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

with civil and political rights than with fundamental human rights ; consequently, he
c+ecognized "the right of self-preservation" as "the most basic of human rights."~
His ideas did not stem from his formal education 9~ Instead, they sprouted directly
from his personal experience as a black man living in the American South . As an
"organic intellectual ;' he was one of the most influential theoroticians the civil rights
movement produced' Unlike some of the other orators and writers commenting on race
relations in the United States, his ideas had a plain, unpolished quality, originating in his
daily trials in Monroe .
Despite the wild trajectory of his life in exile, Robert Williams was not
particularly unique in Afro-American history. Certainly his courage and forward
~Williams, "Reflections of an Exiled Freedom Fighter," unpublished manuscript,
Box 2, Undated Folder 1, Robert F . Williams Collection, Bentley Historical Library,
University of Michigan .
93Williams did attend college . Taking advantage of the G .I. Bill, he decided to go to
college near Monroe to be near his family. After brief stints at both West Virginia State
College and North Carolina College at Durham, he settled at Johnson C . Smith College in
Charlotte until his GI benefits ran out in 1952 . Financial necessity forced him to leave
college and find work to support his family. See Cohen, Black Crusader, 47-56.
~In describing the life of civil rights activist Ivory Pony, George Lipsitz has applied
the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, Italian theorist and Marxist, to the civil rights movement .
Using Gramsci's concept of the "organic intellatual," Lipsitz has described how Perry
held no formal status as intellectual or theorist, but still shaped the ideas and actions of an
entire population group through his activism, and by involving people in "social
contestation :' Organic intellectuals learn about the world by trying to change it . Like
Pent', Williams personifies the quintessential organic intellectual . See Lipsitz, A Life in
the Strugg e: No Perrv and the Culture of Onp~jlj~II (Philadelphia : Temple University
Press, 1988), 9-11 ; see also Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed.
Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York : International Publishers, 1971), 9,
10.
'sAs Man: Schleifer pointed out in the epilogue of the second edition of Negioes With
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