Negroes with Guns

The Quintessential* Exploration of the Role of Violence in Protecting Civil Rights

This enhanced edition includes an index.

"I do not advocate violence for its own sake, or for the sake of reprisals against whites. Nor am I against the passive resistance advocated by the Reverend Martin Luther King," Robert F. Williams wrote in his prologue to Negroes with Guns. "But where there is a breakdown of the law, the individual citizen has a right to protect his person, his family, his home and his property."

In 1961 Mr Williams led his Monroe, North Carolina community to arm themselves in the face of racist violence. This book spells out his belief that the ability to defend oneself is a legal right which could prevent racist incidents from occurring, and that self-defense compelled law enforcement agencies into action. "The lawful authorities of Monroe and North Carolina acted to enforce order . . . as a direct result of us being armed." As a result of his movement, Williams was vilified and framed, and subsequently fled the country, but his account of his struggle for the rights White America takes for granted remains a searing testimony to the racism which continues to plague the nation to this day.

This book vividly captures effect of the debate in the Black community between non-violent and violent defense of civil rights as it played out in the 1960s. Williams graphically details his ongoing struggle with the Ku Klux Klan and the black community's attempt at armed defense. Framing this struggle in a wider context are essays on non-violence by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and abolitionist scholar Truman Nelson, who discusses the divergent views of King and Williams.

Author: Robert F. Williams, Martin Luther King, Truman Nelson
Publisher: Echo Point Books & Media
Published: 11/20/2020
Pages: 130
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.56lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.38d
ISBN: 9781635618983

About the Author
Williams, Robert F.: - ROBERT F. WILLIAMS was born in Monroe, North Carolina in 1925. As a young mail he went north to work in various plants and then served in the U. S. Marine Corps. The young veteran returned to Monroe in 1953 and there joined the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., soon becoming its president. This was the beginning of an unremitting struggle with the Ku Klux Klan and other racist forces in the South which culminated in a frame-up against Williams for kidnapping. Negroes with Guns is the story of that struggle.