"The intense period in Mississippi in the summer of 1964 proves a point that was true elsewhere in the South, as well: a clear, sharp line cannot be meaningfully drawn between nonviolence and armed self-defense. Within the framework of black community life and civil rights effort in the South, and in the minds of most who joined the freedom movement, the pistol , the rifle, and the shotgun were integrated with the spirit of the struggle that has always been a basic feature of black life in America and a critical component of the black experience and of the black memory. Nonviolence was an important part of this struggle too, but it was not the entirety of it; nor was the use of guns the be-all and end-all of black struggle.
"'If there is no struggle, there is no progress.' These words spoken by Frederick Douglass more than 150 years ago aptly summarized the relationship of black people in America to the largely white nation that surrounded them. 'Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just how much a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed; and these will be continued until they are resisted by words or blows, or both.'
"Douglass ' words set forth the basic choice that confronted black people in America in the 1960s, just as meaningfully as they do the choice confronted by black people in 1857 when he made that speech, or, for that matter, the choice that confronts black people today. Black life in America has always meant struggle to protect and secure black life in America. That struggle has never centered on the question of violence versus nonviolence. Rather, there has always been one fundamental question , a question posed by the civil rights worker to him- or herself in the 1960s, by the rebellious black person in colonial or antebellum America, by the freed man and freedwoman after the Civil War, and generally by the black community to itself across time: What are you going to do?...
"Whether the question was one of picking up a gun in response to an attack by night riders , or of curling one's body tightly and protectively while being assaulted by a mob at a lunch counter sit-in, or of shielding an elderly person who was under attack for trying to register to vote, the decision of what to do centered not on the choice of violence or nonviolence, but on the question of what response was best in each situation. Most often, moreover, there was very little time to decide. Sometimes heads of households chose to defend home and family with guns ; sometimes it was best to step on the accelerator and speed away or flee on foot. Sometimes ambush eliminated any possibility of choice. What was always at play was the common sense of survival. And flight when necessary was not cowardice , just as shooting it out hopelessly in the name of 'manhood' was not always courage."
P.144-146, "I Wasn't Being Nonviolent," THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF 'LL GET YOU KILLED by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. (2016)

Friday, December 8, 2017
THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF.., EXCERPT
"The intense period in Mississippi in the summer of 1964 proves a point that was true elsewhere in the South, as well: a clear, sharp line cannot be meaningfully drawn between nonviolence and armed self-defense. Within the framework of black community life and civil rights effort in the South, and in the minds of most who joined the freedom movement, the pistol , the rifle, and the shotgun were integrated with the spirit of the struggle that has always been a basic feature of black life in America and a critical component of the black experience and of the black memory. Nonviolence was an important part of this struggle too, but it was not the entirety of it; nor was the use of guns the be-all and end-all of black struggle.
"'If there is no struggle, there is no progress.' These words spoken by Frederick Douglass more than 150 years ago aptly summarized the relationship of black people in America to the largely white nation that surrounded them. 'Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just how much a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed; and these will be continued until they are resisted by words or blows, or both.'
"Douglass ' words set forth the basic choice that confronted black people in America in the 1960s, just as meaningfully as they do the choice confronted by black people in 1857 when he made that speech, or, for that matter, the choice that confronts black people today. Black life in America has always meant struggle to protect and secure black life in America. That struggle has never centered on the question of violence versus nonviolence. Rather, there has always been one fundamental question , a question posed by the civil rights worker to him- or herself in the 1960s, by the rebellious black person in colonial or antebellum America, by the freed man and freedwoman after the Civil War, and generally by the black community to itself across time: What are you going to do?...
"Whether the question was one of picking up a gun in response to an attack by night riders , or of curling one's body tightly and protectively while being assaulted by a mob at a lunch counter sit-in, or of shielding an elderly person who was under attack for trying to register to vote, the decision of what to do centered not on the choice of violence or nonviolence, but on the question of what response was best in each situation. Most often, moreover, there was very little time to decide. Sometimes heads of households chose to defend home and family with guns ; sometimes it was best to step on the accelerator and speed away or flee on foot. Sometimes ambush eliminated any possibility of choice. What was always at play was the common sense of survival. And flight when necessary was not cowardice , just as shooting it out hopelessly in the name of 'manhood' was not always courage."
P.144-146, "I Wasn't Being Nonviolent," THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF 'LL GET YOU KILLED by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. (2016)

