“We Will Shoot Back”

Abstract

Between 1965 and 1979, economic boycotts were a principal form of insurgency for Black activists in Mississippi. After 1964, in several communities, the boycott of White-owned commerce became the primary tactic utilized by human rights forces to disrupt the system of segregation. These boycotts relied upon paramilitary organization to protect the activities and leadership of the Mississippi freedom movement and the Black community in general and to sanction anyone in the Black community who wished to violate the boycott. This paradigm of economic boycotts supported by paramilitary organization was first utilized in 1965 in Natchez. Natchez is a commercial center in southwest Mississippi. The combination of economic boycott with armed resistance posed an effective coercive campaign to pressure the local White power structure for concessions demanded by the movement. The insurgent model of Natchez was replicated throughout the state, particularly in Black communities of southwest Mississippi.Between 1965 and 1979, economic boycotts were a principal form of insurgency for Black activists in Mississippi. In that period, dozens of economic boycotts occurred in municipalities throughout the state coercing local White power structures to acquiesce to the demands of activists in the Black community. The economic boycott was a decisive maneuver to achieve concessions in Mississippi communities that were not possible to achieve through nonviolent action. In fact, after 1964, Mississippi boycotts were comple-

Freedom, Firearms, and Civil Resistance

“…Several books (Cobb 2014;Johnson 2014;Umoja 2013;Wendt 2007) show that the events in Monroe were not an isolated incident, but rather one episode in a tradition of black self-defense against white supremacist violence. In 1854, Frederick Douglass wrote that the "true remedy" for the fugitive slave act, meant to help return escaped slaves to their masters, was "a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap" (Johnson 2014: 31).…”