by Revolution
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
>
