We Will Shoot Back

June 17, 2013
African-American Studies professor Umoja adds a much-needed chapter to the history of the Civil Rights Movement with his well-sourced chronicle of the Mississippians who risked life, limb, and livelihood by arming themselves against "White supremacist terrorism". Though groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress on Racial Equality promoted nonviolence, they also relied on "covert armed protection". Indeed, armed self-defense" was "common practice for southern black activists." These men and women argued: "non-violent stuff ain't no good. It'll get you killed." The possibility of armed resistance came to be an important bargaining chip between civil rights groups and federal officials who often declined to intervene in the increasingly violent confrontations. However, after the 1964 deaths of civil rights workers James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, support for nonviolence disintegrated; some disaffected civil rights leaders adopted paramilitary tactics or turned to the nascent Black Nationalist groups to protect civil rights workers. Increasingly, the Black Panthers and other Black power leaders gained ascendency as White supremacists continued their assaults on Black communities well into the 1970s. Umoja's eye-opening work is a powerful and provocative addition to the literature of the civil rights movement.