The Case for Self Defense in the Civil Rights Era

The common assessment of the Civil Rights Movement assumes that nonviolence was the most successful tactic employed. However, Black Americans have always participated in forms of self defense against a variety of threats while in the US. Some of these examples include methods such as defensive theft and outright physical attack against their oppressors. In a passage from his infamous autobiography, famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass found that self defense “ recalled to my life a crushed self respect… and inspired me with a renewed determination to be a free man.”  To Douglass, defense endowed black people with confidence and self determination. This is evidenced by the following quote, “When a man learns to use arms he gets more self confidence in himself, and the fact that he knows what to do with arms, he knows the power of arms.” 

This sentiment is shared by the Father of HistoryMaker Dr. Glenn W. Cherry. His father, Charles was a Korean War veteran and Morehouse alum, who returned to the United States and joined the Civil Rights Movement. Cherry served as a member of the Citizens Coordinating Committee and then in the NAACP as the bails bondsman for Central Florida. He says,

“...To get some people out of jail and before the police let them out they were notifying everybody that they were letting them out of jail. And so, he said he knew that they were going to get shot at coming out of there, because most the places where they were coming you had to come down a road that, you know, there was woods on both sides…he was the bails bondsman, he'd go to get them out and he'd hear them telling everybody that we're letting them go and they would hold them long enough for everybody to get kind of in place. And so, he said that that's when, when he said, ‘Well, you had to be smart. It was sometimes when I was nonviolent and it was sometimes when I was going to protect myself because I wanted to get home.’ And so, he said he'd come--coming out of some of those places, they'd start shooting and he said, he'd stick his shotgun out the window and, and shoot a couple shots while he's going down the road just so they'd know, you know.”

Charles W Cherry Sr

It was under these kinds of physical threats that many of the earliest civil rights activists chose to take up arms. The assumption of armed resistance making its first appearance after the modern civil rights movement is incorrect. This is evidenced by the number of black citizens and leaders who were armed at the time. Such figures include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who entered his journey as an activist armed with the understanding that physical violence against black people was a common occurrence. Dr. King often kept arms with him until clergy members encouraged him to adopt the most literal form of non-violence. To its believers, non violence was the embodiment of Christian love and “turning the other cheek.” Similarly, non violence afforded its followers a particular brand of Christian martyrdom. Furthermore, in comparison to self defense, non violence illuminated the gravity of unprovoked violence black activists experienced. As a result of these beliefs, armed self defense became the exact opposite of King’s peaceful method. This was especially true for the American public, who both lauded and challenged King for these beliefs. However, this method was far from safe or without significant risk. HistoryMaker Robert Green witnessed many of these dangers first hand. As the national education director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Green traveled with Dr. King and saw the following incident.

“...We pull up to the light, and James Belk, owner of the gas station, saw Dr. King. He was pumping gas. He stopped pumping gas. He walked up to the car, pulled out his pistol, and put it up to Dr. King's temple…everybody froze. He said, ‘Martin Luther King, Jr., you so and so, and so and so, I'm going to blow your f-ing brains out.’ Dr. King very calmly turned to him and said, ‘Brother, I love you.’ And that pistol came down. Well, of course, we all were at--probably had heart attacks in all four chambers, and we were pretty put out. See, it was-"Dr. King, we told you, you should ride in the back, you should ride in the back of the car. Look what happened." He very calmly turned to us and said, "Look, [President] John Fitzgerald [Kennedy] had the [U.S.] Army, the [U.S.] Navy, the [U.S.] Air Force, the [U.S.] Coast Guard, and the Secret Service, and they assassinated him. When they're ready for me and my time comes, I'm gone." I remember that incident. That was his response.”

Alternately, Malcolm X believed that self defense was the most appropriate ideology for black people in the Civil Rights era because he recognized the individual’s “right to protect the integrity of his life, home and property, using force if necessary.” Conversely to King’s interpretation of Christianity moral suffering, Malcolm X’s interpretation of the Koran did not encourage the oppressed “to suffer peacefully.” Malcolm went on to use the threat of nonviolence as a powerful counterpoint to Dr. King’s nonviolent movement. By using the weapons and language [racists] use, Malcolm offered white Americans the alternative option for peaceful reform. Malcolm reintroduced the idea of black self defense to the public consciousness. This is powerfully exemplified by his threat to Rockwell and other Alabama supremacists in defense of X’s public foe, Dr. King. X said, “If your present racist agitation...causes physical harm to King or any other Black American...you and your Klu Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who believe in our right to self defense.”

This argument, pitted against the nonviolent work of Dr. King earned X an increasingly negative portrayal in the media. This is evidenced by the words of Historymaker, Philip Cohran. In addition to being the founding director of the Afro-Arts Theatre in Chicago, Cohran was also briefly a member of the Nation of Islam, where he recorded some of Malcolm X’s speeches. On X’s personality, Cohran had this to say, 

“Malcolm X had to be painted as the worst person of the 20th century because he was opposed to white people's rule and domination of the African people and the rest of the world. But Malcolm was not a hateful person, with all the abuse that he had been involved in. There hardly was a person that he ever hit or struck, you know. Like when he carried his gun, he would just, you know, was going through acts. But later on as a minister you could see and you could feel the tenderness and the concern that he had for other people. And that's why he could go on the street where the wine heads and all of them hung around. All of them listened to him, they could feel him, no matter what state of mind they were in, drunk and everything else. So, we all admired him for that.”

Phil Cohran for Histprymakers

On X’s public perception and ethos, Cohran went on to say,

“I would say that Malcolm was loved by almost anybody that he came up and met. Even Dr. King [Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.], anybody that met him, he was that type of guy. He didn't have a bad bone in his body. But everybody in the news always got this one picture. The editor of the paper, when they selected the pictures that's going to go in the paper, it's always that tough one, looking like, "I'll kill you," you know, they made him look as bad as they could. And they brought Malcolm up as the enemy of white people, but he was the enemy of the things that white people practiced; (laughter) he was not the enemy of any man. Now, the dogma was set up to attract black people's attention. They could, they would never have gone anywhere with what some of those other organizations were talking about. So, it was a type of a device or propaganda, reverse propaganda, you might put it. But what we were interested in was the truth of ourselves, because you cannot excel without knowing who you are.”

Malcolm was not the only party invested in the safety of those who advocate for nonviolence. The Deacons of Defense were an elite group of clergymen who would follow Dr. King to events for his armed protection. The Deacons of Defense combined the principles of nonviolent direct action with the principles of self defense. Historymaker, activist and imam Mujahid Ramadan had family members who were in the Deacons of Defense. On the Christian basis of the group he says, “ Most of them probably were religious men who were members of churches and who, who saw, they saw a different purview of you know not so much turn the other cheek. I think they saw that more spiritually and symbolically, but not so much in the physical sense of turning the other cheek. I think it was their religious and spiritual convictions that led them to being who they were and that feeling as though they had a right based on the law of God you know to defend and, and protect themselves.” As mentioned earlier, many people in the Civil Rights era were aware of the sticky realities that a non violent stance would place them in. Ramadan continues, “the Civil Rights Movement, while it was visible…never had a stronghold in Louisiana because Dr. King wouldn't come there because of the deacons, because of what they practiced or the way they approached things.”

Deacons of Defense at a KKK Rally

A major contributor to the Deacon of Defense’s success is their ability to project the image of a secret and sprawling society that made white people question their power. “I think they were very select because I knew some…you never knew publicly who they were and they were like shadows…you could tell by the way they talked to one another. I remember language like, ‘How you doing pilgrim?’ ‘Hey pilgrim, how you doing?’ But he wouldn't call everybody pilgrim and--not everybody called him pilgrim back.” Despite their limited numbers, deacons used their guns to protect and defend non violent resistors and often participated in unarmed protest as well. This combination of beliefs is exemplified by the events of July 8th 1965, when two DoD members shot a white man who attacked them for attempting to aid an injured black protestor. On the tactics of the Deacons Ramadan says, “...The traditional non-violence of Dr. King…wasn't something they could actually practice with everybody because they didn't think some people were accepting of that. So, they felt as though the best way to deal with them is the way they dealt [with violence]...” Despite the obvious use of violence in this instance, major civil rights organizations such as CORE refused to denounce the Deacons. This refusal speaks to the power of their values and the impact of their work on a national scale. In 2003, the deacons of Defense got a movie detailing their experiences. The films director, Historymaker Bill Duke had this to say about the project.

“...When the civil rights story was told to me, it was about, you know, really these cowering kind of black folks, you know, that were pacifistic, and kind of relied upon the good auspices of brave white folks to save us, you know. No one ever told me these guys that came from World War II [WWII] and the Korean War, or whatever, with guns came…and had tasted what it meant to stand up for themselves and fight for themselves. And when the Klan [Ku Klux Klan, KKK], or racists, tried to threaten them on any level, they step in their face, said, ‘You know something, I'm going to shoot you’... I was so impressed by that I wanted to make a movie about that, yeah.”

A shot from Showtime’s Deacons of Defense Movie

The Black Panther party of Self Defense believed that self defense was a natural piece of their most integral values “self-determination, self-respect, and self-defense. ”Many of the Party’s most prominent figures held the core values of the Deacons of Defense and Malcolm X. Huey P. Newton considered Malcolm’s influence ‘ever-present’ in the existence of the BPP and their stance on armed resistance.   The Black Panther Party’s conception of violence differed from previous traditions in its definition of violence.  Additionally, the BPP’s understanding of Marxist and communist views widened their understanding of self defense. On the Party’s intellectual approach to self defense, Historymaker Maulana Karenfa recalled the following, 

“...We had the most tightly knit and organized, ideologically grounded, philosophically grounded paramilitary group in existence at that time. And we believed in armed struggle. We believed that [Frantz] Fanon was… And we also believed what Malcolm said. We would see this as defensive struggle, armed struggle as defensive struggle. It shouldn't glory in violence or want violence, but to see the people's right to defend themselves.” To Newton, and the wider BPP, starving people, robbing them of their dignity and self respect, denying them of their political rights or discriminating against them all counted as violence.  As such, violence of any sort could be met with defensive violence on their part.

In reality, all of these approaches to protect the black body andmind proved fruitful for the cause of the Civil Rights Movement. If you would like to learn more the figures featured in this blogpost, please feel free to browse this MyClip Playlist!