Cobb - This nonviolent stuffll get you killed : how guns made the civil rights movement possible

More Advance Praise for This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed

What most of us think we know about the central role of nonviolence in the long freedom struggle in the South is not so much wrong as blinkered. Or so Charles Cobb says in this passionate, intellectually disciplined reordering of the conventional narrative to include armed self-defense as a central component of the black movements success. Read it and be reminded that history is not a record etched in stone by journalists and academics, but a living stream, fed and redirected by the bottom-up witness of its participants.Hodding Carter III, Professor of Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Popular culture washes the complexity out of so many things. Charles Cobb works mightily against that torrent. This Nonviolent Stuffll Get You Killed shows that the simplistic popular understanding of the black Freedom Movement obscures a far richer story. Cobb defies the popular narrative with accounts of the grit and courage of armed stalwarts of the modern movement who invoked the ancient right of self-defense under circumstances where we should expect nothing less. This book is an important contribution to a story that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.Nicholas Johnson, Professor of Law, Fordham Law School, and author of Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms

This Nonviolent Stuffll Get You Killed is the most important movement book in many years. Charles Cobb uses long-standing confusion over the distinction between violence and nonviolence as an entre to rethinking many fundamental misconceptions about what the civil rights movement was and why it was so powerful. This level of nuance requires a disciplined observer, an engaged participant, and a lyrical writer. Cobb is all these.Charles M. Payne, author of Ive Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle

Any book that has as its central thesis that armed self-defense was essential both to the existence and the success of the civil rights movement is bound to stir up controversy. But Charles Cobb, combining the rigor of a scholar with the experience (and passion) of a community organizer, has made his case. This book is a major contribution to the historiography of the black freedom struggle. More than that, it adds a new chapter to the story of the local people who, often armed, protected the organizers and their communities during the turbulent civil rights years.John Dittmer, author of Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

Charles Cobbs This Nonviolent Stuffll Get You Killed is a marvelous contribution to our understanding of the modern black freedom struggle. With wonderful storytelling skills and drawing on his unparalleled access to movement participants, he situates armed self-defense in the context of a complex movement and in conversation with both nonviolence and community organizing. Cobb writes from personal experience on the frontlines of SNCCs voter registration work while also using the skills of a journalist, historian, and teacher. The result is a compelling and wonderfully nuanced book that will appeal to specialists and, more importantly, anyone interested in human rights and the freedom struggle.Emilye Crosby, author of A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi and editor of Civil Rights History from the Ground Up

This long overdue book revises the image of black people in the South as docile and frightened. It tells our story, demonstrating that black people have always been willing to stand their ground and do whatever was necessary to free themselves from bondage and to defend their families and communities. This is a must-read for understanding the southern Freedom Movement.David Dennis, former Mississippi Director, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Director, Southern Initiative of the Algebra Project

THIS NONVIOLENT STUFFLL GET YOU KILLED

ALSO BY CHARLES E. COBB JR.

On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail

No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists
Over a Half Century, 19502000
(edited with William Minter and Gail Hovey)

Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project
(with Robert P. Moses)

Copyright 2014 by Charles E. Cobb Jr.

Published by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cobb, Charles E., Jr.

This nonviolent stuff'll get you killed : how guns made the civil rights movement possible / Charles E. Cobb.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-465-08095-3 (ebook)

1. African AmericansCivil rightsHistory20th century. 2. Civil rights movementsUnited StatesHistory20th century. 3. Self-defenseUnited StatesHistory20th century. 4. FirearmsLaw and legislationUnited StatesHistory20th century. 5. Gun controlUnited StatesHistory20th century. I. Title.

E185.61.C633 2014

323.1196'073dc23

2013045809

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This book is dedicated to

Ella Baker, Herbert Lee, Medgar Evers, Amzie Moore, Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, Victoria Gray Adams, Aaron Henry, Hartman Turnbow, C. O. Chinn, Hazel Palmer, Vernon Dahmer, Laura McGhee, Robert Burns, Cleveland Jordan, Joe and Rebecca McDonald, Janie Brewer, Henry Sias, E. W. Steptoe, Alyene Quin, Curtis Conway C. C. Bryant, Webb Super Cool Daddy Owens, George Metcalfe, Wharlest Jackson, Joseph Mallisham, Harry T. and Harriet Moore, Henry J. Kirksey, Annie Mama Dolly Raines, Ernest Chilly Willy Thomas, Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Robert Hicks, Charles Sims, A. Z. Young, Vernon Johns, Golden Frinks, Annie Lee Cooper, Amelia Boynton, John Hulett, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Septima Clark, Reverend Samuel Wells, Robert Williams, Jim Forman, Ann Braden, Myles Horton, and all the other strong elders who kept a-comin on, kept us safe, taught us much, and made us better.

It is also dedicated to the memory of these freedom fighters of my generation:

Cynthia Washington, Ed Brown, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, Stokely Carmichael, Bob Mants, George Raymond, Lawrence Guyot, Sam Block, John Wilson, Ralph Featherstone, Prathia Hall, Richard Haley, Oretha Castle Haley, Sammy Younge, Endesha Ida Mae Holland, Fay Bellamy, Mimi Shaw Hayes, Mendy Samstein, Hellen ONeal McCray, Willie McCray, Cordell Reagon, James Orange, Jimmy Travis, Annelle Ponder, John Buffington, Matthew Jones, June Johnson, George Ware, Amanda Bowens Perdew, Jim Bevel, Billy Stafford, James Peacock, Randy Battle, Lafayette Surney, Mario Savio, Ralph Allen, Michael Mickey Schwerner, James J. E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Bill Winky Hall, Patricia Stevens Due, L. C. Dorsey, Sam Shirah, Frank Cieciorka, and Butch Conn.