Racial segregation established by a white-dominated state legislature after the end of the Reconstruction era persisted for nearly a century into the 1960s.

Williams and the burgeoning NAACP chapter would be met with fierce resistance during their push to integrate local public facilities.

He began to work to integrate public facilities, starting with the library and the city's swimming pool, which both excluded blacks.

He noted that not only did blacks pay taxes as citizens that supported operations of such facilities, but they had been built with federal funds during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

[7] In 1958 Williams hired Conrad Lynn, a civil rights attorney from New York City, to aid in defending two African-American boys, aged nine and seven.

The former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, talked to the North Carolina governor to urge restraint, and the case became internationally embarrassing for the United States.

During the civil rights movement years of the 1960s, there was rising in Ku Klux Klan white violence against the minority black community of Monroe.

The NAACP and the black community in Monroe provided a base for some of the Freedom Riders in 1961, who were trying to integrate interstate bus travel through southern states.

That year, Williams was accused of kidnapping an elderly white couple, when he sheltered them in his house during an explosive situation of high racial tensions.

[citation needed] Williams and his wife fled the United States to avoid prosecution for kidnapping.

In 1969 they finally returned to the United States, after Congress had passed important civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965.

The trial of Williams was scheduled in 1975, but North Carolina finally reviewed its case and dropped the charges against him.

He mustered support in the South, and played a key role in helping Ronald Reagan to be elected as President of the United States.

As part of the developing Charlotte metropolitan area, in the 21st century, Monroe has attracted new Hispanic residents.

The Seaboard Air Line Railroad ran multiple passenger trains a day on the Raleigh-Athens-Atlanta route through Monroe, including the Silver Comet (New York-Birmingham).