revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

115
During 1965, SNCC began discussing how to form a black student movement
. The Northern Student Movement (NSM), began to organize Afro-American
student groups of black students on white campuses in the North while
SNCC focused on black students in the South .
Several events took place in 1965 which affected the civil rights
movement . The Deacons for Defense, an all black, community self-defense
organization, developed in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama . The Dea
cons provided civil rights marches in Louisiana with armed protection .
They also had shootouts with the KKK and on several
occasions, Louisiana
policemen .
RAM and other black nationalists formed northern Deacons for
Defense support groups . 7 RAM and the Deacons developed an alliance . Both
groups helped one another organizationally and physically . In August,
1965, the Los Angeles black community exploded . Revolutionary nationalists
engagedin armed struggle against the racist repressive forces . Not
knowing RAM was
in Watts, RAM organizers from New Jersey went to Watts,
where they found strong revolutionary black nationalist cells .
In New
York, RAM members began meeting with black youth discussing the formation
of a black liberation army .
Revolutionary nationalists around the country studied the August mass
rebellion in Watts .
They saw that spontaneous mass rebellions would be
the next phase of the protest movement and began discussing how they could
give these rebellions direction .
RAM was also active in
helping LeRoi Jones develop the Black Arts
Movement . The Black Arts Movement was originally to be the cultural wing
of RAM . RAM, though a secret movement, was gaining popularity and
7Thomas F . Parker, ed . Violence in the U .S ., Vol . 1, 1956-67 (New
York : Facts on File, Inc ., 1974T, p . 115 .