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  an all-out bloody campaign, then they will be among the first

  to advocate self-defense. They will justify their position as a

  question of survival. When it is no longer some distant Negro

  who is no more than a statistic, no more than an article in a

  newspaper, when it is no longer their neighbors but them,

  and when it becomes a matter of personal salvation, then

  their attitude will change.

  As a tactic we use and approve non-violent resistance.

  But we also believe that a man cannot have human dignity if

  he allows himself to be abused, to be kicked and beaten to

  the ground, to allow his wife and children to be attacked,

  refusing to defend them and himself on the basis that he's

  so pious, so self-righteous, that it would demean his personality if he fought back.

  We know that the average Afro-American is not a pacifist. He is not a pacifist and he has never been a pacifist and he is not made of the type of material that would make a

  good pacifist. Those who doubt that the great majority of

  Negroes are not pacifists, just let them slap one. Pick any

  Negro on any street corner in the U.S.A. and they will find

  out how much he believes in turning the other cheek.

  All those who dare to attack are going to learn the hard

  way that the Afro-American is not a pacifist, that he cannot

  forever be counted on not to defend himself. Those who attack him brutally and ruthlessly can no longer expect to attack him with impunity.

  The Afro-American cannot forget that his enslavement

  in this country did not pass because of pacifist moral force

  or noble appeals to the Christian conscience of the slaveholders.

  Henry David Thoreau is idealized as an apostle of nonviolence, the writer who influenced Gandhi, and through 83

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. But Thoreau was not dogmatic; his eyes were open and he saw clearly. I keep with me a copy of Thoreau's Plea For Captain John Brown. There are

  truths that are just as evident in 1 962 as they were in 1 859

  when he wrote:

  . . . It was his [John Brown's] peculiar doctrine that a man

  has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder,

  in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are

  continually shocked by slavery have some right to be

  shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but such will

  be more shocked by his life than by his death. I shall not be

  forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest

  succeeds to liberate the slave.

  I speak for the slave when I say, that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me . . . . I do not wish to kill not to be

  killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these

  things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the socalled peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look

  at the jail! . . . We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of

  my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be

  made of Sharpe's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with

  them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them or the like. I think that for once the Sharpe's rifles and the revolvers were employed

  in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who

  could use them.

  The same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple once will clear it again. The question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in which you use it. No man has appeared in America, as yet, who loved his fellowman so well, and treated him so tenderly. He [John Brown] lived for him.

  He took up his life and he laid it down for him. What sort of

  violence is that which is encouraged, not by soldiers, but by

  peaceable citizens, not so much by laymen as by ministers of

  the Gospel, not so much by the fighting sects as by the Quakers, and not so much by Quaker men as by Quaker women?

  84

  SELF-DEFENSE: AN AMERICAN TRADITION

  This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death;

  the possibility of man's dying. It seems as if no man had ever

  died in America before; for in order to die you must first have

  lived.

  It is in the nature of the American Negro, the same as

  all other men, to fight and try to destroy those things that

  block his path to a greater happiness in life.

  "The Future Belongs to Today's Oppressed"

  Whenever I speak on the English-language radio station

  in Havana (which broadcasts for an audience in the United

  States) I hope in some way to penetrate the mental barriers

  and introduce new disturbing elements into the consciousness of white America. I hope to make them aware of the monstrous evil that they are party to by oppressing the

  Negro. Somehow, I must manage to clearly reflect the image

  of evil that is inherent in a racist society so that white Americans will be able to honestly and fully see themselves as they really are. To see themselves with the same clarity as

  foreigners see them and to recognize that they are not champions of democracy. To understand that today they do not really even believe in democracy. To understand that the

  world is changing regardless of whether they think they like

  it or not.

  For I know that if they had a glimpse of their own reality

  the shock would be of great therapeutic value. There would

  be many decent Americans who would then understand that

  this society must mend its ways if it is to survive, that there

  is no place in the world now for a racist nation.

  As an individual, I'm not inclined toward "politics." The

  only thing I care about is justice and liberation. I don't belong to any political party. But I think that as long as the present politics prevails the Negro is not going to be integrated into American society. There will have to be great political changes before that can come about.

  Those Americans who most deny the logic of the future

  85

  NEGROES WITH GUNS

  Robert and Mabel Williams in September 1996.

  are the ones who have driven me into exile. Those people

  have been cruel. Yet cruel as it may be, this exile was not the

  end those people had planned for me. But it is not in the

  hands of today's oppressors to determine my end. Their role

  in history denies them an understanding of this, just as their

  role does not allow them to understand that every true nationalist leader in Africa has been imprisoned or exiled and that the future leaders of Latin American and Asian national

  liberation today are experiencing imprisonment, exile, or

  worse.

  The future belongs to today's oppressed and I shall be

  witness to that future in the liberation of the Afro-American.

  86

  Document Outline

  Prologue

  1. Self-Defense Prevents Bloodshed

  2. An NAACP Chapter Is Reborn in Militancy

  3. The Struggle for Militancy in the NAACP

  4. Non-Violence Emboldens the Racists: A Week of Terror

  5. Self-Defense Prevents a Pogrom: Racists Engineer a Kidnapping Frameup

  6. The Monroe Case: Conspiracy against the Negro

  7. Self-Defense: An Ameerican Tradition
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