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

massacre as implied by Hall . Other SNCC projects were also effected by this
debate . Donald Harris, a SNCC organizer in Albany (Georgia), questioned if
SNCC activists should discourage local Blacks from participating in acts of
retaliatory violence . In 1964, SNCC workers had also encountered armed Blacks
in a fierce struggle which had exploded in Cambridge, Maryland?
In a critical moment in the debate, Charles Cobb then asked a critical
question. Cobb asked "Where does SNCC stand when Mr. (E.W.) Steptoe is killed
while defending his home, with his two daughters there and his rifle laying on the
floor?" He continued "Where does SNCC stand when I pick up his gun. . .as I
will . . .and, then, when the police arrest me?" After a long silence, SNCC's elder
advisor Ella Baker offered her perspective to break the impasse. Baker rarely
intervened in the internal debates of her junior comrades in SNCC . In response to
Cobb's questions, Baker stated "I can't conceive of the SNCC I thought I was
associated with not defending Charlie Cobb...In my book, Charlie would not be
operating out of SNCC if he did what he said ." Ella Baker was respected by all
factions within SNCC . While not affirmatively advocating armed self-defense,
Baker's support for Cobb's position was a critical acknowledgment of support for
SNCC staff desiring more flexibility around the organization's position on the use
of force . After Baker's affirmation and several other comments, Cobb asserted "I
won't carry a gun. . .but what's different here is the presence of Mr. Steptoe's
daughters . If I was alone, I'd head out the back door. The question to me is purely
one of protection of the daughters.""
After the lengthy debate, a consensus was reached that no guns were to be
kept in any "Freedom House or office in any SNCC project" and that "no one on
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