3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

this . And there ane some whites, whether they acre in the law or on the outside, that just
hate black people. And they hate me most of all . They hate me more . . . because I have
resisted, and also because I have constantly advocated the enforcement of the
Constitution ." 3q
Williams was quick to associate gun owning with hunting and the outdoors . "I
organized a charter group for the National Rifle Association there," he testified, "and we
used to do quite a bit of shooting in the South . . . And also I did quite a bit of hunting,
and now I am a licensed hunter in Michigan:'° Williams evoked the nation's most
revered gun club, the National Rifle Association, to show how his own gun ownership
was more mainstream than marginal . He realized how threatening black gun ownership
remained to the white public, and respected the power of the committee to persecute him
further. He hoped to impress them as a red-blooded American 4~
During the Senate hearings, Williams fell back on his two primary beliefs : first,
that a double standard existed in the United States with regard to self-defense, and
second, that white supremacy was the prime catalyst for this double standard. He
retreated from the embittered pronouncements he had made abroad, fearing legal reprisals
from the commuttee . Instead, he reiterated those ideas which he had clung to all along,
a9 [.1.S . Senate Judiciary Hearings, 83, 84, 89 .
~°U.S . Senate Judiciary Hearings, 76 .
`~In an interview published in the Marxist Leninist Ouarterlv , Williams drew parallels
between his bearing arms and soldiers' bearing arms while fighting for the United States
in Vietnam. See "Interview with Robert Williams," Marxist Leninist Ouarterly 2 n 1
(1964), 53 .
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