“In the Spirit of ‘76 Venceremos!”: Nationalizing and Transnationalizing Self-defense on Radio Free Dixie

Abstract

From 1963 to 1966, Radio Free Dixie broadcast from Havana, Cuba, to the United States. Launched by civil rights leader Robert F. Williams, Radio Free Dixie distributed militant messages to black audiences in the United States. This article examines the content of the Radio Free broadcasts and the ways that the messages of Williams were framed as both national and transnational symbols of black struggle within the context of the Cold War. It contributes to the history of black journalism by highlighting how black media in the United States have used both national and transnational politics to link historical debates about race, self-defense, and US imperialism.

Notes

Mabel R. Williams, Negroes with Guns, directed by Sandra Dickson, Churchill Roberts, Cindy Hill, and Cara Pilson (Florida: Documentary Institute, 2005), DVD.

Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. R. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

It is not clear why Radio Progreso allowed Radio Free Dixie to air three times a week. Based on the transcribed broadcasts, it was likely that the station aired reruns of the week's broadcast.

Walter Rucker, “Crusader in Exile: Robert F. Williams and the International Struggle for Black Freedom in America,” Black Scholar 36, nos. 2–3 (2006): 19–34; Robert Carl Cohen, Black Crusader: A Biography of Robert Franklin R. Williams (Secaucus: Lyle Stuart, 1972); Truman Nelson, The Right to Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968); Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. R. Williams and the Roots of Black Power.

In total, the study analyzed 180 Radio Free Dixie broadcasts. The year of the transcription is unknown. Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns (New York: Marzani & Munsell, 1962); The Black Power Movement Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams, Microfilmed Collection from the Holdings of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

For a history of African American foreign correspondence, see Jinx Broussard, African American Foreign Correspondence: A History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013). For more on militancy in black media, see William G. Jordan, Black Newspapers & America's War for Democracy, 1914–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); James Edward Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). For more on black media and transnational movements, see Michael West, William G Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins, eds., From Touissant to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Judson L. Jeffries, ed., Black Power in the Belly of the Beast (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Lara Putnam, Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 16.

Marcus Garvey's messages of black nationalism emphasized self-determination, self-defense, and economic independence among black people. See Cristina Mislan, “An ‘Obedient Servant’: Internationalizing and Capitalizing on Blackness in Marcus Garvey's Negro World,” Journalism History 39, no. 2 (2013): 116–126.

For histories on the relationship between black Americans and US foreign policy, see Carol Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). See also Glenda E. Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights 1919–1950 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009).

See Brenda Gayle Plummer, In Search of Power: African Americans in the Era of Decolonization, 1956–1974 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Lara Putnam, “Nothing Matters but Color: Transnational Circuits, the Interwar Caribbean, and the Black International,” in West, Martin, and Wilkins, From Touissant to Tupac, 110.

Vincenzo Ruggiero and Nicola Montagna, eds., Social Movements: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 2008); Wilma de Jong, Martin Shaw and Neil Stammers, eds., Global Activism, Global Media (London: Pluto Press, 2005).

Steven Vertovec, “Conceiving and Research Transnationalism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 447–462.

For a discussion on global social movements and media, see Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Networks of Knowledge and Practice: Global Civil Society and Global Communications, in de Jong, Shaw, and Stammers, Global Activism, Global Media, 17–33.

Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism 1937–1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 22.

For a discussion on the historiography of the African diaspora, see Tiffany Ruby Patterson and Robin D. G. Kelley, “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World,” African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 11–45. See also Manning Marable, “Blackness beyond Boundaries: Navigating the Political Economies of Global Equality,” in Transnational Blackness: Navigating the Global Color Line, ed. Manning Marable and Vanessa Agard-Jones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 1–8.

Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 7.

Bruce Lenthall, Radio's America: The Great Depression and the Rise of Modern Mass Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 79, 105.

Douglas, Listening In, 9.

Scholars have noted the significance of racial ventriloquy on television, radio, film, and other art forms. The term refers to the practice of white actors portraying people of color and includes the use of blackface routines. See Susan Gubar, Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 9.

Ibid.

Lenthall, Radio's America, 42.

Robert F. Williams to Bill Neumeister, date unknown, in The Black Power Movement Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams, Reel 2, Microfilmed Collection from the Holdings of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; Robert F. Williams to William Ochs, 23 April 1965, in The Black Power Movement Part 2, The Papers of Robert F. Williams, Reel 2; Williams, letter to Donnie R. Letendre, 24 April 1965, in The Black Power Movement Part 2, The Papers of Robert F. Williams, Reel 2.

Robert F. Williams to Mark R. Edelstein, 23 April 1965, in The Black Power Movement Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams, Reel 2.

Cuban native Carlos Moore worked with Williams on the radio program until 1963, when he went into exile and left the island.

Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006), xiv.

Mabel R. Williams, Robert F. Williams, Self-respect, Self-defense & Self-determination: An Audio Documentary as told by Mabel Williams (San Francisco: Freedom Archives, 2005), CD.

Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 47.

Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns (New York: Marzani & Munsell, 1962), 31.

Ibid., 26.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Radio Free Dixie, in The Black Power Movement Part 2, The Papers of Robert F. Williams, August 30, 1962, reel 11. Hereafter: RFD. Transcriptions of radio recordings provided in microfilm reels. Author of transcription unknown. Housed at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Ibid.

RFD, March 8, 1963, reel 12.

Ibid.

Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1233–1263.

Ibid.

Ibid.

RFD, May 3, 1963, reel 12.

Black Cuban military soldier Antonio Maceo served as a late nineteenth-century revolutionary figure who fought for Cuban independence. Cuban historians often refer to Maceo as an early figure who helped shape the image of Cuba as a “raceless” nation. For more on Maceo and other revolutionary figures, see Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

RFD, May 16, 1963 reel 12.

Ibid.

RFD, August 9, 1963, reel 12.

RFD, January 17, 1964, reel 12.

RFD, January 11, 1963, reel 12.

Ibid.

RFD, January 17, 1964, reel 12.

Ibid.

RFD, December 10, 1965, reel 13.

RFD, December 17, 1965, reel 13.

RFD, December 10, 1965, reel 13. Williams's comments about the contradictions found in the discourse of nonviolence advocates came before Martin Luther King's speech against the Vietnam War in 1967.

Ibid.

RFD, June 25, 1965, reel 13.

Ibid.

RFD, July 9, 1965, reel 13.

RFD, June 18, 1965, reel 13.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

RFD, November 12, 1965, reel 13.

RFD, November 19, 1965, reel 13.

RFD, December 10, 1965, reel 13.

RFD, January 21, 1966, reel 13.

For more on the emergence of transnational media and social movements, see Peter Van Aelst and Stefaan Walgrave, “New Media, New Movements? The Role of the Internet in Shaping the Anti-Globalization Movement,” Information, Communication & Society 5, no. 4 (2002): 465–493; Summer Harlow, “Social Media and Social Movements: Facebook and an Online Guatemalan Justice Movement That Moved Offline,” New Media & Society 14, no. 2 (2012): 225–243; Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner, “New Media and Internet Activism: From the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to Blogging,” New Media & Society 6, no. 1 (2004): 87–95; Tarrow, “The Dualities of Transnational Contention: “Two Activist Solitudes” or a New World Altogether,” Mobilization 10, no. 1 (2005): 53–72.

Shelley F. Fishkin, “Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies—Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, November 12, 2004,” American Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2005): 17–57.

Tarrow, “The Dualities of Transnational Contention: “Two Activist Solitudes” or a New World Altogether,” 56.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cristina Mislan

Cristina Mislan is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, 209 Lee Hills Hall, Columbia MO 65211, [email protected]