February 2021 Catalogue

B a u m a n R a r e B o o k s B l a c k A m e r i c a n a 2 0 2 1 47 “One Of The Most Telling And Important Documents Of The African American Struggle” 63. WILLIAMS, Robert F. Negroes with Guns. New York, 1962. Octavo, original black paper boards, dust jacket. $900. C lick for M ore I nfo First edition of Williams’ powerful book, “a great influence” on Huey P. Newton and, to Rosa Parks, in original dust jacket. “Williams was an architect of the modern black power” ( New York Times ). After serving in WWII he returned to North Carolina, where he led the nearly defunct NAACP chapter. With Klan rallies drawing over 15,000 people, “Williams advocated ‘armed self-reliance’… It was not that he opposed nonviolent direct action. In fact, he used it throughout his career as a civil-rights leader. Rather, he believed that different situations demanded different tactics. So, while he petitioned, negotiated, marched, picketed and sat-in, he also always carried a pistol and organized the Black Guard” (Jones in Film and History V.38 ) . After Williams went into exile in the early 1960s, he authored Negroes with Guns , “one of the most telling and important documents of the African American freedom struggle” (Tyson, Introduction to 1998 edition, xv-xvi). To Huey P. Newton, Negroes with Guns “had a great influence on the kind of party we developed” ( Revolutionary Suicide , 112). Following Williams’ death in 1996, Rosa Parks stood at his funeral and “told the congregation that she and those who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Alabama had always admired Williams ‘for his courage and his commitment to freedom. The work that he did should go down in history and never be forgotten’” (Tyson in Human Tradition , 238-44). Book fine; light edge-wear, mild soiling to near-fine dust jacket. “The Afro-American militant is a ‘militant’ because he defends himself, his family, his home, and his dignity.”