Protection or Path Toward Revolution?: Black Power and Self-Defense

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of the ideology and practice of armed self-defense in the Black freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. Comparing self-defense tactics in the southern civil rights movement with armed militancy in the Black Power movement, the article argues that there were both continuities and discontinuities between these two phases of the Black freedom struggle. The fact that African-American activists relied on armed protection long before the advent of Black Power clearly contradicts the long-held notion that 1966 marks a sudden renunciation of Martin Luther King's nonviolent philosophy. Compared with the pragmatic necessity to protect Black communities against racist terrorists in the South, however, the self-defense efforts of Black Power groups such as the Black Panther Party tended to play a more symbolic role and served primarily as a means of affirming black manhood, gaining publicity, and recruiting new members.

Keywords:

• Armed Self-Defense
• Black Power
• Civil Rights Movement

Notes

The most important works include Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2006); Peniel E. Joseph, ed., The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era (New York: Routledge, 2006); Matthew J. Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); James Edward Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004); Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004); Scot Brown, Fighting for US: Maulena Karenga, the US Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism (New York: New York University Press, 2003); Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Yohuru Williams, Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Black Panthers in New Haven (St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press, 2000); Komozi Woodard, A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) & Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Charles E. Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered] (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998). An earlier study that continues to provide a good overview but focuses on the cultural dimensions of the movement is William L. Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), p. 3.

Emilye Crosby, “‘This Nonviolent Stuff Ain't No Good. It'll Get Ya Killed': Teaching about Self-Defense in the African American Freedom Struggle,” in Teaching the American Civil Rights Movement: Freedom's Bittersweet Song, eds. Julie Buckner Armstrong, Susan Edwards, Houston Roberson, and Rhonda Williams (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 159–173; Emilye Crosby, A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Lance E. Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Christopher Strain, Pure Fire: Armed Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005); Akinyele O. Umoja, “The Ballot and the Bullet: A Comparative Analysis of Armed Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Black Studies 29(4) (March 1999): pp. 558–578; Akinyele O. Umoja, “‘We Will Shoot Back': The Natchez Model and Paramilitary Organization in the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” Journal of Black Studies 32(3) (January 2002): pp. 271–294; Akinyele O. Umoja, “1964: The Beginning of the End of Nonviolence in the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” Radical History Review 85 (Winter 2003): pp. 201–226; Simon Wendt, The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007); Simon Wendt, “‘Urge People Not to Carry Guns’: Armed Self-Defense in the Louisiana Civil Rights Movement and the Radicalization of the Congress of Racial Equality,” Louisiana History 45(3) (Summer 2004): pp. 261–286.

For a more detailed discussion of these differences, see Wendt, The Spirit and the Shotgun.

Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir (New York: David McKay, 1962), pp. 94, 96, 111, 162; “Statement by Mrs. L. C. (Daisy) Bates, Arkansas State President National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” August 13, 1959, box 3, folder 5, Daisy Bates Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin (hereafter cited as SHSW); Grif Stockley, Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), p. 186.

Andrew M. Manis, A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press), pp. 110, 117–118, 169–170; Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, interview by James Mosby, transcript, September 1968, Cincinnati, Ohio, Ralph J. Bunche Oral History Collection (hereafter cited as Bunche Collection), Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C., p. 18.

Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, pp. 80–89.

See Wendt, The Spirit and the Shotgun, pp. 42–65.

Eugene Nelson to Dear Parents, July 3, 1964, Eugene Nelson Papers, SHSW.

Griffin McLaurin, interview by Harriet Tanzman, tape recording, March 6, 2000, Milestone, Miss., Civil Rights Documentation Project, L. Zenobia Coleman Library (hereafter cited as Coleman Library), Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Miss.; Steven Bingham, “Mississippi Letter,” Steven Bingham Papers, SHSW.

Nicholas von Hoffman, Mississippi Notebook (New York: David White Company, 1964), pp. 94–95; Ms. Winson Hudson, telephone interview by John Rachal, transcript, August 31, 1995, Mississippi Oral History Program, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, p. 103; Rims Barber, interview by Kim Lacy Rogers and Own Brooks, tape recording, August 30, 1995, n.p., Delta Oral History Project, Coleman Library; Elizabeth Sutherland, ed., Letters from Mississippi (New York: McGraw-Hill), p. 115.

See Crosby, A Little Taste of Freedom, pp. 167–188; Umoja, “‘We Will Shoot Back,’” pp. 271–294; Umoja, “1964: The Beginning of the End of Nonviolence in the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” pp. 201–226; Wendt, The Spirit and the Shotgun, pp. 100–152.

For a detailed account and discussion of the Deacons' activities, see Hill, The Deacons for Defense; Wendt, “‘Urge People Not to Carry Guns, ’” pp. 261–286; and Wendt, The Spirit and the Shotgun, pp. 66–99.

Quoted in “The Deacons,” Newsweek, August 2, 1965, p. 28.

Quoted in Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 90.

“Diary,” entry July 14, 1964, Jo Anne Oiman Robinson Papers, box 2, folder 1, SHSW; Sutherland, Letters from Mississippi, p. 45; “Summary of Incidents in Bogalusa, Louisiana, April 7–9,” 1965, Southern Regional Office Files (hereafter cited as SRO), box 1, folder 6, SHSW; “4/7/65 Bogalusa, La.,” SRO, box 7, folder 6; “Concordia (Ferriday) July 21, 1965,” SRO, box 4, folder 7.

John R. Salter and Don B. Kates Jr., “The Necessity for Access to Firearms by Dissenters and Minorities Whom Government Is Unwilling or Unable to Protect,” in Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out, Donald B. Kates Jr., ed. (Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.: North River Press, 1979), p. 192.

Bobby Seale, A Lonely Rage: The Autobiography of Bobby Seale (New York: New York Times Books, 1978), p. 130; Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 111.

For a more detailed account of this process, see Wendt, The Spirit and the Shotgun.

“Freedom Riders Go beyond the New Frontier,” Liberator 1 (June 1961): pp. 1–2.

Keith Younger, “Violence vs Nonviolence,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 1, 1963, p. 4.

Mr. Revresbo, “Eye for an Eye,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 24, 1963, p. 4.

“Malcolm X Talks with Kenneth B. Clark,” in Malcolm X: The Man and his Time, John Henrik Clark, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1969), p. 176.

“Message to the Grass Roots,” in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, George Breitman, ed. (New York: Pathfinder, 1989), pp. 9, 12.

Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 416. On the OAAU, see William W. Sales Jr., From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro–American Unity (Boston: South End Press, 1994).

Quoted in M. S. Handler, “Malcolm X Sees Rise in Violence,” New York Times, March 13, 1964, p. 20.

George Todd, “Malcolm X Explains His Rifle Statement,” Amsterdam News, March 28, 1964, p. 35; Gertrude Samuels, “Feud Within the Black Muslims,” New York Times Magazine, March 22, 1964, p. 104; William Worthy, “Malcolm X Plans for Rifle Clubs,” Baltimore Afro–American, March 21, 1964, p. 2.

Daniel H. Watts, “Malcolm X: Self-Defense vs. Submission,” Liberator 4(4) (April 1964): p. 3.

Quoted in “Form Rifle Clubs, Militant Detroiter Urges,” Jet, July 16, 1964, p. 7.

Dealia Mathis, letter to the editor, Ebony, November 1964, p. 16.

William L. Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon, p. 2.

On the struggle to integrate the city's schools, see Leonard Nathaniel Moore, “The School Desegregation Crisis of Cleveland, Ohio, 1963–1964: The Catalyst for Black Political Power in a Northern City,” Journal of Urban History 28(2) (January 2002): pp. 135–57.

Lewis Robinson, interview by John Britton, transcript, November 15, 1967, Cleveland, Ohio, Bunch Collection, pp. 19–20.

Lewis G. Robinson, The Making of a Man: An Autobiography (Cleveland: Green and Sons, 1970), p. 78; “Negro Rifle Club Leader Expects White Violence,” Cleveland Press, April 6, 1964, p. A1.

Robinson, The Making of a Man, p. 121.

Robinson interview, p. 8.

Robinson, The Making of a Man, p. 122–130.

Nikhil Pal Singh, “The Black Panthers and the ‘Undeveloped Country’ of the Left,” in The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered), p. 81.

Huey P. Newton, “The Correct Handling of a Revolution: July 20, 1967,” in Huey P. Newton, To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 15–16; Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, p. 122.

“Interview with Huey Newton,” in Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century, August Meier, Elliot Rudwick, and Francis L. Brodwick, eds. 2nd ed., (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merill Company, 1971), p. 508.

“Playboy Interview: Eldridge Cleaver,” Playboy, December 1968, p. 92.

Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (New York: Vintage, 1970), p. 85; Countryman, Up South, p. 287.

Ogbar, Black Power, pp. 102, 103–106; Erika Doss, “Imaging the Panthers: Representing Black Power and Masculinity, 1960s-1990s,” Prospects 23 (1998): p. 493; Tracye Matthews, “‘No One Ever Asks What a Man's Place in the Revolution Is': The Politics of Gender in the Black Panther Party, 1966–1971,” in The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered], pp. 269, 278; Norbert Finzsch, “‘Picking Up the Gun': Die Black Panther Party zwischen gewaltsamer Revolution und sozialer Reform, 1966–1984,” Amerikastudien 44(2) (1999): p. 239; Rhonda Y. Williams, “Black Women, Urban Politics, and Engendering Black Power,” in The Black Power Movement, pp. 89–90; Countryman, Up South, pp. 287–288, 293.

Andrew Claude Clegg, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 101, 122; Brown, Fighting for US, p. 56.

Stephen Ward, “The Third World Women's Alliance: Black Feminist Radicals and Black Power Politics,” in The Black Power Movement, p. 124.

For examples of Black women's activism in Philadelphia, see Countryman, Up South.

Stephen Ward, “The Third World Women's Alliance,” p. 120. For a similar reinterpretation of the role of Black feminism in the Black Power movement, see Kimberly Springer, Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); Kimberly Springer, “Black Feminists Respond to Black Power Masculinism,” in The Black Power Movement, pp. 105–118; and Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, pp. 255, 271–272, 294.

Williams, “Black Women, Urban Politics, and Engendering Black Power,” p. 88; Springer, “Black Feminists Respond to Black Power Masculinism,” p. 116.

“On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community: April 17, 1971,” in Newton, To Die for the People, pp. 48–49.

Countryman, Up South, p. 288.

Kenneth O'Reilly, “Racial Matters”: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972 (New York: Free Press, 1989), pp. 293–324; Ward Churchill, “‘To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy’: The FBI's Secret War Against the Black Panther Party,” in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and their Legacy, Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 78–117.

Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, pp. 149–150; Williams, “Black Women, Urban Politics, and Engendering Black Power,” pp. 89–90; Countryman, Up South, p. 288.

John A. Courtwright, “Rhetoric of the Gun: An Analysis of the Rhetorical Modifications of the Black Panther Party,” Journal of Black Studies 4(3) (March 1974): pp. 249–267.

Quoted in Jane McManus, “An Exile Warns of Race ‘Explosion’ in the U.S.,” National Guardian, September 12, 1964, p. 6.

Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, pp. 111–112.

See Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, pp. 59–60, 269, 275; Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon, pp. 165, 168, 144–49; Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army and the Radical Legacy of the Black Panther Party,” in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party, pp. 3–19.