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

North Carolina in December,1975, after Governor William Milliken of Michigan
extradited him to face the 1961 kidnapping charges ; by then, the state of North Carolina
had lost interest and dropped all charges against him . He ~+esided in Baldwin, Michigan,
until his death on October 15, 1996, at the age of 71~ Rosa Parks delivered the eulogy at
his funeral, and a tribute at Wayne State University honored him on November 1 .
Enjoying a final homecoming, Williams had returned to Monroe to lead a parade in 1995,
thirty-four years after being forced to leave u
To someone not attuned to the seminal importance of self-defense in the struggle
for bl~k equality, Rosa Parks' eulogy of Robert Williams would seem to be the most
discordant note in the final coda of the civil rights movement . Here, after all, was the
paragon of the civil rights movement-a woman who hadcome to symbolize nonviolence
itself--eulogizing a man who had come to symbolic violence in racial matters . But
Rosa Parks, unbeknownst to many, had never wholeheartedly endorsed nonviolence, and
the solidarity she felt with Williams reprtsonted a kind of quiet assurance in the power of
self-defense .
It was plain to anyone who bothered to read her autobiography . "We always felt
that if you talked violently and said what you would do if they [aggressors) did something
4, 1972, Box 3, Miscellenes Folder 1, Robert F. Williams Collection, Bentley Historical
Library, University of Michigan .
See "Robert F. Willliams, 71, Civil Rights Leader and Revolutionary [obituary),"
~1ew York Times (October 19, 1996) : 52 .
"Community Gives Rights Activist Hero's Welcome," The Charlotte Observer
(August 20, 1995), 18, 4B .
220