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

demand. It never did and it never will .
How one viewed the manifestations of power in the world affected how one met an unjust
adversary : with a prayer, or with a gun; by appealing to his conscience, or by appealing to
his fear; with open arms, or firearms . Regardless, as Douglas recognized, the proof was
Ices in how one did it than in the fact it was done at all .
Did self-defense prove effective in the struggle? The bottom line remains that
few white supremacists were willing to die over whom they saw as a bunch of crazy, gun-
wielding black men. Malcolm X recognized this fact . "Whites will never correct the
problem [of the color line] on moral, legal, or ethical reasons," he told Peter Goldman in
the backroom of Michaux's National African Memorial Bookstore, a Harlem landmark .
"But they're realists enough to know that they don't want Negroes running around with
rifles ."~' On the disadvantaged side of the South's racial divide, a significant proportion
of blacks felt they had little to lose and everything to gain in arming themselves and
preparing to defend themselves in the name of protecting their constitutional freedoms .
The fascinating tale of Robert Williams' exile and return to the United States
concludes the story of civil rights and self-defense in a way nothing else can dramatize.
His saga ends with a strange twist that not only encapsulates the importance of self-
z2John W. 8lassingame, ed ., The Frederick Douglas Pacers : Speeches . Debates. and
Interviews vol . 3 (New Haven: Yale University Pres, 1979), 204.
Malcolm X, quoted in Peter Goldman, The Death and life of Malcolm X 2d. ed .
(Urbane: University of Qlinois Press, 1979), 156.