The forty-nine-year-old Black man made his decision after the Michigan Supreme Court on December 1 refused to block his extradition.

"The time is ripe to take on these charges in North Carolina and get it over with once and for all," Williams said in an interview. "And the sooner I can get through this mess, the sooner I can have my freedom."

The alleged kidnapping occurred in 1961 when a white, out-of-town couple, the Stegalls, innocently drove through a Black section of Monroe and were taken from their car and led to Williams's home by Blacks who feared for their safety. The measure was taken after some Blacks had threatened retaliation against any whites they saw because the Black community was under an armed attack by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist elements.

Williams, president of the Monroe NAACP, was a leader of Black resistance to the Klan. He was charged along with four others, with kidnapping.

"I have a taped interview that a British correspondent did with Mrs. Stegall, where she says that they had gone home and forgotten about the whole matter until the police came with the press and made it a kidnapping," Williams recalled of the incident.  
 
December 18, 1950
Agreement to top war councils in Washington that President Truman should declare a national emergency gives warning that the war on the home front against labor will be pushed with increasing determination.

The additional basic power the national emergency proclamation would give Truman is, perhaps, control of the hours of work. The danger now facing American workers is that under cover of the "emergency" wages will be frozen or even rolled back, the work week increased and job regimentation instituted.

A wage freeze would necessarily mean the outlawing of the escalator clauses in contracts now covering over a million workers.

That the capitalist rulers have decided a national emergency declaration is necessary as a psychological weapon to prepare for an all-out drive against living and working standards is at the same time a recognition of the discontent and distrust in the minds of the majority of the people.

The disaster in Korea and the obvious floundering of the ruling circles in Washington have naturally undermined the confidence of the masses in the government.

Far from feeling that great additional sacrifices are necessary, there is plenty of evidence that the American people feel they already have sacrificed enough.

Once the full effects of the real costs of war preparations are felt by the workers, it will take more than psychological blitzkriegs to quell their resistance.  
 
 
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