Books

Charles E. Cobb Jr.: This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.

Scott Crow (editor): Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense.

Lance Hill: The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement.

Kellie Carter Jackson: We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance.

Nicholas Johnson: Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms.

David F. Krugler: 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back.

Christopher B. Strain: Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era.

Timothy B. Tyson:

• Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story.
• Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power.

Akinyele Omowale Umoja: We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.

Simon Wendt: The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights.

Robert F. Williams. Prologue by Martin Luther King. Negroes with Guns.

Articles & Other Resources

Black Liberation Army: Resources.

Charles E. Cobb Jr.:

• Audio interview: Armed for Nonviolence: Guns and the Civil Rights Movement.
• Guns and the Southern Freedom Struggle: What’s Missing When We Teach About Nonviolence.
• Excerpt from: This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.

Code Switch: From Negro Militias To Black Armament.

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.

Scott Crow: Liberatory Community Armed Self-Defense: Approaches Toward a Theory.

Angela Davis: video interview from prison on the role of self-defense in the Black Freedom Struggle.

Deacons of Defense:

• FBI files on the Deacons.
• Rickey Hill: The Bogalusa Movement: Self-Defense and Black Power in the Civil Rights Struggle.
• George Lakey: Did civil rights need Deacons for Defense?
• Jace Mallory: Deacons for Defense and Justice museum garnering support.
• Douglas Martin: Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81.
• Charles R. Sims: Civil Rights & Armed Struggle in the Sixties.
• Matthew David Streets: “The Deacons are Somewhere Nearby”: How Bogalusa’s Deacons Bolstered the Civil Rights Movement.
• Wikipedia entry.

Annelieke Dirks: Between Threat and Reality: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Emergence of Armed Self-Defense in Clarksdale and Natchez, Mississippi, 1960-1965.

Houston Mutiny of 1917:

• Wikipedia entry.
• Black Past entry.
• Zinn Education project entry.

Nicholas Johnson:

• The what and why of ‘Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms’.
• Short video: How the civil rights movement changed black gun culture.

David F. Krugler: see his large collection of articles and interviews about Black self-defense during the Red Summer.

Left of Black: Black Armed Resistance. (Contains timeline.)

Thad Morgan: The NRA Supported Gun Control When the Black Panthers Had the Weapons.

Rebecca Onion: Red Summer: In 1919, white Americans visited awful violence on black Americans. So black Americans decided to fight back.

Akinyele Omowale Umoja:

• “We Will Shoot Back”: The Natchez Model and Paramilitary Organization in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.
• From One Generation to the Next: Armed Self-Defense, Revolutionary Nationalism, and the Southern Black Freedom Struggle.
• 1964: The Beginning of the End of Nonviolence in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.
• Repression breeds resistance: The black liberation army and the radical legacy of the black panther party.
• The Ballot and the Bullet: A Comparative Analysis of Armed Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement.

Simon Wendt:

• ‘They Finally Found Out that We Really Are Men’: Violence, Non-Violence and Black Manhood in the Civil Rights Era.
• God, Gandhi, and guns: the African American freedom struggle in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1964-1965.
• Protection or Path Toward Revolution? Black Power and Self-Defense.
• “Urge People Not to Carry Guns”: Armed Self-Defense in the Louisiana Civil Rights Movement and the Radicalization of the Congress of Racial Equality.

Robert F. Williams:

• Robert F. Williams: Negroes With Guns (chapters 3-5).
• Robert F. Williams: 1957: The Swimming Pool Showdown.
• Robert F. Williams: Speech given in Peking in 1966, condemning discrimination in the U.S. against Black Americans.
• Robert and Mabel Williams: Self Respect, Self Defense, & Self Determination. (Audio).
• Documentary: Negroes With Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power.
• Timothy B. Tyson: Robert F. Williams, “Black Power;’ and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle.
• Timothy B. Tyson: Robert Franklin Williams: A Warrior For Freedom, 1925-1996.
• Timothy B. Tyson, Randolph Boehm, & Daniel Lewis: The Papers of Robert F. Williams.
• Stanford’s MLK Institute bio of Williams.
• On Rosa Parks speaking at Williams’ funeral.
• Wanda Sabir: Growing up Revolutionary: An interview with John Williams, son of Mabel and Robert F. Williams.

Jasmin A. Young: Strapped: A Historical Analysis of Black Women and Armed resistance, 1959-1979.

Malcolm X: Video interview, clarifying his call for self-defense and rifle clubs.

Contemporary Examples

MSNBC:Black community in Ohio forms safety program after neo-Nazi rally.

NPR: These are the faces of the rising number of Black gun owners in the U.S.