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

Chapter Two : The Movement Intensifies : Mississippi and Medgar
In Mississippi, the continuation of the armed resistance tradition has to be
understood within the context of the violent nature of life within the state . Vio-
lence existed in Mississippi as a means of social control by the white power
structure over Black people . Particularly in areas with large Black populations,
violence was necessary to "keep niggers in their place ." A statement by
Black Reconstruction U.S . Senator from Mississippi Blanche K . Bruce was as
true in 1950's as it was in the 1890's . Bruce declared :
. . .in all important areas of citizenship, a Negro in Mississippi
receives substantially less than his due consideration as an American
and as a Mississippian . We find that terror hangs over the
Negro in Mississippi and is an expectancy for those who refuse to
accept their color as a badge of inferiority.'
After Emancipation in Mississippi, as well as the rest of the South, a white
supremacist military offensive complemented the legal offensive to disenfranchise
and subjugate people of African descent. Without violence it would have been
impossible to keep Blacks from exercising their participation in the state and local
electoral arena. Without participation in the electoral arena, white supremacists
were free to implement their agenda, which first and foremost meant to set the
political machinery to institutionalize white domination . The violence of the
Reconstruction era would establish the foundation of race relations in the state for
the next one hundred years . Neil McMillen's study of Black life in Mississippi
during what has been called the Nadir period, Dark Journey : Black MississiRpians