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

hours . While in each case there were more Black fatalities than white, the resis-
tance of the blacks of Wahalak was considered a dangerous threat to white su-
premacy in Mississippi . The Weekly Clarion Ledger stated unless "the last of the
obnoxious Negroes have been done away with" white lives and power was not
secures'
While the above-mentioned incidents did not stop the tide of white terror-
ism, they do represent a means of survival which would be employed in Black
southern communities for most of the twentieth century. Blacks are more likely to
utilize armed resistance versus white invaders if there is a community with a
contiguous Black section or a Black majority with a class of Black landowners .
Black enclaves, like the Black sections of Wiggins, Wahalak, or Darktown and
Brownsville in Atlanta, offer a base of mutual protection and support for armed
resistance . Darien and Hampton were both in Black majority counties with a
significant number of Black landowners . Being more economically independent
from their brothers and sisters involved in sharecropping, independent Black
farmers were not as likely to be intimidated by local whites . Independent Black
farmers also possessed more resources to mount significant resistance . Neil
McMillen notes that the larger the Black population the less likely the lynching
of Black people . 52 In some cases this reality was because of the consequences
Blacks themselves could inflict on white vigilantes .
Armed resistance would become more determined and massive in the
period following World War 1. In numerous race riots across the United States,
Black communities, including Southern cities and towns like Longview, Texas ;
Charleston, South Carolina ; Knoxville, Tennessee ; Elaine, Arkansas ; and Wash-