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

cline.
I have borrowed the subtitle of this dissertation from Dr. George Lipsitz,
Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego . He and I were discussing the tactics of the
movement after a panel discussion at the annual convention of the Organization of
American Historians in San Francisco in 1997 when he mentioned something about the
"fiction of nonviolence ." The phrase lodged in my mind. While he might disagree with
my appropriation of it, the phrase makes sense with regard to the role of self-defense in
civil rights agitation because it reflects the notion that the ideology and practice of self-
defense, from l9SS to 1968, stemmed from a larger tradition of resistance in Afro-
American communities nationwide . Nonviolence, as espoused by Dr. King and others,
represented a break in that tradition . The word "fiction" here implies something more
apocryphal than fictitious . In other words, the phrase "fiction of nonviolence" is not
meant to suggest that nonviolence was something imagined or feigned ; it is instead meant
to suggest that the impulse to defend oneself, using force if necessary, was much more
common than nonviolence among most black Americans during this period . To
understand the importance of self-defense to many black Americans, one must consider it
not only in relation to the civil rights movement but also within the greater context of
Afro-American history.
Undoubtedly, my ambivalence concerning the legitimate use of violence infuses
every aspect of this projoct . Like most Americans, I profess to deplore violence; like
most Americans, I am simultaneously and paradoxically enthralled by it . I am neither
pacifist nor pugilist. I like to think that I would fight, when confronted with injustice, for
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