
By Charles E. Cobb
Vacationing Martin Luther King, Jr. on the top of the civil rights move, the journalist William precious nearly sat on a loaded pistol. “Just for self-defense,” King guaranteed him. one in every of King’s advisors remembered the reverend’s domestic as “an arsenal.” Like King, many nonviolent activists embraced their constitutional correct to self-protection—yet this significant measurement of the civil rights fight has been lengthy ignored.
In This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, civil rights pupil Charles E. Cobb, Jr. unearths how nonviolent activists and their allies stored the civil rights circulation alive by means of bearing—and, whilst invaluable, using—firearms. no matter if patrolling their neighborhoods, garrisoning their houses, or firing again at attackers, those women and men have been the most important to the movement’s good fortune, as have been the guns they carried. Drawing on his firsthand stories within the Southern Freedom stream and interviews with fellow members, Cobb bargains a arguable exam of the important position weapons have performed in securing American liberties.