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

and his band waylaid the Cleveland police. If so, this incident marked the complete
metamorphosis of self-defense into an offensive action, or non-defensive assault . Evens'
actions represented a severe deviation from the kind of defensive measures recommended
by Malcolm X, and by the Deacons for Defense and Justice a few years before. Perhaps
the brand of self-defense practiced by Evens represented a necessary step toward a
revolutionary consciousness . But it subsequently compromised any legitimate claim to
self-defense, as understood in most legal and ethical frameworks, and marked the end of
an era of relative progress in black-white relations, especially compared to what would
follow .
By 1968, self-defense as understood by the civil rights vanguard had come to
signify something quite different than it had in 1955, and it only partially related to
conventional notions of self-protection . Guns were flooding not only black communities
but also white communities around the counay, which geared up on both sides of the
racial divide for a race war that never came' The rhetoric of self-defense had assumed
an ominous tone by 1968 . A resolution adopted at the Black Students' Conference at
Central State University of Ohio dalar+ed :
We assert the right of Black students who arc experiencing political and violent
suppression to respond in kind. We see the Orangeburg Massacre as a lesson
which teaches the necessity of self-defense . Our motto is: Avenge Orangeburg 9a
Black nationalists outlined "black survival curriculums" which detailed self-defense and
9ZSee "Guns!," 17 (August 1968): 22-26 .
93Reprinted in C. Eric Lincoln, ed., Is Any~y Listening to Black America? (New
York: Seabury Press, 1968), 150 .