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

Chapter Three: The Non-Violent Movement Interacts with the
"Eye for an Eye"
Tradition in Mississippi
While the NAACP, as an organization never took an overt stance on armed
resistance or self-defense, it never advocated nonviolent direct action as a primary
method of struggle in Mississippi . In 1961, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) became the first activist organization to advocate, as such, a
commitment to nonviolence as a philosophy, strategy, or tactical approach to
Black to organizing in Mississippi . Within two years another nonviolent activist
group, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) would also become active in the
state. In Mississippi, activists committed to nonviolence would organize in
communities whose indigenous leadership and sympathizers believed in and
practiced armed self-defense as a way of life. Before examining the interaction of
SNCC and CORE with the Black armed resistance tradition in Mississippi, I will
explore the prior development of nonviolence as a strategy, tactic and philosophy
within the Black protest movement.
CORE was the first national organization to advocate and practice nonvio-
lence as a primary philosophy and strategy in the Black liberation movement .
CORE's origins emanate from the legacy of pacifist activism in the U .S.A . In
1941, members of the Christian pacifist organization Fellowship of Reconciliation
(FOR) developed a special project at the University of Chicago aimed at challeng-
ing racism . The FOR had begun as a pacifist group during World War I . Decades
after the founding of its parent organization, the FOR project at the University of
Chicago discussed applying Gandhian techniques to attacking racial segregation .