{"id":585,"date":"2014-06-23T08:02:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T08:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/06\/guns-made-civil-rights-possible-breaking-down-the-myth-of-nonviolent-change.html"},"modified":"2014-06-23T08:02:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-23T08:02:00","slug":"guns-made-civil-rights-possible-breaking-down-the-myth-of-nonviolent-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/06\/guns-made-civil-rights-possible-breaking-down-the-myth-of-nonviolent-change.html","title":{"rendered":"Guns Made Civil Rights Possible: Breaking Down the Myth of Nonviolent Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
I have never subscribed to nonviolence as a way of life, simply because I have never felt strong enough or courageous enough, even though as a young activist and organizer in the South I was committed to the tactic. \u201cI tried to aim my gun, wondering what it would feel like to kill a man,\u201d Walter White wrote of his father\u2019s instruction to shoot and \u201cdon\u2019t . . . miss\u201d if a white mob set foot on their property. If I had been in a similar situation in 1960s Mississippi, I would have wrestled with the same doubts that weighed on the young White. But in the final analysis, whatever ethical or moral difficulty I might have had would not have made me unwilling or unable to fire a weapon if necessary. I would have been able to live with the burden of having killed a man to save my own life or those of my friends and coworkers.<\/span><\/div>\n
It has been a challenge to reconcile this fact with nonviolence, the chosen tactic of the southern civil rights movement of which I was a part. yet in some circumstances, as seen in the pages of this book, guns proved their usefulness in nonviolent struggle. That\u2019s life, which is always about living within its contradictions.<\/span><\/div>\n
More than ever, an exploration of this contradiction is needed. The subjects of guns and of armed self-defense have never been more politicized or more hotly debated than they are today. Although it may seem peculiar for a book largely about armed self-defense, I hope these pages have pushed forward discussion of both the philosophy and the practicalities of nonviolence, particularly as it pertains to black history and struggle. The larger point, of course, is that nonviolence and armed resistance are part of the same cloth; both are thoroughly woven into the fabric of black life and struggle. And that struggle no more ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 than it began with the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther king Jr., and the student sit-ins.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have never subscribed to nonviolence as a way of life, simply because I have never felt strong enough or courageous enough, even though as a young activist and organizer in the South I was committed to the tactic. \u201cI tried to aim my gun, wondering what it would feel like to kill a man,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGuns Made Civil Rights Possible: Breaking Down the Myth of Nonviolent Change<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I have never subscribed to nonviolence as a way of life, simply because I have never felt strong enough or courageous enough, even though as a young\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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