Self Defense and the Fourteenth Amendment // Concurring Opinions

Self-Defense and the Fourteenth Amendment - Concurring Opinions:
by Robert Tsai

Dance and sing you black creatures of Mother Africa.

Move to the sound of the drums

of your forefathers.

Hold on to your drums and beat

them in defiance of the slavemaster and

let their thundering sound awaken those who sleep.

–Mabel Robinson Williams, Transition (1966)

Mabel Robinson Williams passed away last week. Williams may have been most famous for being married to Robert F. Williams, the controversial former head of the NAACP in Monroe County, NC, but she was an intriguing theorist and fierce activist in her own right. She recalled that her father slept every night with a pearl-handled pistol under his pillow in case the Klan’s night riders attacked. 

As an adult, she served as Secretary of the local NAACP, co-founded a newsletter calledThe Crusader, organized a mutual aid society called CARE, and helped run Radio Free Dixie. Mabel called herself a “co-warrior” and “helpmate” to Robert, even as she served as a nurse’s aid and later operated a day care. When her sons joined a picket against a segregated swimming pool, she sat in the car with guns, keeping one eye out for armed whites. She and other female members of a rifle club trained to protect their families against the Klan. Once, Mabel came out of her house with a shotgun and chased off deputies trying to arrest her husband.