Robert organized an armed paramilitary group to protect his community from the violent attacks of the Ku Klux Klan. The Williamses’ leadership in Monroe was just the beginning of their lifelong pursuit of freedom and justice for Black people in the United States and for oppressed populations throughout the world. Their activism foreshadowed major developments in the civil rights and Black Power movements, including Malcolm X's advocacy of fighting oppression "by any means necessary," the emergence of the Black Panther Party, and Black solidarity with Third World liberation movements.
Robert documented his experiences in Monroe in his classic 1962 book, _Negroes with Guns, _and completed a draft of his memoir, While God Lay Sleeping, months before his death in 1996. Mabel began a memoir of her own before her death in 2014. The family estate selected John Bracey Jr., Akinyele Umoja, and Gloria Aneb House to edit and complete the manuscripts. The two are presented together in this book, offering a gripping portrait of these pioneering freedom fighters that is both deeply intimate and a fierce call to action in the ongoing fight against racial injustice.
Akinyele Umoja is a Professor of African-American Studies. Umoja is the author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance and the Mississippi Freedom Movement, named the 2014 Anna Julia Cooper/ C.L.R. James Award for the best book in Africana Studies by the National Council of Black Studies. We Will Shoot Back also earned the 2014 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. He is also co-editor of Greenwood Press Black Power Encyclopedia (2018), which was named on the Reference and User Services Association’s (a division of the American Library Association) 2019 List of Outstanding References for Adults. Umoja also the editor of a special issue of The Black Scholar (2018) on the legacy of his comrade; revolutionary activist, attorney, and late Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, the Honorable Chokwe Lumumba. Umoja’s research has also been featured in several other journals and anthologies. Professor Umoja is also very engaged in social justice advocacy. Along with his wife Aminata and other comrades, Umoja organized Atlanta’s Malcolm X Festival in 1989, which is now attended by thousands annually. Umoja received acknowledgement from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (1998) and the National Council of Black Studies (2008) for his activism. Due to his civic engagement and scholar-activism, he was inducted into Selma, Alabama’s Hall of Resistance in the Enslavement and Civil War Museum during the annual Bridge Crossing and Jubilee Celebration. Other inductees into the Hall of Resistance include author Sonia Sanchez, and scholar-activists Asa Hilliard, Maulana Karenga, and legendary Hip Hop artist Tupac Shakur.
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