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The Internationalist and the Informant: Robert F. Williams and Richard Gibson from Beijing to Black September
Abstract
This paper seeks to contribute to an emerging literature on global revolutionary thought, analyzing the sinews that bound together Black and Palestinian transnational networks of solidarity. During the period from 1967 to 1974, prominent black radicals and their organizations articulated cogent and incisive analyses of the Palestinian Revolution as part of a broader anti-imperialist project. This paper will examine this intellectual engagement, drawing on archival research from the personal papers, memoirs, pamphlets and letters of Robert F. Williams at the Bentley Historical Library (University of Michigan). Williams, native of North Carolina and advocate of armed self-defense against racist aggression, was widely recognized during his exile in Cuba and China as the “ambassador of militant Afro-Americans” in the Non-Aligned world. Both he and his trusted confidant in London, Richard Gibson, were deeply moved by the advent of the Palestinian Revolution. Through their status as representatives of black America the two interacted with Palestinians and encouraged domestic actors stateside to voice support with the Palestinian struggle. Williams, who had the opportunity to meet a Fateh delegation in Beijing in 1968, was himself a signatory to the famous 1970 New York Times advertisement featuring black intellectuals and activists condemning Israel and Jordan for the events of Black September. Despite this record, the historiography has remained notably silent on his engagement with the Arab world. Key biographical works on Williams (Tyson, 1999, and Frazier, 2014) do not mention Palestine at all, and works that document Black-Palestinian solidarity (Lubin, 2014, Feldman, 2015, and Fischbach, 2018) ignore Williams completely or, at best, barely mention his name as a signatory to the 1970 statement. This paper contributes to both historiographies by detailing Williams’ embrace of the Palestinian Revolution. Unbeknownst to Williams, Gibson was secretly working with the CIA to spy on fellow black radicals. A close reading of CIA and FBI documents elucidate how black internationalists deeply worried U.S. intelligence agencies. Gibson, who interviewed and maintained contacts with Palestinian guerrillas in the 1970s, continued his informant activities throughout this period and even potentially provided information to the agency that might foster discord between them and the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, weakening Cleaver’s International Section of the Party in Algeria during his ideological (and sometimes physical) war with Huey Newton. In conclusion, this paper argues that both Black Power and the Palestinian Revolution were global events, whose fate and fortune were intricately linked.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries