Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power

What role did the press play in the civil rights movement? How was the media utilized by both sides of the movement?

Radio Free Dixie opens on an event that “haunted [Williams] for decades” (2); As an 11-year-old, he witnesses a white police officer beating a Black woman. How does this incident resonate throughout Williams’s life?

How does Radio Free Dixie challenge common narratives of the civil rights movement? What value do you think Tyson sees in challenging these narratives?

Examine the role of violence in the text. How was violence, or the threat of violence, used as a political tool both by allies and enemies of the civil rights movement?

In Chapter 8, Williams states that the difference between his and King’s philosophies on violence is partially due to their different upbringings. Examine this idea. What facets of each of their lives might have shaped their approach to activism?

Examine the significance of the sexual taboo. Where did it originate, and how did it affect life for Black Americans? Do any vestiges of this taboo remain today?

In the conclusion to Radio Free Dixie, Tyson claims that “virtually all of the elements that we associate with Black Power were already present in the small towns and rural communities of the South where the civil rights movement was born” (308). Provide examples from the text that support this claim.

What was the role of white liberals in Williams’s activism? What do Williams’s relationships with people like J. Ray Shute reveal about the nature of white supremacy?