Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

INTRODUCTION
One winter evening in 1978, six Klansmen attacked four members of the
United League, a Black human rights organization, on the streets of Holly
Springs, Mississippi . As the four men approached the street from their office, the
Klansmen started shooting . United League president Alfred "Skip" Robinson
jumped to safety behind his brother's car, that was parked on the street . From
behind the car Robinson pulled his .357 magnum revolver out of his briefcase and
started firing back at his attackers . The Klansmen scattered after Robinson's
armed response . One Klansman even dropped his rifle after the counter-attack by
the United League leader. After this incident Robinson and the United League
were not bothered again by Klansmen in Holly Springs . Active mainly in the
1970's, United League members carried weapons and believed and practiced
armed self-defense . In organizing communities in the state, in response to white
supremacist violence, Robinson encouraged Black people to arm themselves and
take "a life for a life ."
Robinson's armed response was not an isolated incident . Black people in
the South have a long history of using weapons to defend themselves, their fami-
lies, institutions and movements for human and civil rights . Robinson and the
United League were only an extension of a tradition which had existed in the
South centuries before them. Although, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's
and 1960's in the American South is often characterized as a non-violent revolu-
tion, it also embodies this longstanding tradition of armed resistance . Scholarly
and popular literature of the Movement rarely speaks about the significance of