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oral histories of the American South

Founding <cite>The Crusader</cite>

Williams remembers the birth of the newspaper <cite>The Crusader</cite>, which Williams published with Robert when the Monroe paper stopped printing his letters.

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The kissing case had a lot of momentum to it. And, you know, helped to move it along. But I'm trying to remember and I'm not very good at chronological dates and the sequences because now that I look back over it it just kind of melts together. But, so, I remember Rob going to Cuba. And he went along with several black writers and artists: Leroy Jones and some of the other artists. And while down there learning about what was going on with the Cuban revolution. But then we had already started publishing "The Crusader" before then. So I'm trying to remember. I don't remember if we were publishing "The Crusader" when the kissing case came along. I think we must have been because we had good mailing lists that we were able to contact people all over. The newspapers stopped publishing Rob's letters to the editor.
I'm surprised they ever did.
Yeah, yeah. They did, but the closer he came to identifying problems that [loud buzz] that existed in our community, the more the newspaper decided that, no, we don't want to let this—we don't want to publish this. So after he got to be president of the NAACP, he tried on several occasions to report things, incidents that were being reported to the NAACP and all that, and the paper wouldn't run anything. They wouldn't tell what was going on. And so he—they came up with the idea that we need to have our own press, something that we can—so that we can tell the people what's going on. So that's how we decided we better put out a little newsletter. And he said, "Well, we'll just make it a little one-pager or two-pager, you know." And once we started doing that—. And I guess if I would go back and read some of the earlier editions I would see exactly why it was that we came up that, and what the sequence of events were. But, perhaps, you can do that at some later date.