Word: picketings
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...June, 1961 the Monroe NAACP, of which Williams was vice-resident, decided to picket the town's only public swimming pool. Previously, they had requested that it be desegregated, or at least opened to their children once a week. The town's officials refused: even if the Negro children were allowed to use the pool alone, it would cost too much money to refill it so that the white children could go swimming again...
...time of the picketing Williams had already established the principle of violence for self-defense. "The Negro in the South cannot expect justice in the courts," he had said in a public statement after a white man had been acquitted of the charge of raping a Monroe Negro woman despite the testimony of first-hand witnesses. "He must convict his attackers on the spot. He must meet violence with violence, lynching with lynching." Monroe Negroes were prepared to shoot it out an the picket line, if the town's white people attacked them...
Several days later, when Williams was driving to the picket line, another car full of white men attempted to flip him off the road. Williams managed to work both cars into a ditch by the roadside. The crowd around the cars started screaming: "Kill the niggers! Pour gasoline on the niggers!" The driver of the other car approached with a baseball bat, saying "Nigger, what...
Finally the highway opened up, and Williams was given space to drive to the picket lines. Apart from the picketers, there were about 3,000 or 4,000 white people there. The crowd was noisy. This time the chief of police came up to Williams telling him to surrender his gun. "I told him I was not going to surrender any gun. That those guns were legal and [there] was a mob, and if he wanted my guns he could come to my house and get them after I got away form there. And he said, 'If you hurt...
...Carolina had enforced law and order. Just two state troppers did the job and no one got hurt in a situation where normally (in the South) a lot of Negro blood would have flowed. The city closed the pool for the rest of the year and we withdrew the picket line...