It’s been fifty years since “Freedom Summer” and the murder by Mississippi Kluxers of three young civil rights volunteers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and “Mickey” Schwerner. The triple killing was world news mainly because Goodman and Schwerner were white Jewish New Yorkers. If it had been only the African American Chaney, nobody outside the “beloved community” of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee would have cared.
The Deep South’s culture of violence against blacks was a given. What’s not so given, even today, is the black community’s long tradition of armed resistance. Charles Cobb’s book “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible” reveals that armed self-defense was an authentic part of the African American experience since 1619.
Almost every household visited in the South had a hidden shotgun or pistol under the bed. This contradicted the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr’s dominant peace-and-love message, though King himself was bodyguarded by armed men and his Atlanta home contained weapons.
The article explores how armed resistance evolved, particularly after World War II veterans returned home, leading to groups like the Deacons for Defense. It also contrasts Southern and Northern experiences of black self-defense, including personal accounts from Chicago and Detroit.
In honoring Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, martyrs to a beloved community of nonviolent resistance, the article considers how their fate might have differed if they’d been protected by armed defenders rather than left vulnerable on that lonely Mississippi road in 1964.