3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

use of guns, civil rights leaders disagreed as to whether or not the Deacons should
participate in the Greenwood March. SNCC opted to continue Meredith's march across
Mississippi . According to Cleveland Sellers, a SNCC activist, Stokely Carmichael
argued that the march should "de-emphasize white participation, that it should be used to
highlight the need for independent black political units, and that the Deacons . . . be
permitted to join the march." Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young were "adamantly
opposed" to Carmichael . "They wanted to send out a nationwide call to whites ; they
insisted that the Deacons be excluded and they demanded that [SNCC] issue a statement
proclaiming . . . allegiance to nonviolence ." Martin Luther King, Jr. held the deciding
vote . While he favored mass white participation and nonviolence, he was committed to
the maintenance of a united front . King sided with Cannichael . Wilkins and Young
withdrew their support and did not participate in the march .ss
Sellers' account of the debate seems reliable, though historians have disagreed
over what transpired, particularly over King's involvement in the discussion . King
apparently attempted to dissuade the Deacons from making a show of fore at the march .
Representatives of SNCC and CORE concurred with the Deacons, but King "pressed
on" :
He was not saying that Negroes shouldn't protect themselves and their houses
when attacked. Yet self-defense was not the point here . The point was whether
they should carry guns in an organized demonstration . To do so would only
confuse and obscure the moral issues, and it would not expose Mississippi
injustice . KNegroes came mashing through the state brandishing .38s and rifles,
ss Cleveland Sellers, The River of No Return : The Autobiog~y of a Black Mili~er
and the Life and Death of SNCC (New York: William Morrow and Co.,1973), 162.
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