Speech by U.S. Civil Rights Leader Robert Williams, 1966

American civil rights leader Robert Williams delivered this speech on August 8th,1966 at a demonstration in Beijing commemorating the third anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s “Statement Supporting the American Negroes in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism”. The rally was held to condemn discrimination against Black Americans in the U.S. and support their right to use counter-violence in response to white supremacist violence by the U.S. government and other groups. In this speech, Williams lambasts the U.S. for its history of brutal violence towards Black Americans and oppressed peoples worldwide, criticizing U.S. authorities and the dominant class in American society for being hypocritical, fascist, and racist. Williams links the white supremacist violence faced by Black Americans at home with U.S. imperialism abroad, especially criticizing the War in Vietnam. In doing so, he explicitly situates Black Americans, a minority within the U.S., within a global majority of oppressed peoples resisting racism and imperialism. Taken together with Mao Tse-Tung’s statement supporting Black radicals’ struggles for freedom and human rights, this text offers an example of the complicated exchange between Chinese communism and U.S. Black radicalism as both movements sought to envision alternatives to U.S. expansion and empire.