Despite being exiled to a foreign land a thousand miles from home, Robert and Mabel Williams continued their revolutionary work. In addition to publishing their own newspaper, The Crusader, Cuba's communist government permitted Robert and Mabel to launch Radio Free Dixie.
A weekly radio program broadcast through Cuba's Radio Havana station, Radio Free Dixie circulated radical Black agitprop and music rooted in a broad framework of revolutionary internationalism and spoke directly to America's Black working class.
In the book Robert F. Williams: Self-Defense, Self-Respect, Self-Determination, Mabel Williams explained the origins of Radio Free Dixie:
"We always had shortwave radio. Listening to the radio Robert kept thinking 'Well, there's nothing coming out of the U.S. officially that is really telling our story, telling about what's going on with the Black people in the United States.' So, he approached Fidel Castro with the idea of establishing a radio program. Rob had decided that we wanted to have a musical program but at the same time, use the music to attract the attention of the people. Jazz, protest music that came out of our struggle so we could get people's attention and then we could be able to give them the message of what was happening to our people in the United States…in the struggle."
Before every broadcast, a State-crafted address was played in which Radio Havana—and, by extension, the Cuban government—expressed its solidarity with the plight and struggle of Black people in America and oppressed peoples everywhere.