The guns weren’t used in drive by shootings or from being “disrespected”.
Via Guns
Charles Cobb, a professor and former activist, is telling the little known story of how guns protected the non-violent, civil rights advocates of the 1960s in a new book.
A noted journalist and professor at Brown University, Cobb recently published, “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed,” a look at firearms inside the Civil Rights movement, which includes a firsthand account of his experiences.
Cobb maintained in a recent interview with NPR that he witnessed the untold story of guns inside the civil rights movement. He gained that experience as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi from 1962 to 1967.
The SNCC was one of the most important organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement.
“I worked in the South. I lived with families in the South,” explained Cobb to NPR. “There was never a family I stayed with that didn’t have a gun. I know from personal experience and the experiences of others that guns kept people alive, kept communities safe. And all you have to do to understand this is simply think of black people as human beings, and they’re going to respond to terrorism the way anybody else would.”