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

unnoticed, unbeknownst, or simply ignored by many scholars and students of the
movement. Were Robert WiUiams and the Deacons for Defense and Justice indeed
anomalies, or did they represent an underlying ambiguity within the movement? How did
these activists tit within the accepted nonviolent paradigm defined by "mainstream" civil
rights activists? I hope to answer these questions by examining the mindset of civil rights
workers employing armed self-defense during the late 1950's and early 1960's, before the
advent of Black Power, when self-defense became something of an assumption by those
within the movement . "Very little attention has been paid to the possibility," another
scholar recently suggested, "that the success of the movement in the rural South owes
something to the attitude of local people toward self-defense." s This study offers a
cornective .
Focusing on the movement itself, it situates the seemingly aberrant ideas of
activists such as Robert Williams and Charles Sims-black men who advocated armed
self-defense during the early phases of the movement-into a broader historical context .
Chapter I treats Rev . Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and how he sometimes rationalized, but
ultimately eschewed self-defense . Chapter Q explores the life of Robert F. Williams, who
has been customarily overlooked by civil rights historiography . Filtered through an
analysis of the activism of Malcolm X, famed Nation of Islam minister, Chapter QI
discusses the means scholars have traditionally used to discuss the civil rights movement
in the United States, or what I have termed the violent/nonviolent dichotomy . Chapter IV
treats the Deacons for Defense and Justice, while Chapter V, focusing on the Black
6Payne, I've Got the Li¢ht of Freedom, 205 .
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