incident when my mother was working for the Belk family. And she had been working for the family—I guess she'd been working for the family—I don't know how many years. But there was one daughter in the family and her name was Sarah. And I used to love to go to the Belk home. And Sarah would give me toys and she'd go in—. She had dollhouses with all this little miniature furniture in it, and stuff, you know. And she would go in and—everybody called me Little Miss Mabel, including her, Little Miss Mabel, you know. And she would go in her dollhouse and give me stuff: little chairs and little miniature stuff. And sometimes her mother would come in and say, "Well now, you've given Miss Mabel enough now. That's enough. Don't give her anymore. That's fine." [Laughter]

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But Sarah became—. I guess when Sarah turned thirteen or twelve or thirteen, I remember my mother coming home from work one day and she said, said, "Well, Miss Mabel, today told me off." We said, "Told you off how, you know what?" She told me now that Sarah has become thirteen years old I have to call her Miss Sarah. And she said, and "I wanted to say to her, is she going to call me Mrs. Barber?" That was my mother's married name. But my mother was crying that day. And that was something. That hurt my heart. And I remember another time she came home from work. And she said that Miss Mabel had gone out of town. But she had me to go shopping and buy, I forget how many pounds of bacon. And told me, "Now, Emma you feed the dog every day." And the dog was to have bacon and eggs every day for breakfast, which that was what they fed him anyway. And indicated to her not outright, but almost accusing her or letting her know that she was not to take the bacon home to us. But she was to feed the dog the bacon and the eggs. And that's what she bought it for and that's what she wanted her to do. And I remember my mother telling dad. And feeling hurt that she would think that she would take the bacon and the eggs home even though we didn't have bacon and eggs everyday for breakfast, you know. So, even though they were good to us in a way that—. Well, one, they gave my mother a job. Her father had bought my mother and father a house to live in when my real father was alive. And every year she would buy an outfit for me for school, to go to school. And those were some of the positive things that they did for us. But my father worked for her for—I think—. I was talking to Gwen today about a living wage. He worked for her for a wage. I don't know if it was a living wage or not.

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He could not—if he had had a living wage, he would have been able to provide those things for his family himself. And my mother the same thing. If she had had a living wage when she was working for them, she wouldn't have had to depend on them to give us second-hand clothes, and even buy clothes for us from the store, if they had been.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Did your daddy work for the Belks, too?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

My father who passed away when I was not two years old. Yeah. But then my stepfather worked for the railroad, yeah. So we were able to—. We had a better economic situation once we were with my father who worked for the railroad. But, at the same time, because my mother came into the marriage with three children, she felt an obligation to help to support the family. And so she continued to work the whole time.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear] in your place [unclear] within limits. I mean, I'm sure that many people considered him very lucky.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Oh, yes, yes. And when I'd go to the Belk store even the white sales people would refer to me as Little Miss Mabel rather than Mabel because they didn't want to disrespect the Belk family. And she would take me herself to the store to buy the things. And I was privileged to have that connection with her that she was going to give me that stuff. But then I would get teased from the kids at school because of it, you know. [Laughter] "Yeah, Little Miss Mabel, Little Miss Mabel." But, anyway—. So I had some mixed memories, mixed emotions about all of that connection. And I realize now that we still were not looked at as deserving human beings, you know. So, then coming out of that environment and marrying Rob, and he's determined. He's been off to the Army and back. And he has encountered all kinds of discrimination

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in the Army. And discrimination was everywhere. And he was trying to get work and ran into all kinds of discrimination because of that. He was intellectually, I would say he was an intellectual superior to a whole lot of these people in Monroe. He wrote letters to the newspapers. He wrote poetry.

DAVID CECELSKI:

At [unclear] absolutely in a grasping kind of mind. Always wanting to learn and—.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes. He read constantly. He was constantly—. We had a library of books. And a lot of times when we had very little money a part of that money was spent for buying another book, you know, because he really had an inquiring mind. And trying hard to understand what was going on. And I think Robert had a basic—. He had a basic belief that once people got to know each other and accepted each other on—accepted each other's—our differences and our likenesses, and understanding that we were all human beings. He had a basic belief that people would come around that that we could live in peace and harmony, you know. He even thought that the government was going to come in our side. From the time I married him until the time that we returned from China, I believe that he had a basic belief that there had to be good people in this government that were going to stand up for what was right because he always wanted to stand up for the right thing. And he felt like other people would join in, good people. And because Monroe did not join in—

DAVID CECELSKI:

They just weren't with it.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

They just were not—. And they didn't believe like that. They didn't really believe that way. They didn't really believe that the government

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should be a government of, for all the people. And I thought—I don't know if they believe that now or not—that the government should be representative of all people and should look out for the best interests of all people. And that is something that when I'm talking to young people I say, "If the Klan had known what a great education we would have gotten, they would never have run us out of Monroe." [Laughter] You know, the Klan backing up the Monroe officials and the FBI coming in backing up the Klan and the Monroe officials. But it was a bad thing that turned into a good thing. Because getting out of Monroe and having dealings with people from all over the world, we were able to open up our minds and grow as individuals and grow to know, to really know, that there is a fatherhood of God and a brotherhood of man. That's the only way I know how to put it. And if you really believe in that, and you have to chose sides. There are forces out here that are forces for good and there are forces out here for evil. And there comes a time in your life when you have to make a choice. And once you make that choice and you choose the side of good, then it just opens up a whole new world for you. You can be tolerant of people's prejudices because you understand that they're coming from, you know, where they're coming from. That that's what made them that way. But then you can appeal to their better side and hope and pray that they will choose as well to support the good forces in this world. And become a part of this big family that I feel that we're—. Those of us who have chosen the side of good are really a big family. And we are a world family. And there's no racism in that family. There are races in that family. And there are people who prefer to be with their people and that's fine. But there is a respect

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for each other, and a respect for each other's beliefs. And so, anyway, that's going way beyond where—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Way beyond Monroe.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

That's not what you found in—

MABEL WILLIAMS:

That's not what I found in Monroe. And I haven't seen that seed of good developing. It may be here. And I hope to God one day I'll find it and look at those people and say, "Here is the seed that is developing and growing in Monroe that is a part of the human family that realizes that we are all brothers and sisters in the final analysis. And we're all—"

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

DAVID CECELSKI:

There'd be a little statue of Robert and you up at the courthouse and probably in the museum at the center for tolerance and struggle. I see a lot of signs about Williams Memorial.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Well, we—. It doesn't have to be—it really doesn't have to be a Robert Williams Memorial. It doesn't have to be but the seeds that he planted in my mind, in my family's mind, in a lot of people. I think those seeds have to be nourished and hopefully, eventually, there will be some young white Monrovians who will catch that seed, nurture that seed and let it grow in Monroe. And then we can feel—I can feel better about Monroe. I haven't seen that yet. And I really hope and pray that it will come in my lifetime.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Yeah. I was going to get to this later. But we can go back to it. But that is something that interests me is how you think in looking back on everything that you and Robert, too, would want his legacy to be—y'all's legacy to be remembered. And not those in Monroe, but beyond, too.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, beyond Monroe. I—

DAVID CECELSKI:

What's the images of kind of Robert and y'all that are—but people don't talk as much about kind of the meanings of a life.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

What did it all mean and what was the struggle all about. And the fact that, you know, people like to blow up the fact that Robert was a violent man or believed in violence.

DAVID CECELSKI:

That's right. He makes a great poster, you know what I mean. I'm not against that.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

And that was a part of what happened. It wasn't that he was—. He was not a non-violent person. Well, no, he was a non-violent person. He didn't believe in doing violence himself to others other than in defense of his own. And I think that his stance on violence—violence self-defense. Let me put it that way. I think his stance on violent self-defense did more for the civil rights movement than people want to believe. Because once those evil people out there found that they couldn't do violence and be immune to violence then they didn't do as much violence as they did when they knew they were doing it with immunity. And that nobody was going to prosecute them or—. They weren't going to have to pay any price if they killed. There used to be a saying, "kill a nigger, buy another one", you know, during slavery times.

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You kill a nigger, you buy another one, you know. And—but when they found out you killed a nigger, you're going to have to maybe somebody—a nigger'll kill you.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Or burn your tobacco barn.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

That's right. So I think that that part of Rob's stance in saying, "Just this far and no further", played a big role in letting not only the racist bigots in the local area know that they had to make changes. But let the power structure know that they had to really move to do some protection or else the country would suffer for it, and fall apart. So—

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear] the black community. And the example that Robert [unclear] set. And that also affected [unclear] —

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

—particularly [unclear] . Could you talk [unclear] other with that [unclear] .

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Here in Monroe or all over? I think it—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Maybe both.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah. I think it affected the black community all over because at last it made them see that, "Well, no, we don't need to accept this lying down and doing nothing. We need to stand up and when we stand up and say, 'no,' we have a greater impact." If we look at—. This is a story that Robert liked to tell all the time. You go by a school and it's a Martin Luther King school. And a little black child says to his mother, "Mama, who is a Martin Luther King?" The mother replies, "Martin Luther King was a civil rights man. He was a great leader of the black people. He loved his people. And he led them in a non-violent fight, struggle. And as a result of that now we have integration

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and blah, blah, we." And he said, "Well, oh, what happened to Martin Luther King?" "Well, he was killed." "Why was he killed?" "He was killed because he loved his people and struggled for his people" etceteras, etceteras, etceteras. Okay. Go down the road and here's a Medger Evers University. Same scenario. "Well, mama who was Medger Evers?" And she explains who Medger Evers was. "Well, what happened to him?" "He was killed because he struggled for his people. He loved his people. And the racists killed him. They killed him." Malcolm X. "Well, mama this is Malcolm X Boulevard. Who is Malcolm X?" Same story. "He loved his people. He struggled for his people. And he was killed." And the message that that is giving to young people, young black people, is if you love your people and you struggle to raise their level you will be killed. So what young person is going to want to become a Malcolm X, a Martin Luther King or Medger Evers or any of those martyrs that—. Now we've got Martin Luther King holiday, you know.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Who's going to want to pattern themselves after those people? Not anybody. No—. And now you look out there. Who's leading? Who's leading, you know. What kind of leadership do you have? Who wants to step in those footsteps? Nobody. But then you've got a Robert F. Williams who—as he liked to say, "Went home to Mt. Vernon" [Laughter] "and lived out his days as a gentleman." Well, like the president went home to Mt. Vernon and lived out his days as a gentleman.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Surrounded by his family.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes. Surrounded by his family and loved ones, and so forth and so on.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Had a long life.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Had a long life, long fruitful life. Loved his people, struggled for people, fought for his people not only nationally, not only in North Carolina. Not only in Monroe, let's say, not only in North Carolina. Not only in the United States, but all over the world. Went all over the world and continued to struggle for his people and then went home to become a gentleman farmer, you know. So hey, maybe, maybe this is the kind—. That's the kind of example that should be out there in front of, not only black children, but white children as well. Hey, if you take the side of the people and you struggle for the best interests of the people—

DAVID CECELSKI:

The side of good.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

And the side of good. And hook your self to that star. Then your life is worthwhile. And that's the legacy that I would like to see for the Robert F. Williams' story. That's the legacy that I'd like to see.

DAVID CECELSKI:

And it goes beyond, I mean, you're right. It goes way beyond like the gun thing.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, way beyond that.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Because it's a—. That, I mean, guns to capture a young person's imagination.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, yes, yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

In a way that having a milkshake poured in your head at a lunch counter does not.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Right. Of course.

DAVID CECELSKI:

But it's something else, don't you think when a child hears about Robert standing up for himself in this way or any of the other people that you think of [unclear] who are [unclear] the—. You know people like George Washington—. It's [unclear] . It's not necessarily just that—. It's not that they're—. That they're willing to use violence.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

But one sees something more behind that. And what do you think someone's going to see? What was behind the shotgun? What kind of—what would be good to see in Robert?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I think they would see a person who really knows that one person can make a difference. One person standing up can definitely make a difference. In not only his life but in the lives of other people. And that that one person—. Rob believed that we all had that responsibility. That everybody's born for something. Everybody is here for a purpose. And that we—. Some people live their lives and they just eat, and sleep and die and never do anything. They don't have any causes. They don't have any purpose. And they think that there is no purpose. Maybe the purpose is just to get money, have a good time, play.

DAVID CECELSKI:

They certainly don't have anything that they're willing to die for.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Nothing that they're willing to die for. But you should have something that you're willing to die for that gives you a reason to live.

DAVID CECELSKI:

That's a nice way to put it.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

And I think that that was the legacy, one of the legacies that he left. And I remember one newspaper article during the time that Robert had said about self-defense. One newspaper article came out and said that he was advocating the indiscriminate killing of white babies in their cribs. Now you know that was horrible. Making people think that this man—. Here's a crazy man out here who is trying to get all the white folks killed. That was just to mobilize white folks against him. And against what was going on that was really the right thing in the society to be happening at the time. So—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Where did he get that kind of—?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I think it was passed down through his grandmother, his grandfather and all the way down from slavery. His grandmother came out of slavery literate, knowing how to read and write. Having been the offspring of a white slave master and a black slave. His grandfather came out of slavery knowing how to read and write. And determined to teach their children that they were as good as anybody on this earth. And that they should stand up for what was right and good. And I think that's another thing that the white south, and white Monroe especially, has not lived up to. I remember I was talking to Robert's brother right before I came here. He still lives in Detroit and he's eight years old. And he remembers going into Sechrest Drug Store in Monroe, and one of the clerks coming up to his daddy. He was a little boy with his daddy. And the clerk came up to his daddy and said, "John you know we're cousins." This white clerk said to Robert's father, "John, you know we're cousins. But don't tell

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anybody," you know. So my eighty-year old brother-in-law remembers that to this day. But those family members, family members would never accept the fact that—like I said—we're all one family even though we're black and white.

DAVID CECELSKI:

They don't want to treat people like family.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

They don't want to treat people like family. And they refuse to acknowledge the fact that they're family because we're so different because we have that one bit of black blood, you know, that makes us black.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Right. So you think—. Robert had this way back and his grandmother, I understand, was his special—

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Oh yeah, was his special person that he loved and taught him about world events and got him interested in reading newspapers early on. And, yeah, she was a very—-. And handed him a rifle that his grandfather had used way back, and a musket-loaded rifle, which I still have.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Do you?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

That's [unclear] .

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes. So his brother also told me that his grandmother looked white. And he said one day a white insurance man came by and said to his grandmother, "Are you the only white family in this nigger neighborhood?" And said she looked at him and said, "Don't you ever say that to me again. I am not white. I am black. And this is not a nigger neighborhood. This is a black neighborhood." [Laughter]

DAVID CECELSKI:

Good for her. Lucky he didn't get shot.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes. He's lucky he didn't get shot. I remember reading some report when one of Robert's aunts was visited by the FBI. And he wrote that she was more—she was worse than Robert after Robert had left Monroe. She said, "Well this is a no-good town." And she should've burned the damn town down. That was one of the direct descendants of this grandmother, her daughter, who made that—. Aunt Cora. She was really a wonderful person, too. But, yeah, he got—. He had a tradition of struggle and of anger at the society for refusing to recognize people as people. And I think that's—. Robert didn't like to talk about it. His older brother John would talk about it. But Robert didn't like to talk about that connection. So he wouldn't talk about it very much. But his older brother would.

DAVID CECELSKI:

I wonder why not? [unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I told him that he wanted to deny that portion of his—that German stubborn portion of his heritage. And he would only claim the black portion [Laughter] because they denied him. I think that's the reason why. And he didn't like that part of it. But, you know, that's a reality that we face. That is a reality when you start to go back and research and find—. I don't remember which president said it was the most inhumane form of slavery he'd ever seen because people were selling their own sons and daughters into slavery. And the south knew that they were doing that. They knew that they—. They knew and they have never faced up to that fact. They have never faced up. Monroe has never faced up to the fact.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Everybody [unclear] . You have to have a humane society because we're all kin.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

And, of course, how we treat our kin as well. I mean that's—. You're not southern if you don't, I mean, [unclear] .

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah, yeah. I—one of the presidents now, one of the old presidents they have found that—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Jefferson.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

It's Jefferson that has these two descendants that they did the DNA and found out. Oh yeah. But they said they still won't allow them to be a part of the home place. They can come to the reunion but they still—. So it's not just a Monroe thing.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Apparently they're starting to look at Washington now.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Now they can do this DNA thing to answer questions about George Washington as well.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, yes, yes. So. [Laughter]

DAVID CECELSKI:

No surprise.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

No surprise, no surprise. So—but that does not negate the fact that there still has to be ongoing struggle. There still has to be ongoing struggle in order to overcome all of the evils of the past. And I think because our capitalist society at this stage is so—. We have so engaged all of our people, black and white and all, into materialism that it is becoming more and more difficult to have any meaningful human struggles, social struggles that tie people together—that tie people together. And it gets back to those people who have

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Page 29

opted for the good teaching their own—their young people that we have something beyond stuff and things. There's something important in this world that is more important than gathering toys and stuff and things. And there's a human element out here that we need to be concerned with. And I'm hopeful that that is going to happen. I'm hopeful that that is going to happen.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, yes, yes. But I'm—

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear] Monroe and I can see you wouldn't have got where you are without [unclear] that you seem to have. [unclear] exactly what' s in front of your eyes [unclear] further vision or something.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes. And one of the things for me personally is that I think this whole experience of my life has taught me that where we are in the world today there is no set solution out there. That the—there's no ism that's going to do it. It is not coming out of any political, specific political force that's out there right now. It's something that's going to come out of something that we don't even have control over. But we know that once we identify with it that it's going to come. And I think it has to do with spiritual. We're in kind of a spiritual warfare. And I think that that's where the solution is coming from. I'm wondering if our country, our beloved country, this time is on the edge of the Roman—where the Roman Empire was before it went plummeting down. A lot of people don't like to think about that, you know. But everything lives—everything born lives and dies, right? And we would be blind if we didn't know that societies do the same thing.

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But then we have to have a belief and a hope that a society will be developed that can be better. We haven't seen the best of what this society has to offer this world. I hope not. I'm sure, I'm sure not. We haven't seen the best.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear] you feel like with especially the end of the Cold War and everything, all of a sudden [unclear] , you know, it's like, okay, we're here. And all of a sudden everyone's starting to look inward like you said. Most at a national level. It's like well, all those years [unclear] was to beat the Soviets. And now they have this huge empire [unclear] .

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Right.

DAVID CECELSKI:

And we're looking [unclear] .

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Not much there. All they're doing is grasping and grasping and grasping.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah, terrible wrong.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

No.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

And people have to, like I said, they have to make a choice, you know. Do they want to be a part of the mean-spirited evil forces that are going on? Or do they want to be a part of the solution, you know. It's like the civil rights song, "What Side Are You On?" Hey, come on.

DAVID CECELSKI:

You want to take a little break?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, please.

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Page 31

[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]

DAVID CECELSKI:

When is the first moment—we've talked about what Monroe was like.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

We've talked about the way black people were kept in their place. What were the first signs the first time there were chinks in the wall? When was the first time you saw a black person stand up to Monroe? Stand up and not end up in jail or worse.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Right, right, right. Hmm.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Was Robert the first or were there things before Robert that you remember?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I was trying to think if there were any incidents before Robert. Robert was such a major part of my life that it's very difficult to think of life before Robert. But—

DAVID CECELSKI:

You were just a young thing.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Right, right. Nothing comes to mind right away.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Okay.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I remember after Robert and I got married. And one thing that brought the realization to me that this, you know, I was in a different situation was when Robert was writing letters to the editor. And I don't remember what the first letters were about. But I remember Robert's father—. Well, first of all, Robert's father telling me in front of Robert, said, "You know that man thinks he ought to be president—he ought to

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be president of the United States." That he should be president of the United States. And he was talking about his son, Robert, you know. And Robert chimed up and said, "Well, why shouldn't I be? I'm a man just like they are." You know. "So, yeah, I think I'm good enough to be president of the United States." Well—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Yeah.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

That was something. My father called me one day and said—when we were visiting he said—"You need to tell Robert to stop calling these people billy goats." And I said, "What are you talking about?" Somebody had told him that Robert wrote in the paper that these Monroe white folks were billy goats. And I couldn't understand what it was he was talking about. He said, "They are bigots." [Laughter] But my father was really afraid that Rob—he said, "That boy's going to get in serious trouble calling these folks billy goats and going on." [Laughter] Which billy goat was an apt term for them because they were—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Oh, I like that. I like that.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

But his rejection of the way people were treating him and his coming home and talking about it. Because he was out there trying to get employment, trying to get his G. I. bill thing together, trying—. And he was running into all kinds of problems and he would come home and talk about it. And tell me what was going on, you know. And the things that he had faced during the day whether it be at the veterans' place where he was trying to get his veterans' allotment. Or, I think they call it a 52/20 or something like that that you get twenty dollars for fifty-two or fifty-six weeks,

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something like that, 56/20. And so he'd come home and tell us about the problems he was encountering. But, in the meantime, he was still writing letters to the editor and complaining about just simple things: stories he would read in the newspaper of something happening, and just complaining in general about the plight of black folks.

DAVID CECELSKI:

What did he—what did Robert look like?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

What did he look like? [Laughter]

DAVID CECELSKI:

That's a hard question to ask of you.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Oh, yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

In [unclear] .

MABEL WILLIAMS:

He was a very handsome, tall dashing young man. To me he was very handsome and he was—

DAVID CECELSKI:

A little bit older than you.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, he was—. In fact he was, what, seven years older than me. He and my sister, and his best buddy were all classmates. My sister was seven years older than me. That was my brother, between my sister and me—the brother that I told you died of tuberculosis—and—. But my sister and I were great friends even though she was seven years older than I. And I spent lots of time at her place. So that's how Robert and I got together. She had married Robert's best friend who was Kenneth Redford. So when Robert came home from the military and he was there, in and out a lot. And I was there and in and out a lot. That's how we got together, yeah. [Laughter]

DAVID CECELSKI:

And how did he carry himself at that time in his life because it was more than looks, right?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, yes, yes.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear] What was his physical presence [unclear] ?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

He was just—he was just an outstanding—. He stood out in a crowd. He was very proud and self-assured, you know, and muscular.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Would some people call him haughty [unclear] that he kind of crossed the line?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

No, I don't think anybody called him haughty. But he was a little standoffish because he rejected a lot of the social norms that even the black people had, especially black middle-class people who thought that because they had an education that they were a little better than some of the regular working people. And he took pride in debating them and pulling them down, and you know, letting them know that, you know, if you didn't have your degree, you couldn't prove to me that you— [Laughter] —you know, that you had one if you didn't show it to me. There's no way I would know it from your intellect, you know. But he was not haughty. He was not haughty. But he was bashful. Robert was—. And people find that hard to believe. He was very shy. Shy, kind of, you know. He didn't shy—he wasn't shy in—. I don't know. He was just shy. [Laughter] I don't know how to describe that. He gave the presence of being very strong. But he was more, I

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guess, more of an introvert. He was a private person. He didn't easily mix into a crowd. He wasn't a loud person. He wasn't a social mixer, so to speak.

DAVID CECELSKI:

I wondered about that because [unclear] , you know, because they're so [unclear] but in a sense the [unclear] and even now in society that someone who writes poetry is usually the most masculine [unclear] sort of inwardness that might be there.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah. He was very private in a way. In his own way. He was a very private person. And really shied away from a lot of social interaction. Loved classical music, listened to it all the time when he was writing, or even reading or studying.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah, yeah. And, well, he loved all kinds of music, but that was—. He would listen to classical music when he was real young. And during the first years of our marriage he was that way. He was very much family oriented. He was very close to his family. But he was not a social, real, real sociable person at the time when we first married.

DAVID CECELSKI:

What did he do to blow off steam, to recreate or did he? [unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

He was not a very sports-minded person, so he did not engage in sports. I guess he was a self-entertaining person, more intellectual than physical. He liked to go hang out with the boys and talk.

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

At the barbershop—

DAVID CECELSKI:

The VFW or anything like that?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah, little places like that, um-hmm. Get together with his friends and—

DAVID CECELSKI:

He seems to have almost like a philosophical [unclear] after that. [unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I think so. I think so. I think he started developing his philosophical outlook very early. Well before I knew him. And kind of, I guess, measured everything by that point of view, you know, the philosophy that he had already developed in his own mind.

DAVID CECELSKI:

You thought he was sweet.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Oh yes, handsome, good-looking, sweet, loving. Oh yes. I fell madly in love with him. And, of course, my mother was terrible upset and my father, too, because I was a high school student and they wanted me to finish school and go to college. My sister had finished Spellman College, and was already out and had a job teaching. And so that was supposed to be my next move. I was supposed to follow in her footsteps, you know, and do that. But when I fell in love with Robert that was out the window for a while.

DAVID CECELSKI:

What [unclear] there was nothing—they didn't have anything against Robert or did they—?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

No. They didn't have anything against him personally except they thought he was too old for me. And that they didn't want—they felt like I was throwing my life away to give up everything for him, you know.

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And eventually quit school and got married. And, well I did go back. And he always encouraged me to continue my education. He used to laugh about the fact—he'd said, "I raised Mabel", you know. And his Uncle Charlie was—had been a teacher. And it seems that Uncle Charlie had married one of his students and, also, sent her back to school to finish her education when they got married. So he'd tell me about that lady, you know.

DAVID CECELSKI:

This is an unfair question, but what do you think a twenty-three or four year old Robert Williams saw in you?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

I really don't know. And I can't answer that question except that in later—

DAVID CECELSKI:

Out of sixteen years he [unclear] .

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Right, right. In later years I—when we would talk and I'd look at some of the development that had gone on before and think about his girlfriends that he'd had before. I think at twenty—what was it twenty-three, twenty-one—I think he was ready to choose a wife. I really do. And I think he was attracted to me biologically, as well as—

DAVID CECELSKI:

[unclear]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah. And I was a little wild. That's the way he—he described me as wild. I didn't describe myself as wild. But he described me as a little wild because I always did walk fast. And very outgoing, loved basketball, played basketball all the time. Got in a lot of trouble because I played basketball. We didn't have a gym. We had to walk all the way to Camp Sutton from here. Camp Sutton is down about two or three miles outside of Monroe. That's where the

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Army camp used to be. And we'd walk there to go practice basketball and then have to walk back to New Town and back on to our house. It seemed like six or seven miles. I'm told now that it's only maybe about four miles. But walking four miles a day—. But that was after walking to school and having school all day.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Right.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

And then leaving there and going to—out to practice basketball and walk back this way and back home. So, usually I'd leave home early in the morning to go to school and when I'd get home it'd be after dark, in the evening, you know.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Your mama didn't like that?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Oh, she didn't like that at all. And she'd really get on me about that.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Did you play on a team?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Oh yeah, I played on a team. In fact Robert's brother was our assistant coach for a while. His older brother, the one that I told you is eighty.

DAVID CECELSKI:

John?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah, John. He had come home from the Army and he worked with us as assistant coach for our girls—girls and the boys, too. And we used to travel all around: Concord, Wadesboro, playing. And I was one of the star forwards on the team.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Were you?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Enjoyed that tremendously. And even after we got married for a while I went back and I played basketball when I was back in school. Robert didn't like that so well. He'd, " You don't need—a married woman don't need to be out there playing basketball." Finally I had to give that up. But, yeah, I was really an all-out athletic person. And I loved school. I loved my teachers and I loved the subjects. And I was a good student as well. I think maybe Robert might have—. He didn't know a lot about me, but in our conversations I think he might have seen some potential that I didn't even see in myself at the time. So that's the best I can answer that question.

DAVID CECELSKI:

And you saw it in him?

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, yes. And he was a great teacher. Eventually he was a great teacher. Of course, we had our problems like any young couple will have. And especially the fact that here I am a person who was trying to accommodate the status quo. And here was this man that I had married who was always out there questioning the status quo and protesting against it. And not being able to conform the way I could conform. I could accept it and walk away. I could walk away from the conditions like in the basement of that hospital. I could walk away and accept the fact that I was given a job, and that I was allowed to learn some things on that job that would, you know, be helpful to me. But I could walk away from that and walk into another job that was just as segregated, but maybe would give me a little bit more money and a little bit more opportunity. And knowing that this is—it's a job. It's a way of living. I can help support the family. But he was not able to do that. And especially when he was in a position where he had gotten a job.

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For instance, they were building this highway down here. He and some of his friends got a job on the highway. The white man was a foreman and he couldn't read and write. And all of those fellows had been—had finished high school and some had been to the Army. And some of them had even had some college training. And they had these minimum wage jobs. And the foreman was a white man who could not read and write. And Robert, that was something he couldn't accept. He just could not accept. Early on he started having migraine headaches from the pressure of the things that he saw in the society that were so wrong. And when he—

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Other than the situation being the enemy, you know. And that created a lot of friction with me and him, as well as in the society because I, at that time, could not accept a lot of that either, you know. Well, you know, everybody, all of the black people have to make accommodations with—in order to make a living, you've got to make accommodations.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Right.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

And he would make accommodations for as long as he could. But he couldn't keep his mouth shut about it. He would say, "Okay, I got this job. Wonderful. I got this job. That's wonderful." But the first time he encountered a situation—. He didn't hide his talents under the bushel. If he saw somebody who was supposed to be his superior and that superior asked him a question, he let it be known right away that he knew more about it than his superior did. And that got him in trouble a lot of times, you know. Because a lot of times you

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have to" hee-hee, ha-ha, yeah", in order to keep a job. Black folks have been traditionally good with that. But he was not good at that, you know. I could hear jokes about black people and say, "Yeah. Ha-ha", and walk away. But if he heard a joke about a black person that was a derogatory joke, he would not feel the same. And his reactions were different from mine. And not only that, but he did not stop writing in the paper: letters to the editor and his poetry, and having them published while he was working on these jobs. And if an employer found out that he was one of these, what they called smart or uppity niggers that was writing in the paper, they'd fire him just for that, you know. So sometimes I would—I was in the position of being a part of the problem for him because I was trying to get him to conform. And he was trying to get me to see that we should not conform. So those were some of the things that caused friction in our relationships.

DAVID CECELSKI:

Especially once you had the children.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

Yes, yes, yes, especially then, yeah. And he was very—. He was a good daddy, a good father. He taught the boys a lot. And they learned a lot. They learned a lot from him.

DAVID CECELSKI:

When was the first time that Robert went beyond in Monroe—when was the first time he went beyond the letter writing or standing up maybe to one person on the job.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

That came when he became president of the NAACP. I think that must have been around '56 or sometime when all of the local

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professional people were experiencing a lot of problems if they belonged to the NAACP, or if the white folks thought they belonged to the NAACP. There was a lot of economic pressures that were coming down. Teachers, just all of those people—. The local white power structure was letting it be known that they were not going to tolerate having their Negroes being part of that—what they called that Communist-backed NAACP. And so the professional people—and they were most of the people that belonged—black people who—. When Robert came back from the Army and he was elected—. He went in the NAACP thinking this is the organization now that's going to help to bring about all these changes, you know. And the Supreme Court has made the decision and now, everything's going to be just fine. And he went into the NAACP with that in mind. And most of those folks just either left, or when they joined they told they would join under a pseudonym, under an anonymous name, and "don't tell anybody that I belong." Even a mother who was a teacher and her daughter was a teacher. The mother didn't know that the daughter was a member. The daughter didn't know that the mother was a member because they were afraid of the economic pressure, you know. And I remember one black guy who was a janitor at one of the local places. And I don't remember what the place was. But he said that—. And he had been a member of the NAACP for a long time. And he was sweeping around and they were having a meeting, or he was in the room somehow. And he said he heard this, one of the fellows said, "I wouldn't have one of those nigger NAACP people working for me." And he had never spoken up, had had the job for twenty or thirty years, had never said anything. And he said he threw his broom down and said, "Well, goddamnit, you got one now."

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[Laughter] And he came and told Robert about it. And Robert said, "No, no, no, no. That was the wrong thing for you to do." And he said, "Robert, I couldn't help it. I just was fed up."

DAVID CECELSKI:

That was it.

MABEL WILLIAMS:

That was it. And after that, "I just couldn't help it. I just couldn't help it." He got fired, you know. And I don't remember what happened after that. But every time Robert would enroll somebody else in the NAACP he would warn them, "Don't tell anybody that you belong, especially the people that you work for, you know. You can tell your other friends. But don't tell the people that you work for that you've joined."

DAVID CECELSKI:

So all these people, the professional people leave and Robert's left—

MABEL WILLIAMS:

With hardly anybody and he just went and recruited among just ordinary common folks on the street. He liked to tell the fact that his first members came from the poolroom. He went into a pool hall. And his mother had been a very deeply religious woman, you know. Had warned him. She was always afraid that her children would turn out to