Born in Jim Crow-era Monroe, North Carolina, Robert F. Williams and Mabel Williams were the state's most legendary African American freedom fighters. 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.