revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

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conversative leaders in the civil rights movement and also the United
States government . Williams became a critic of the U .S . government's
domestic and foreign policy . He supported the Cuban Revolution and became
a founding member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee . The Fair Play for
Cuba Committee was a committee of Americans who were opposed to the United
States imperialist aggressions against Cuba .
After making two trips to
Cuba, flying the Cuban flag in his back yard and constantly agitating for
Afro-Americans to rise up in armed self-defense, he became a target of the
U .S . government's counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO), a program
designed to destroy the black liberation movement .
In August of 1961, in
the midst of an armed confrontation in Monroe, Williams and
his family
escaped an
assassination plot organized against him by the combined forms
of the KKK, North Carolina State Police, National Guard and FBI . The FBI
initiated the largest manhunt in its entire history to capture Williams . 18
After months of flight and no news of his whereabouts, Williams surfaced
at a press conference in Havana, Cuba . The revolutionary government
of Cuba granted Williams political asylum .
This news electrified the pro
gressive forces of the world because for the first time in
history a black
radical political leader had defied the U .S . government and had escaped its
racist clutches .
Williams, exiled in Cuba from 1961 to 1965, helped to internationalize
the black liberation struggles .
While in Cuba, Williams met with revolutionaries
from Latin America, Africa and Asia . His propagating of inter
national
support for the liberation of Afro-Americans helped to develop
solidarity with guerrilla organizations in Latin America and other parts of
18 Robert F . Williams, Negroes with Guns (Chicago : Third World Press,
1973), p . 126 .