Robert F. Williams, president of the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and early 1960s, became a vocal proponent of “the right of Negroes to meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense.” With no protection from law enforcement, Williams advised African Americans to “arm themselves as a group to defend their homes, their wives, their children” because, as he contended, the Constitution bestowed the right to own a gun for the defense of a person’s home or property on all Americans.
