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MURFREESBORO – He was beaten, cut, had his life threatened on more than one occasion, and arrested numerous times, but Rudolph “Bill” Mobley kept moving forward in the fight for equality.

Mobley, a native of Williamston, is a 1964 graduate of E.J. Hayes High School where, in his junior and senior years, he was captain of both the football and basketball teams. His coach for both sports was the legendary Herman Boone, who later became the head football coach at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, VA whose 1971 state championship team served as the true story behind the 2000 movie “Remember the Titans.”

In his later years of high school and following his graduation, Mobley became active in the Civil Rights movement. At that time, his mother, Mary Mobley, served as the vice president of the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). That organization, founded in 1957, is a civil rights organization based in Atlanta, GA. Its first president was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I became involved in the Civil Rights movement because my mom was in it,” he said. “I wanted to protect her.

“My first civil rights demonstration with them was in St. Augustine, Florida,” Mobley recalled. “We got down there on a Sunday, had a march on Monday where I and others were arrested and wound up in the Jacksonville State Penitentiary for a week.”

Mobley couldn’t remember the exact number of demonstrations/marches he was involved in or the total times he was arrested.

“Sometimes we would march every day for a week. Many of those marches were in Williamston,” he said, adding that a book in his possession – The Williamston Freedom Movement – detailed many of those struggles for civil rights from 1957-1970.

On one occasion, Mobley said he got into an altercation with a sheriff’s deputy and was struck in the head.

“I guess I made a lot of people mad, and not just the whites; the first person who tried to kill me was my own cousin who pulled out a knife and cut me in my head twice,” Mobley said.

Mobley recalled on another occasion where an elderly Black man had threatened to kill him.

“There were some Blacks who saw the Civil Rights movement as their enemy,” Mobley noted. “We were fighting for change and they thought things were fine just as they were back then. Some thought the worst thing to ever happen to Blacks was the integration of public schools. They were looking backwards, not forward.”

Mobley said he and others in the movement “caught it” from both sides.

“In the Civil Rights movement, whites would come through our neighborhoods throwing things and calling us names. That would cause Blacks to retaliate.

“My mind got changed on that because one night I was with a large group of Black guys who were throwing things at this white guy’s car,” Mobley shared. “He stopped and told us that he sympathized with what we were going through, but he wasn’t part of the hatred, he wasn’t out to harm anyone. From that point on I changed my whole demeanor. I started hanging out with two other guys. All we did was protect our neighborhood and attack anyone who attacked us first. We vowed not to kill anybody, just stand up and protect our neighborhood.”

Eventually, Mobley moved to Massachusetts where he lived for 13 years. There he joined the NAACP and participated in marches there.

“My sister was also there. One summer she and I, through the NAACP, visited summer camps that were for rich white kids and we would educate them about the Civil Rights movement. I also coached youth basketball while I was there,” Mobley said.

He also took courses in auto body repair and landed a job in a shop. He later worked for General Electric before moving back home to Williamston. There he found a job working for Roanoke Chevrolet in their body shop. Less than one year later he gained employment with Dominion Energy.

By the time Dominion transferred Mobley to Hertford County in 1983, he joined the local chapter of the NAACP, helping to spread the word about the organization on a local radio station. That broadcast was later renamed the Truth Network.

He retired in 2000 from Dominion Energy.

Today, Mobley wishes Blacks would become more active in promoting their history.

“Why is it that the only time you hear the Black National Anthem – ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ – is during Black History Month,” he observed. “Black history needs to be celebrated every month. If we were included in United States history and world history, there would not be a need for Black history. We are United States citizens, so why aren’t we a part of United States history?”

Prior to Dr. King’s birthday becoming a national holiday, Mobley worked with management at Dominion Energy in an effort to allow their employees, Black or white, to take that day off.

Even though he was part of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, Mobley realizes the sacrifices made by others before him in an effort to establish equality among the races.

“We are where we’re at today because of those who gave their lives in the fight for our rights,” he said. “My wife [Arlicie, who passed away in 2021] and I toured the Civil Rights Trail, from Memphis to Birmingham, standing in spots where churches were bombed, lives were lost, and marches took place.”

Mobley said despite the efforts of many, work remains to gain 100 percent equality.

“Now we’re taking the fight within our ranks; addressing the problem of kids on our streets with guns,” he stressed. “It’s gotten so bad that you can’t speak to someone without being threatened with violence. The Devil is on the rampage. No one is teaching love and respect inside homes anymore. It’s at home where the real education begins and we’re not seeing much of that anymore.”

Mobley and his wife once worked as youth directors at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, taking them on trips to help expand their horizons.

As he looks back on his life, Mobley, now age 78, said the words of Dr. King as well as those written in the Bible have carried him through the battles he faced along the way.

“Dr. King said, ‘A man who isn’t willing to die for something isn’t fit to live.’ And the Bible tells us that we have to overcome the fear of dying to do the will of the almighty. That doesn’t mean I’m going out and do something stupid, but overcoming the fear of doing what’s right is half the battle,” Mobley concluded.