LET IT BURN – The Coming Destruction of the USA?

ROBERT CARL COHEN Interviews ROBERT FRANKLIN WILLIAMS Dar Es Salaam 1968 In 1956 US Army & Marine Corps vet Robert Franklin Williams attempted to integrate the Monroe, North Carolina swimming pool. When the Ku Klux Klan answered with violence, Williams & other Black vets formed the “Guard” an armed self-defense unit. In 1961 the “Freedom Riders,” who’d asked Williams & the Guard not to intervene during pacifist integration efforts in Monroe, were attacked by the KKK. With the Police Chief threatening to hang him, & tanks approaching, Williams fled with his family to New York. Charged with kidnapping & hunted by the FBI, he escaped to Cuba, where he published “The Crusader” & broadcast “Radio Free Dixie,” predicting ghetto uprisings & urban guerilla warfare in the USA. In 1965 he moved to China, from where he urged Black GIs in Vietnam to turn their guns against racists in the US. Returning to the US in 1971, he lived in Michigan while fighting the 1961 charges – eventually dropped for lack of evidence. Before his death in 1996, distancing himself from Black Separatism, he mollified his earlier predictions of an impending race war & became pessimistic about the erosion of the 1960s Civil Rights gains. Interview Highlights: The KKK’s plan to murder Williams & destroy his NAACP Branch. The kidnapping charges. Why Castro granted Williams asylum. The Communist Party’s opposition to his Black Nationalism. Che Guevara’s support, & why Guevara left Cuba. Why Williams began advocating…