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

Chapter Four : 1964 : The Beginning of the End of Nonviolence
"1964 will be America's hottest year .- .A year of racial violence and much
racial bloodshed....if there is to be bleeding it must be reciprocal."
Malcolm X
SNCC and CORE's initial years in Mississippi had demonstrated that
white supremacists would respond violently to protect the system of segregation .
The Kennedy Administration, particularly the Justice Department, also exhibited a
lack of willingness to protect COFO activists from the violence of Mississippi
racists . COFO activists, some of whom had come to Mississippi with the expecta-
tion of federal protection, were dismayed by their inability to guarantee security
for local Blacks in Mississippi . Since the arrival of Moses in 1961, Black Missis-
sippi and the Mississippi movement had experienced a reign of terror which
included the assassination of Medgar Evers. In spite of the willingness of local
Blacks to protect themselves and their communities, nightriders continued their
bombings, drive-by shootings and other acts of harassment, and intimidation .
In the FaU of 1963, a debate developed within COFO, particularly among
the SNCC forces, as to how to proceed with the Mississippi Movement. Con-
cerned about SNCC's inability to protect Black Mississippians, Bob Moses
proposed COFO bring massive amount of white volunteers from Northern col-
leges and universities . Moses was impressed by the involvement of nearly 100
white volunteers from Yale and Stanford during the successful "Freedom Vote"
campaign that fall . The "Freedom Vote" campaign was an alternative election to