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

ary perspective that the U.S . government was a colonial government and the
enemy of Black people ran counter to SNCC's liberal reformist view which saw
elements of the Democratic Party and the federal government as allies . Liberal
whites associated with SNCC and COFO also viewed RAM as a divisive force in
the development of multiracial harmony.'S
When the subject of armed self-defense came up at the June 1964 SNCC
staff meeting, some of the opponents of armed self-defense believed that the
presence of guns in the Greenwood office was partially a result of RAM's influ
ence on certain Black organizers in SNCC . After the decision was made to
remove the guns from all Freedom Houses and SNCC offices and to disassociate
from any volunteer who was armed, Bob Moses dispatched Stokely Carmichael
to Greenwood . Carmichael was to remove the guns from the Greenwood office
and ask that the RAM forces also leave the Freedom House and not participate in
any SNCC project. Ironically during Freedom Summer many SNCC militants did
carry weapons and SNCC executive secretary James Forman, who opposed the
guns being in the Greenwood Freedom House, placed an armed sentry around the
Greenwood office ."
As previously stated the June 1964 staff meeting represented the first time
SNCC would debate the issue of armed self-defense as a national organization .
While the SNCC field staff was able to reach a consensus on this issue on the eve
of Freedom Summer support for armed self-defense and the practice of carrying
weapons would grow within the organization. In fact the Freedom Summer
experience would play a significant role in diminishing nonviolence as a philoso-
phy and practice of the organization .
137