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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview K-0266, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Mabel Williams paints a vivid picture of segregated Monroe, North Carolina, detailing the subjugation that ate away at African Americans' sense of self. Among those who resisted was Williams's husband, Robert, the descendant of a long line of assertive African Americans, who slept with a pearl-handled revolver under his pillow. Williams remembers Robert for much of this interview, describing how his militant, assertive conviction in racial equality clashed with the rigid segregationist mentality in Monroe. Unable to assimilate in the way that many African Americans did, Robert earned the ire of white city fathers, who prevented him from finding employment in a quest to injure him and his family and undermine his masculinity. The local newspaper stopped printing his letters, one of his only safety valves for expressing the frustrations that gave him migraine headaches. But these efforts at stifling Robert's activism failed; he only grew more determined to resist white supremacy, arming himself and training fellow African Americans in armed self-defense. Guns became an important part of the Williamses' lives, whether on Robert's hip or on the seat of the car next to Mabel. Thus protected, Robert organized demonstrations to desegregate an all-white swimming pool, and even ran for mayor. Williams eventually left not only Monroe, but the United States altogether. This interview is a detailed account of the life and work of one civil rights activist who believed in violent resistance in a time of non-violent protest.
Mabel Williams, wife of civil rights activist and advocate of armed self-defense Robert Williams, remembers her husband's efforts to overturn segregation in Monroe, North Carolina, in the 1960s.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
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
Well, they don't know anything about—
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.
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.
They didn't really mean—they weren't really worried about you committing crimes?
No, no, no.
Be a little more specific. What kind of boundaries were they afraid you would cross?
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
Was that a white elementary school?
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.
Felt like—?
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.
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—
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.
So your father had a line, too. He wasn't completely—.
That's right. He wasn't—
I mean it might not have been out there where robbers—
Right, right.
But he had a line in the sand—
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—
Rough country?
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.
The Belk family?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Where do you start?
Yeah.
Where do you start?
Another
Well, following the thing that—.
For one of the richest families in the state.
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.
He was a teacher at the school or—?
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.
So when he was doing these things, was it part of Sunday school or was it—?
Yeah. He would do that as a part of Sunday school. Yeah.
The black—or, no—
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.
And even at that time you did not just say—you know
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—
Pretty hard to forget.
Yeah, yeah.
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.
And you had a baby at that time, didn't you?
No. I was expecting a baby. I was expecting a child.
And you were thinking—?
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
It didn't matter downstairs?
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.
It's a very deep-rooted thing.
Yes. And, it's very hurtful.
The reason that you—
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—
Passing places that—
Yes.
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."
Did your daddy work for the Belks, too?
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.
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.
At
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—
They just weren't with it.
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
Way beyond Monroe.
Yes.
That's not what you found in—
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.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
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.
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.
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.
Yes, beyond Monroe. I—
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.
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.
That's right. He makes a great poster, you know what I mean. I'm not against that.
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.
Or burn your tobacco barn.
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—
Yes.
—particularly
Here in Monroe or all over? I think it—
Maybe both.
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
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"
Surrounded by his family.
Yes. Surrounded by his family and loved ones, and so forth and so on.
Had a long life.
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—
The side of good.
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.
And it goes beyond, I mean, you're right. It goes way beyond like the gun thing.
Yes, way beyond that.
Because it's a—. That, I mean, guns to capture a young person's imagination.
Yes, yes, yes.
In a way that having a milkshake poured in your head at a lunch counter does not.
Right. Of course.
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
Yes.
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?
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.
They certainly don't have anything that they're willing to die for.
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.
That's a nice way to put it.
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—
Where did he get that kind of—?
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
They don't want to treat people like family.
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.
Right. So you think—. Robert had this way back and his grandmother, I understand, was his special—
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.
Do you?
Yes, yes.
That's
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."
Good for her. Lucky he didn't get shot.
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.
I wonder why not?
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
Everybody
Yes.
And, of course, how we treat our kin as well. I mean that's—. You're not
southern if you don't, I mean,
Yeah, yeah. I—one of the presidents now, one of the old presidents they have found that—
Jefferson.
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.
Apparently they're starting to look at Washington now.
Yes.
Now they can do this DNA thing to answer questions about George Washington as well.
Yes, yes, yes. So.
No surprise.
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
Yes, yes, yes. But I'm—
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.
Right.
And we're looking
Not much there. All they're doing is grasping and grasping and grasping.
Yeah, terrible wrong.
No.
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.
You want to take a little break?
Yes, please.
When is the first moment—we've talked about what Monroe was like.
Yes.
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.
Right, right, right. Hmm.
Was Robert the first or were there things before Robert that you remember?
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—
You were just a young thing.
Right, right. Nothing comes to mind right away.
Okay.
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
Yeah.
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."
Oh, I like that. I like that.
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,
What did he—what did Robert look like?
What did he look like?
That's a hard question to ask of you.
Oh, yes.
In
He was a very handsome, tall dashing young man. To me he was very handsome and he was—
A little bit older than you.
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.
And how did he carry himself at that time in his life because it was more than looks, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
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.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Would some people call him haughty
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—
I wondered about that because
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.
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.
What did he do to blow off steam, to recreate or did he?
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.
At the barbershop—
The VFW or anything like that?
Yeah, little places like that, um-hmm. Get together with his friends and—
He seems to have almost like a philosophical
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.
You thought he was sweet.
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.
What
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.
This is an unfair question, but what do you think a twenty-three or four year old Robert Williams saw in you?
I really don't know. And I can't answer that question except that in later—
Out of sixteen years he
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—
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
Right.
And then leaving there and going to—out to practice basketball and walk back