2 or 3 things I know about her

Tonight the PBS series Independent Lens presents the film, Negroes With Guns, Robert William's seminal 1962 text of the same title.

Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925-October 15, 1996) organized armed resistance to white supremacy in the American South. He debated the merits of nonviolence with Martin Luther King Jr in 1959. In Monroe, he started the Black Armed Guard, with the National Rifle Association’s blessing, to defend the local black community from Klu Klux Klan activity. FBI persecution eventually forced Williams to flee the US to Cuba, where he regularly made radio addresses to Southern blacks on “Radio Free Dixie,” a station he established with assistance from Cuban President Fidel Castro. From the Wikipedia article.

The Western Girls, so called because one year they all came as Annie Oakley (these are a group of negro female impersonaters headed by "Corinne the Queen"), are perhaps the gayest of all. In evening gowns and wigs they try to outdo the real girls. The ones who top their faces with golden-blonde and flaming red wigs are the funnniest. As for Corinne, she always maintains her regal bearing, explaining, "I'm a real queen, and don't nobody never forget it!" The other girls aren't the least bit jelous, either, but love Corrine dearly because "shes's such a gay cat," and Corinne has genuine claims to majesty. In 1931 she was Queen of the Zulus! That year the King said he was disgusted with women, so he selected Corinne to reign as his mate over all of the Negro Mardi Gras!

from "gumbo-ya-ya"
lyle saxon, robert tallant, eds.
1945, houghfton mifflin

Seventeen days later I wrote that letter, on October 31, I was back in solitary

On October 14, I wrote to Ida Rothstein, director of the San Francisco Civil Rights Congress, in part as follows:

“I assure you that it is really gratifying in these trying days to know that I have so many friends that are sensitive to my plight and are leaving no stones unturned to see that justice is done in my case

The court appointed me two lawyers, Phillip C. Wilkins, and C.K. Curtwright. The first time I saw them, Warden Heinze had me locked on one side of a hallway, them on the other. He told Wilkins I was “a mad dog.”

Once again it was Mundt trying my case, this time as the prosecuting attorney. He had to prove that I, with malice aforethought

I sat down and wrote a letter to the Adult Authority, which is group of men in charge of fixing the sentences and kind of running things. I wrote, “the trouble that I had in August is perhaps know to you. I have been unjustly prosecuted and am being unjustly treated in being confined in solitary.

“I feel I was absolutely justified in what I did. However, I shall do my best to survive, if only given the chance. Gentlemen, I humbly beseech of for that chance. I would highly appreciate it, if the Authority would assist me to rehabilitate myself. I feel that there is good in me, that I can and will make good, if I can interest someone in my welfare. I still have confidence in myself. Prison has not caused me to be bitter towards society; all that I ask is chance to earn an honest living when I am free. I do not believe that I was meant to be an utter failure. I ask of you, Gentlemen, to grant me transfer to San Quentin, where I can do my time with a job, for Warden Duffy promised me that. I will be free of the mental strain that I’ve labored under in the prison.

Warden Plummer said to me. “Why didn’t you make good out there?”

I thought. And then I said to the Warden, “Just let me learn a trade up here, please, Warden! Any trade

Freedom! After thirteen years, freedom! I stood on the corner at Folsom and waited for a bus.

That evening, on the bus from Sacramento to Los Angeles, I looked up at the stars. Each time the bus stopped, I stepped down, took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. The stars were very bright.

I got out in Pasadena and hurried towards the apartment my sis, Charlene, had taken when I finally wrote her I was coming out. She had come from Denver to be closer for the great day.

The neon signs made my eyes blink and my head twist. I had never seen them before and I was afraid I would be hit by an auto as I crossed the main streets like a country boy. The stores and traffic lights and cars were so different I felt I was in new world. I jumped up the steps of the little white house and knocked at the door. A girl opened the screen door and I threw my arms about her. She laughed, but pulled away. “I’m not Charlene,” she said. “I’m her friend, Charlene us working, but she sent me over to cook a meal for you.”

My heart was full of defiance and fatalism as the months and years passed.

It was habit for the guards to shoot at inmates as a warning, or for fun. They shot close to our bodies, from the walls and towers.

I was standing in the yard when a bullet whistled past my ear and stuck the ground in front of me. From a window, a guard shouted at me, "Get back into the line."

I stepped back in line, but not before the head guard, Bill Ryan, saw what happened. He came over with two others, Tommy Thompson and John Salberg. Thompson grabbed my arm and twisted it. I cursed him. Pushing me in front of him, Thompson moved me off to the "back alley," a row of unused stone buildings at the prison. They kept goosing me and pushing me with their canes. Arm twisted off or not

!http://static.flickr.com/20/73732951_27ea8a0795_m.jpg! I was transferred to Folsom prison. Folsom is the maximum security prison, and the worst criminals are sent there. When I came in the fall of 1931, I was brought before Warden Larkin, the most vicious man I've ever met in my life. He said to me, "I see by your record that you're a tough n