Negroes and the Gun (67 page)

21
. E. Culpepper Clark,
The Schoolhouse Door: Segregation's Last Stand at the University of Alabama
(1993) at 57, 71-77; Simon Wendt,
The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights
(2007) at 44.

22
. Andrew Michael Manis,
A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth
(1990) at 110, 117-18, 169-170.

23
. Howell Raines,
My Soul Is Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South
(1977) at 115.

24
. Rains,
Soul
, at 141 (italics added).

25
. Austry Kirklin, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing Cultural Center, Their Minds Stayed on Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle in the Rural South, an Oral History
(1991) at 57, 71-77; T. C. Johnson, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing Cultural Center
, at 153.

26
. Christopher Strain, “Civil Rights and Self-Defense: The Fiction of Nonviolence, 1955-1968,” PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (2000); Coretta Scott King,
My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1969) at 226; Wendt,
Spirit
, at 39; Condoleezza Rice,
Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family
(2010) at 92; Diane McWhorter,
Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama—The Climatic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
(2001) at 118; George Lavan, “Armed Birmingham Negroes Conduct Own Safety Patrols,”
Militant
, September 23, 1963 at 1, 5; Glenn T. Eskew,
But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle
(1997) at 322.

27
. Rice, at 92.

28
.
Ben Allen in, Raines,
Soul
, at 167-168.

29
. Rice, at 13, 92-93; interview by Larry King with Condoleezza Rice, CNN, May 11, 2005.

30
. Rains,
Soul
, at 200, 202, 348.

31
. Wilson Baker in, Raines,
Soul
, at 202-203.

32
. The story was made into a film starring Forest Whitaker,
Deacons for Defense
(Showtime 2003).

33
. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 119; Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “Eye for and Eye: the Role of Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” PhD dissertation, Emory (1996) at 156-158; John Dittmer,
Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
(1995) at 266-268, 304.

34
. Umoja, “Eye,” at 159, 160.

35
. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 189; Interview with Gloria Richardson,
Newsweek
, August 5, 1963 at 26.

36
. SNCC was the common name of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The group was generally referred to by the acronym, which was pronounced “Snick.” SNCC grew substantially out of the efforts of Ella Baker to establish a youth arm of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, commonly called SCLC. See Joanne Grant,
Ella Baker: Freedom Bound
(1998) at 128-130.

37
. Cleveland Sellers,
The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC
(1973) 67-69.

38
. Simon Wendt,
Spirit
, at 187-88.

39
. Charles Evers,
Have No Fear: The Charles Evers Story
(1997) at 171; Akinyele O. Umoja, “We Will Shoot Back: The Natchez Model and Paramilitary Organization in the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” 32
J. Black Studies
(2002) at 271, 277.

40
. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 128.

41
. Ibid., at 42-65.

42
. David J. Garrow,
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(1988) at 316-34; David R. Colburn,
Racial Change and Community Crisis: St. Augustine Florida, 1877–1980
(1985) at 50-55, 316-34; Edward W. Kallal, “St. Augustine and the Ku Klux Klan,” in
St. Augustine, Florida 1963–1964: Mass Protest and Racial Violence
(1989) 93-176.

43
. Daisy Bates,
The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir
(1962) at 94-96, 111, 162; Grif Stockley,
Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas
(2005) at 24, 27, 186-188.

44
. Timothy B. Tyson,
Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power
(1999) at 57.

45
. Stockley, at 132.

46
. Bates, at 96, 158-159, 174.

47
. Stockley, at 186.

48
. Tyson,
Radio Free
, at 159.

49
. Stockley, at 186-187.

50
.
Tyson,
Radio Free
, at 159.

51
.
Ark. State Press
, May 23, 1959; Tyson,
Radio Free
, at 163-164.

52
. Tyson,
Radio Free
, at 164.

53
. Strain, “Civil Rights,” at 35; W. E. B. Du Bois, “Martin Luther King's Life ‘Crusader Without Violence,'” 12
National Guardian
(November 9, 1959) at 8.

54
. Tyson,
Radio Free
, at 165.

55
. Stockley, at 195.

56
. Kay Mills,
This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
(1993) at 39.

57
. Mills, at 9.

58
. Evers, at 119.

59
. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 121; Charles Payne,
I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
(1995) at 233; Chana Kai Lee,
For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
(1999) at 9, 11. (Italics added).

60
. Fannie Lou Hamer, “To Praise Our Bridges,” in 2
Mississippi Writers: Reflections of Childhood and Youth
(1986) at 321-330; Mills, at 101.

61
. Mills, at 101; Hamer, “Praise,” at 321-30.

62
. Umoja, “Eye,” at 68-69.

63
. Mills, at 11-12; Hamer, “Praise,” at 322-323; Umoja,
We Will Shoot Back
(2013) at 19-20 (reporting the story of Joe “Pullen”).

64
. Umoja,
We Will Shoot Back
(2013) at 19-20; Mary G. Rolinson,
Grassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement Association in the Rural South, 1920–1927
(2007) at 135.

65
. T. C. Johnson, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing Cultural Center
, at 154-56.

66
. Aaron Henry,
The Fire Ever Burning
(2000) at 150.

67
. Evers, at 1-2; Payne,
Light of Freedom
, at 48.

68
. Evers, at 16-17.

69
. Ibid., at, 47, 49-53, 55, 126. In 1962, the two brothers bought forty acres of land north of Brasilia. They dreamed of building two big houses there and living in the easy peace of a place where they imagined the color line was less acute.

70
. Ibid., at 59-60.

71
. Ibid., at 64.

72
. Ibid., at 62-64, 73.

73
. Wilkins,
Standing Fast
, at 14-16, 72, 317.

74
. Evers, at 76.

75
. Ibid., at 90-96, 104.

76
. Ibid., at 194.

77
. Ibid., at 106, 129-130; Umoja, “Eye,” at 78-80, 171, 178-179; Payne,
Light of Freedom
, at 288.

78
. Howell Raines,
My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered
(1977) at 251-52.

79
.
Interview with Myrlie Evers in
Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s
(Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer eds., 1990) at 152; interview with Myrlie Evers, at Eyes on the Prize Interviews,
http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/eve0015.0753.036myrlieevers.html
, last accessed September 27, 2013.

80
. Umoja, “Eye,” at 79; Adam Nossiter,
Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers
(1994) at 48, 61; Payne,
Light of Freedom
at 287.

81
. Evers, at 117 (italics added).

82
. Rains,
Soul
, at 271; John R. Salter,
Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism
(1979) at 24.

83
. Quote from “United Liberty: The Unseen in the Gun Debate,” at
http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/10758-the-unseen-in-the-gun-debate
, last accessed September 27, 2013. Professor Salter subsequently collaborated with Don B. Kates on a scholarly article titled “The Necessity of Access to Firearms by Dissenters and Minorities Who Government Is Unwilling or Unable to Protect.” The collaboration was fueled by their common experience. Kates went south in 1963, the summer after his first year at Yale Law School, in the employ of the Law Student Civil Rights Research Council to work under William Kunstler, who was collaborating on cases with black lawyers in Raleigh.

Traveling into what he describes as “KKK country,” Kates carried a Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special in a holster, a Colt Trooper .357 Magnum under the seat, and a semiautomatic M1 carbine rifle in the trunk. These were obviously more guns than he could use at one time, but the tactic made sense on at least one occasion when he was part of a group that stood watch at the rural homestead of a black woman who had been threatened for joining as a plaintiff in several of the local cases that Kunstler was pressing. Interview with Don B. Kates, April 23, 2013. Don Kates would go on to produce an unparalleled body of Second Amendment scholarship and contribute centrally to the Supreme Court's affirmation and elaboration of that right in seminal cases in 2008 and 2010.

84
. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 191.

85
. Evers,
Have No Fear
. Compare the modern response of NRA board member Roy Innis (who lost a son to gun violence) to Pete Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc. (who also lost a son to gun violence). Innis followed the Charles Evers approach. Shields and many others in the modern era put their energy into gun control.

86
. Robert Penn Warren,
Who Speaks for the Negro
(1965) at 105.

87
. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 127;
New York Post
, September 2, 1965.

88
. Roy Wilkins to Charles Evers, Wilkins Papers, Sep. 3, 1965, box 7, folder “1965.”

89
. Simon Wendt suggests Wilkins demurred in recognition of his waning power. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 128.

90
. Robert W. Hartley, “A Long Hot Summer: The St. Augustine Racial Disorders of 1964 in St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–1964: Mass Protest and Racial Violence” (David J. Garrow ed. 1989) at 21.

91
. Garrow,
Bearing the Cross
, at 317-34; David R. Colburn,
Racial Change and Community Crisis: St. Augustine, Florida 1877–1980
(1985) at 84-89, 212.

92
. Richard Kluger,
Simple Justice: The History of
Brown v. Board of Ed.
and Black America's Struggle for Equality
(1976) at 3.

93
. Tracy Sugarman,
Stranger at the Gates: A Summer in Mississippi
(1966) at 21, 75; Umoja, “Eye,” at 94; Charles Payne,
Light of Freedom
, at 44.

94
. Henry, at 154-155.

95
. Evers, at 137, 147.

96
. Dittmer,
Local People
, at 47.

97
. Strain, “Civil Rights,” at 76-77;
Baltimore Afro-American
, September 15, 1962, at 1.

98
. CORE is an acronym for Congress of Racial Equality.

99
. Doug McAdam,
Freedom Summer
(1988) at 21, 90; Wendt,
Souls
, at 324;
Tuscaloosa News
, February 20, 2000.

100
. Leola Blackmon, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing Cultural Center
, at 166-67, 174-75. The word
mens
, which appears twice, is from the original oral history.

101
. Shadrach Davis, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing Cultural Center
, at 21; Umoja, “Eye,” at 112; Wendt,
Spirit
, at 100;
Rains
, Soul, at 262-265; Studs Terkel,
American Dreams Lost and Found
(1980) at 192-200.

102
. Reverend J. J. Russell, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing and Cultural Center
, at 25; Umoja, “Eye,” at 112- 113.

103
. Charles E. Cobb Jr.,
On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail
(2008) at 302; Clayborne Carson,
In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
(1995) at 89; Turnbow's statement to Charles Cobb in Cobb,
Road to Freedom
, at 302. (Italics added.)

104
. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 118; Rains,
Soul
, at 266; Studs Terkel, “Hartman Turnbow: The Diploma,” in
American Dreams Lost and Found
(1980) at 192.

105
. Raines,
Soul
, at 265.

106
. Robert Cooper, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing Cultural Center
, at 93-94.

107
. Hill,
Deacons
, at 104;
Tuscaloosa News
, February 20, 2000 (Bolden interview).

108
. Joanne Grant,
Ella Baker: Freedom Bound
(1998) at 173.

109
. Dittmer,
Local People
, at 286.

110
. Raines,
Soul
, at 267.

111
. James Forman,
The Making of Black Revolutionaries
(1985) at 376.

112
. Raines,
Soul
, at 267.

113
. Dittmer,
Local People
, at 254.

114
. Vanderbilt Roby, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing Cultural Center
, at 55.

115
. Bee Jenkins, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing Cultural Center
, at 139.