MXGM Self-Defence Manual

272 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / JANUARY 2002
mented by paramilitary organizations that were critical to the success
of the boycotts.
The years following the Freedom Summer of 1964 represent a
significant shift in the tactics of the civil rights movement in Mississippi.
After 1964, in several communities, the boycott of Whiteowned
commerce became the primary tactic used by human rights
forces to disrupt the system of segregation. These boycotts relied
on paramilitary organization to protect the activities and leadership
of the movement and the Black community in general. Paramilitary
forces were also organized to sanction anyone in the Black community
who wished to violate the boycott. In contrast to earlier stages
in the Mississippi movement, confrontational and inflammatory
rhetoric and the open threat of a violent response were commonplace
in human rights campaigns.
This paradigm of economic boycotts supported by paramilitary
organization was first used in 1965 in Natchez. Natchez is a major
commercial center in southwest Mississippi. Prior to 1964, the civil
rights movement through the local National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Council of Federated Organizations
(COFO), and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was
active in Natchez with limited success. The combination of an economic
boycott with armed resistance posed an effective, coercive
campaign to pressure the local White power structure for concessions
demanded by the movement. The insurgent model of Natchez
was replicated throughout the state, particularly in Black communities
of southwest Mississippi.
The focus of this article is to identify the development of the boycott
strategy with its emphasis on armed resistance in the Natchez
movement. I will examine the origins and elements of the Natchez
model and trace its development in other communities in Mississippi.
This study relies on oral testimony and media accounts to
reconstruct the development of insurgency in local communities.
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