Biography
Mabel Williams was a civil-rights organizer who, with her husband Robert F. Williams, championed armed Black self-defense against white-supremacist violence in Monroe, North Carolina. After the couple sheltered a white couple during racial unrest in 1961, the FBI issued kidnapping warrants and the Williams family fled the United States. Granted political asylum in Cuba, Mabel and Robert broadcast Radio Free Dixie from Havana — beaming news, music, and commentary to Black listeners across the American South — and Mabel helped edit their newsletter The Crusader. The family later lived in China before returning to the United States in 1969. An organizer and movement worker in her own right, she continued civil-rights and community work until her death in 2014.