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

for younger activists to challenge the practice of armed self-defense in Black
Mississippi conununities . First, many of the activists from organizations commit-
ted to nonviolence depended on Black folk immersed in the "eye for an eye"
tradition for survival and protection . Secondly, SNCC and CORE began to recruit
young Black Mississippians like Hollis Watkins, MacArthur Cotton, and Anne
Moody, who grew up consciously or unconsciously familiar with the armed
resistance tradition within their local communities . These two factors compro-
mised any potential for advocating nonviolence in the Mississippi movement.
SNCC and CORE would move from compromise with the "eye for an eye"
tradition to debate within their organizations over support for the right of armed
self-defense .
1 . August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE . (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973), 4-10 .
2. James Farmer, Freedom When? (New York: Random House . 1965), 56-57 .
3 . Meier and Rudwick, CORE . 10
4 . Ibid, 18
5 . Bayard Rustin, Down the Line . (Chicago: Quadangle Books, 1971), 102 .
6. Ibid, 102 .
7 . Marcellus Barksdale, "The Indigenous Civil Rights Movement and Cultural
Change in North Carolina: Weldon, Chapel Hill, and Monroe : 1946-1965 . (Doctoral
dissertation) Duke University, 1977, 368 ; James Forman, The Makingof
Black Revolutionaries . (New York: MacMillan, 1972), 275 ; David Garrow,
Bearing the Cross Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference . (New York: William Morrow, 1986),477,485 .
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