Radio Free Dixie, Essay Example

Introduction

Radio Free Dixie is a biographical novel depicting the life of the man that is considered to be the father of the Black Power movement, Robert F. Williams, as told by author Timothy B. Tyson (1999). Williams was born in a small town called Monroe in North Carolina in 1925, where his grandparents, as well as many other former slaves also lived. Ultimately, this book provides a microcosmic perspective of the difficult journey that was and still is the African American freedom movement as it passed through his lifetime. This includes the survival of the movement in its infancy stages during the overwhelming oppression and brutality of white supremacist groups prior to and following World War II, the significance of the War for inspiring black solidarity, the progress of non-violent resistance to Jim Crow, the struggles of the Black Power movement, and the tenuous but improved racial circumstances following the turbulence of the 1960s. This brief analysis of the book Radio Free Dixie will discuss how the South was constructed after 1945 and how Tyson constructed the history after WWII.

How the South was Constructed after 1945

After 1945, the Cold War was the most influential catalyst to effect change within the struggle for racial equality because America’s aspiration to prove the moral superiority of “democracy for all” to the Communist world also placed global scrutiny on the African-American’s fight for this exact notion right on American soil (Tyson 61). Contrary to what American propaganda would have the world believe, fighting against racial discrimination was akin to aiding and abetting the Communist cause, according to the laws and statutes in effect (Tyson 40). However, despite desiring to counter the deleterious publicity the Communists had courted for the U.S., southern white supremacists continued to flagrantly demonstrate the racist behaviors characteristic of the Jim Crow era, such as public beatings of blacks, hanging, raping, and many other violent behavior that still characterizes the South. Determined to change this, Robert Williams organized other black veterans in an attempt to protect black citizens of Monroe from the frequent attacks of supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Although his intentions were to protect African-Americans, same as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), they often clashed because the organization did not approve of Williams’ use of defensive tactics (Tyson 214). Williams countered their disapproval with the contention that “nonviolence depended on the conscience of the adversary” and “rattlesnakes” “were immune to such appeals, as were many Southern white supremacists” (Tyson 214). He also openly advocated the principle of “armed self-reliance”, although he did not agree that violence was an end, or even a means, to racial justice, stating that it was a necessary component of self-defense because protection by the law was not available to blacks in the South (Tyson 87).

Historian Constructed History after WW2

Williams joined the army during World War II, but the extreme racism he experienced in the service embittered him due to the irony of blacks risking their lives abroad for ‘democracy’ when they had no freedom at home. His stance against whites and their treatment of blacks in the armed forces resulted in a stockade sentence, stating at his hearing: “I told them that I was black, and that prison did not scare me because black men are born in prison. All they could do was put me in a smaller prison” (Tyson 47). He endured his sentence with pride, stating: “…they would have preferred to have me as a nigger than locked up, but I preferred to be locked up than to be what they considered a nigger” (Tyson 47). Black veterans faced racial violence when they returned to America because whites were outraged at the idea that fighting alongside them in the war entitled blacks to equal rights, or that they could now presume to be “as good as any white people”, despite, as Tyson avers, that “…behind the virulent opposition to racial equality was the ever-present shadow of miscegenation that undergirded white determination to preserve segregation” (Tyson 74).

Williams was also noted for speaking on the hypocrisy of many American politicians, such as Adlai Stevenson and his defense of the Bay of Pigs incident in 1961 to the U.N. on the grounds of Cuba’s oppressive regime (Tyson 241). Williams sent him a telegram, stating:

“Please convey to Mr. Adlai Stevenson: Now that the United States has proclaimed support for people willing to rebel against oppression, oppressed Negroes of the South urgently request tanks, artillery, bombs, money and the use of American airfields and white mercenaries to crush the racist tyrants who have betrayed the American Revolution and Civil War. We also request prayers for this undertaking” (p.241)

Outspokenness of this nature supported the contrived forces that led to his eventual flight to Cuba and later China following race riots in Monroe that he organized an armed defense for and he stayed abroad until the Nixon Administration made its rapprochement with China (Tyson 52). Despite his exile, Williams broadcast “Radio Free Dixie” every Friday night to lend support and encouragement to Southern blacks and was able to live out his life quietly in Michigan following his return until his death in 1996 from Hodgkin’s disease (Tyson 307). Throughout his life, Robert Williams fought all forms of oppression he encountered, be it in the form of FBI harassment, including deterring potential employers because he advocated the “Communist” idea of “equality”, white supremacists in his community trying to kill him and his family, national black leadership wishing to ostracize him for ‘inflammatory tactics’, or national white leadership that refuses to take a moral stand to help their own citizens live peaceful lives (Tyson 52).

Works Cited

Tyson, Timothy B. Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999.