7 equal protection under the law at the national level.17 As a result of Williams’ candid interviews wherein he advanced his willingness to take up arms against racial oppression, the national media came to present the Monroe NAACP as the most militant chapter in the United States. The local KKK and white citizenry predictably responded to this by increasing threats of violence and intimidation. While WWII exposed the contradictory nature of the segregationist ideology, Southern governments responded by blocking African-American attempts to convert ideas into the realm of policy (thus preventing practical change). In Monroe, this utilization of the 2nd dimension of power led to further oppression and exclusion of African-Americans from their constitution rights throughout the latter half of the 1950s. In 1956, the Monroe NAACP branch began efforts to gain African-American access to the local town swimming pool. Multiple drowning of unsupervised AfricanAmerican children in local waterholes sparked the group’s efforts to advocate for a safe facility. After being denied construction of a new pool in the African-American community, the local NAACP extended a compromise to city officials: asking the mayor to give African-American children access to the town pool two days a week. Williams argued the pool was built with New Deal federal funds and supported with municipal taxes; therefore it ought to be open to all residents of Monroe. Utilizing the 2nd dimensional tool of institutional inaction, the city officials’ first gave the impression they would build a pool but gave no finite date other than ‘within the next 15 years’. After the NAACP chapter rejected the timeline the officials the original compromise, stating desegregation of the local pool would be too expensive because the town would have to
17 Robert
Williams, Negroes with Guns, 52.