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

While much of the literature of the movement ignores the broad nature and I
significance of armed resistance, autobiographies and oral histories of Movement
participants and observers suggest that in many Southern communities armed
resistance was essential for the survival of the Movement itself. Howell Raines'
My Soul is Rested : The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the DeeR South is
an important source of interviews with Movement activists, supporters, oppo-
nents, and observers . My Soul is Rested contains several references to the exist-
ence of armed resistance by people of African descent in the South, including an
interview with Charles Sims, spokesperson for the Bogalusa Deacons for Defense
and Justice and accounts of armed resistance in Alabama and Mississippi . Mind
Stayed On Freedom : The Civil Rights Stru
t= by the youth of the Rural Organizing and Cultural Center presents the
testimony of fifteen local participants in the Civil Rights Movement in Holmes
County, Mississippi . Utilizing interviews compiled by teenagers during an educa-
tional summer project, Minds Stayed on Freedom presents several examples of
individual and collective armed responses by armed activists . The story of the
Holmes County Movement provides is full of examples armed resistance .
Autobiographies are important aides to uncovering the place of armed
resistance in the Movement . James Forman's The Making of Black Revolutionar-
ies, Mary King's Freedom Song: A Personal Store of the 1960's Civil Rights
Movement , Cleve Sellers The River of No Return , and Ann Moody's Coming o
e in Mississippi are first person accounts by activists who participated in the
Black freedom movement in the Deep South. These works contribute descriptions
of local communities where Black people utilized arms to protect themselves and
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