Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925 – October 15, 1996) was an American civil rights leader and author best known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and into 1961.

At a time of high racial tension and official abuses, Williams promoted armed Black self-defense in the United States.

In addition, he helped gain support for gubernatorial pardons in 1959 for two young African-American boys who had received lengthy reformatory sentences in what was known as the Kissing Case of 1958.

The local chapter of the NAACP supported Freedom Riders who traveled to Monroe in the summer of 1961 in a test of integrating interstate buses.

In August 1961 he and his wife left the United States for several years to avoid kidnapping charges after a white couple got lost in the black part of town in Monroe.

[6][7][8] As a young man, Williams joined the Great Migration, traveling north for industrial work during World War II.

[10] In 1947, Williams married a 16-year-old African American woman named Mabel Ola Robinson, a fellow civil rights activist.

They were determined to defend the local black community from racist attacks, a goal similar to that of the Deacons for Defense who established chapters in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in 1964–1965.

[19] It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence.

[citation needed] In 1958, Williams as head of the NAACP chapter defended two young black boys, ages seven and nine, who were jailed and beaten in Monroe after a white girl kissed each of them on the cheek and told her mother, who became enraged.

On May 12, 1958, the Raleigh Eagle, a North Carolina newspaper, reported that Nationwide Insurance Company was canceling Williams' collision and comprehensive coverage, effective that day.

They first canceled all of his automobile insurance, but decided to reinstate his liability and medical payments coverage, enough for Williams to retain his car license.

"[23] The Raleigh Eagle reported that Williams had said that six months before, a 50-car Ku Klux Klan caravan had swapped gunfire with a group of blacks outside the home of Dr. Albert E. Perry, vice president of the local NAACP chapter.

"[23] The following year, Williams was so incensed with the decision of a Monroe court to acquit two white men of raping a pregnant black woman,[9]: 256  Mary Reid, that he replied by saying on the courthouse steps: We cannot rely on the law.

[citation needed] When CORE dispatched "Freedom Riders" to Monroe to campaign in 1961 for integrated interstate bus travel, the local NAACP chapter served as their base.

[1]: 123 On August 28, 1961, the FBI issued a warrant in Charlotte, North Carolina, charging Williams with unlawful interstate flight to avoid prosecution for kidnapping.

[39] During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Williams used Radio Free Dixie to urge black soldiers in the U.S. armed forces, who were then preparing for a possible invasion of Cuba, to engage in insurrection against the United States.

[41] During his time in Cuba, Williams increased his efforts to obtain international support and publicity for the concept of African American armed self-defense.

[9]: 257  Following requests by Williams, Mao Zedong issued a statement in People's Daily in August 1963 in support of the African American struggle against discrimination.

[9]: 257–258  On August 10, China's ambassador to Cuba invited Williams to the Chinese embassy to be presented with a copy of Mao's statement.

[42] Some Communist Party USA members opposed Williams' positions, suggesting they would divide the working class in the U.S. along racial lines.

Sincerely, Rob.Williams opposed what he described as "fake Marxists" who argued that black people should be patient and seek intervention through the courts and the electoral process.

"[43]: 34  In a speech at a demonstration against United States imperialism in 1966, Williams praised what he described as the militant friendship between the Chinese and the revolutionary American people.

[43]: 34 Represented by the ACLU and human rights lawyer Michael Tigar, he won a lawsuit against the U.S. Postmaster General, in which the statute allowing the U.S. Post Office to refuse to deliver foreign-origin publications deemed to be "communist political propaganda" except at the specific prior request of the addressee was declared unconstitutional under the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

As his lawyer, Conrad Lynn, noted in a November 7, 1969 letter to W. Haywood Burns of the Legal Defense Foundation: Williams now clearly takes the position that he has been deserted by the left.

He takes the position that he is entitled to make any maneuver to keep from going to jail for kidnapping...[45]Williams was suspected by the Justice Department of wanting to fill the vacuum of influence left after the assassinations of his friends Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Hoover received reports that blacks looked to Williams as a figure similar to John Brown, the militant abolitionist who attacked a federal armory at Harper's Ferry before the American Civil War attempting to arm and free enslaved Black people.

[46] In March 1968, a group of several hundred African American leaders met in Detroit and declared the Republic of New Africa, electing Williams as the President of its provisional government.

Williams had chosen to return via Detroit because he could obtain political and financial support from the Republic of New Africa there and because he had greater faith in the Michigan courts than elsewhere in the United States.

[9]: 289  The historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall chaired his defense committee and a broad range of left wing activists arrived to support him.

[48] North Carolina prosecutors dismissed the charges against Williams on January 16, 1976, stating that its major witness was too weak to appear in court.