Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to racism and racialized violence, as well as mentions of sexual assault.

Tyson opens with a quotation from author Lillian Smith’s memoir, Killers of the Dream, in which Smith states that children in the South “[have] lived on trembling earth” (1).

Robert F. Williams was born onto this trembling earth in the small, segregated town of Monroe, North Carolina. Tyson recounts the first “tremor” felt by Williams, a childhood event that deeply influenced his later philosophy on race and violence. In 1936, an 11-year-old Williams witnessed a white police officer named Jesse Helms viciously beat and drag a Black woman. Williams was horrified by the sight, noting that the “emasculated” Black men who witnessed the assault hung their heads, powerless to intervene. Williams never forgot what he saw. Throughout his incendiary career as an activist, he recounted the story often.

Tyson emphasizes that Radio Free Dixie is not just the story of Williams’s life, but also a chronicle of the factors that influenced Black Americans’ struggle for freedom. Though the prevailing narrative of the civil rights movement frames