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30 Seconds to Zero: The Crusader Collection By Mabel and Robert Williams "NOTICE: Any portion of THE CRUSADER may be reproduced and used by any individual or group so desiring without specific permission." Anti-Copyright 1962 – 2023 No rights reserved. This book is encouraged to be reprinted, redistributed, recirculated, made accessible by any means necessary. This work is not an encouragement to violence; its purpose is solely as educational, archival or research material. The Rookery Press#003 rookerypress.wordpress.com Table of Contents Introduction......................................................................1 The New Left: Old Ideas in a New Front..........................12 USA: The Potential of a Minority Revolution Part 1..........17 USA: The Potential of a Minority Revolution Part 2..........30 USA: The Potential of a Minority Revolution Part 3..........44 Reconstitute Afro-American Art to Remold Black Souls...69 Afro-Americans & Slick John Kennedy.............................73 Justice and The Crusader................................................77 Reveille For Black Folks...................................................79 30 Seconds to Zero Introduction Self Respect, Self Defense & Self Determination; interview with Mabel Williams March 14th 2004 Mabel Williams: It’s more than fifty years that I've been involved in the civil rights – human rights struggle, and I came into it kickin’ and screamin’. Actually, I was a victim of the racist and segregated society in Monroe, North Carolina where we had our Black schools, our Black churches, our Black preachers, our Black teachers. And I loved every minute of it. I didn’t want to have nothin’ to do with white folks, period! And my parents, like most parents – Black parents, during that time, did everything they could to protect us from the evils of that segregated society. But I fell in love, from high school, with a guy who had a totally different outlook on life. He didn’t think that he should stay in his place, and submit to segregation. Well I fell in love with him, we got married, and one evening we were sitting around listening to the radio, and his father told me, he said: “Mabel, you know what, that man thinks he ought to be president of the United States.” And I said “what?” And Rob said: “And why not? I’m a man, and he’s a man why shouldn’t I want to be president of the United States?” So, I knew then my life was about to change. So we went trying to make a living in the United States in the south of that time. The power structure did the same thing, ladies and gentlemen, that it’s doing today. It allowed women to have a job, albeit, a meager job, but they denied our men the right to have economic independence so that they could support families. So they were at that time trying to keep us in our place. Well, Robert wasn’t going to stay in his place, and we had all kinds of problems, with him goin’– trying to get jobs. They were giving him a job 1 30 Seconds to Zero working in construction, and had a white man over him who could neither read nor white, and he had to fill out his own time sheet, but that white man was a foreman. I won’t go on and on about that, but I just wanted to tell you about what the beginning was, and when I say, I went into it kickin’ and screamin’, it was because I was thinking that I should stay in my place, but Robert had other ideas, and I grew from that, and I developed as the struggle developed, as we began to fight against the racism of discrimination–individual and then it spread out, and then I began to get a consciousness that followed me all the way to Cuba, China, through the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and back “home” again. And I am so delighted to see young people here today and hope that we can inspire them to continue the fight. Because that struggle – there are evil forces out here who want to see us not make any progress, they want to put us back where we were, and where I used to accept, and we say: “hell no, we will not go.” The Kissing Case There were two little [Black] boys, eight and ten, playing with some little white girls and boys in the meadows. And, a kissing game ensued. Well, the kids didn’t think anything about it. One of the little white girls went home and told her momma: “momma I was playin' with Hanover today, and I kissed him.” Well, her white mother got all excited, started scrubbing her mouth wit' soap and water, and when the father came in, she told the father about it. And the father got upset, and he got his shotgun, and he got with some of his neighbors, and they were going to go and find the boys. He was planning to kill him. I don’t know how the sheriff got involved in it, but the chief of police went 2 30 Seconds to Zero and arrested those two little boys, took them to court, the judge said he had a separate trial for the white family, brought them in so they didn’t have to face the “Black ones.” Had a trial for those boys, and sentenced them to indeterminate sentencing. They were going to have to go to a juvenile home until they were twenty-one years old for kissing a white girl while they were playing. Meanwhile, while they were in jail, happened to be around Halloween, and the police thought it would be funny to put on Klan robes and scare them, and they did that. They had them in the basement of the jail. Those boys had not seen their mothers since they had been arrested. They did not see their parents until the so-called trial. Well, Robert heard about it, and we started a Defense Committee for the boys, and Robert was very excellent at getting word out. He wrote up some news releases and we had a Crusader at that time, and we sent out news releases, and we were able to get people all over the country concerned about it. And one Dutch paper ran an editorial with a picture saying that these little boys were jailed for a kiss. There was a young white reporter, who came to our town and she wanted to do the story. And so Rob took her to the place where the boys were held, and they slipped in a camera and took pictures of the little boys. We were able finally to get those little boys released, after lots and lots of pressure. Because, when their picture appeared on the front page of this Dutch paper, there was a big outcry. And the United States then put pressure on North Carolina, and North Carolina put pressure on our county. But, they accused Robert of being a communist, of course. ‘Cause only communists y’know would come forth, not good southern people, to intervene in a case like that. 3 30 Seconds to Zero If you get a chance to read Negroes With Guns, there is an account of that story there, and also in Radio Free Dixie. In Monroe, North Carolina we knew that the power structure in the local town was against us, but we didn’t know when we started fighting that the FBI was supporting the power structure. That the federal government was supporting the power structure. We were asking for simple things – we thought were simple things. Just the right to have a job in a plant that was being supported by tax dollars – government contracts, but they wouldn’t give us that. Robert was one, trying to go through channels, asking the federal government to come in and intervene: “look what these people are doing to us.” They were oppressing us terribly, but at the same time, not unlike what was happening with them [the Black Panthers]. When the Klan would come out, people would be afraid. That had been our history. The people would go into houses, and close the doors, and pull down the blinds. And had the guns in there, but they still would be afraid of the Klan. Well, Robert said: “We should not be afraid of the Klan, ‘cause if they were going to invade our communities, we should protect ourselves.” Well he was very much one for obeying the law, and the law said you could carry a gun as long as it wasn’t concealed. So he walked around with a Luger on one side, and when we drove our cars around even during our Civil Rights Movement, we had a gun on the seat of the car. So, they were legal, he was trying to stay within the legality of what the law said, see. But what he knew, but did not accept is, that the law wasn’t meant for us, but he was going to make it be for us. He said, he would rather die, just five minutes standing up like a man, than crawling at the feet of his oppressors. Fortunately, he never had to kill anybody. I witnessed three attempts on his life while the authorities stood there and 4 30 Seconds to Zero watched, and pretended that they just didn’t see. On one occasion he asked the chief of police: “Did you see that, do you hear those shots?” We were picketing at the swimming pool and people were shooting at our demonstrators, and the police chief said: “No I didn’t hear anything Robert.” And Robert said: “Well I’m glad to know you’re hard of hearing, cause when we start shooting, you won’t hear that either.” We were in Monroe and we had all kinds of demonstrations for- we used the tactical demonstration of nonviolence, trying to sit down on a lunch stool reserved for white people, and as we would go around to the different drug stores – no less, they would sell us the medicine, but we couldn’t sit down and have an ice cream cone. So we’d go to the drugstores, picketing. Robert was arrested in that incident. We’d picket the swimming pool, we asked for one day in the swimming pool, y’know if they could not build one in our community. “Well just give us one day,” and they said “oh no we can’t do that” Rob said “why?,” and they said “we’d have to wash out the pool after you used it.” Anyway, that’s what spurred us to continue picketing for the right to swim in a tax-supported swimming pool. We had a 10-part program that we presented to the city officials asking for basic human rights, and they weren’t about to budge, because they knew they had the backing of the Klan, and the state troopers, and the federal government, and everybody else. At one time, the Freedom Riders, who were down in Alabama, came in, asked if we would accept them to come in and demonstrate in our hometown to help us– actually they wanted to prove that nonviolence worked. And so Robert said: “You can come in, and we will protect you as long as you are in our community. But, I’m not going out there because, they know that I’m not going 5 30 Seconds to Zero to allow anyone to spit in my face, and live.” So the freedom riders came into our community, and supported us. We had one white Freedom Rider that came from England, and she was living in the homes of some of our people and picketing along with us. But the officials were calling for support from the Klan and everyone else. They were determined to crush our movement. So Robert told them: “Now wait, I don’t think you should demonstrate on Saturday or Sunday, that’s when all these folks are off work, and getting their beer and stuff, and it’ll be pretty bad.” But they chose to go ahead and choose to demonstrate on Saturday and Sunday. The city officials sprayed insecticide on the picketers while they were going around. James Forman was there, and he was on the picket line. When they were getting ready to leave, Robert had sent the groups of armed men to bring them out, because thousands of racists were surrounding the picketers and they had begun to shout at them, kick, spit, so forth, and the police were on the side of the rioters. We were in our community, protecting our community, but waiting for them to come back, all hell had broken loose, people were really upset, about what is happening to the young people that were on the demonstration line. And a white couple came into our community, and although Rob kept them from being killed, they said that they had been kidnapped. Then Rob got a telephone call saying: “You caused a lot of trouble, in thirty minutes you gonna be hanging from the courthouse square.” So he said “come on, get the children, we have to leave.” We left thinking, we would go to New York, wait a while, and come home, let things cool off. When we got to New York, there was an FBI Bulletin, all points, saying Rob was armed and dangerous and schizophrenic and should be apprehended and then at the end it said, he’s traveling in the company of his family. 6