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

who also participated in an armed watch of the home of Ora and Charles Bryant,
said, "it was against SNCC's policy, but we had weapons .""
Much of the SNCC and COFO staff were from Mississippi and Southern
communities where armed self-defense had a longer tradition than nonviolence .
Many others were influenced by the local Movement leaders whom they came in
contact with, like E.W. Steptoe, Hartman Tumbow, Laura McGhee, C . O . Chinn,
Veinon Dahmer, Ora Bryant, and many others whose practice couldn't be con-
fused with philosophical nonviolence . To many Black Southerners, nonviolence
was an alien philosophy. Given the context of Black Southern tradition, it was
difficult for nonviolence to compete with armed self-defense . Bob Moses spoke of
the importance of local people in transforming SNCC's nonviolence policy in
terms of the practice of many in its membership. Moses stated :
Local people carried the day. They defined how they and the
culture was going to relate to the issue of using guns and having
them available and non-violence. . .They defined that and people
fell into it. Then the question was `well can we apply that to us as
organizers?"'
For the strategy of nonviolence to work in Mississippi, without Movement
activists and local people being armed, the federal government would have to
intervene with force to provide security against the forces of white supremacist
terrorism. The experience of Freedom Summer left Movement activists and Black
Mississippians dissatisfied with the response of the federal government to their
safety concerns . This dissatisfaction with the federal government culminated in
the unsuccessful attempt by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to chal-