We will shoot back : armed resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

Resource Information

The work We will shoot back : armed resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Union Presbyterian Seminary Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

We will shoot back : armed resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

Title remainder

armed resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

Statement of responsibility

Akinyele Omowale Umoja

Creator

• Umoja, Akinyele Omowale

Subject

• African Americans -- Suffrage -- Mississippi -- History -- 20th century
• Civil rights movements -- Mississippi -- History -- 20th century
• Civil rights workers -- Mississippi -- History -- 20th century
• African Americans -- Civil rights -- Mississippi -- History -- 20th century
• Mississippi Freedom Project
• Self-defense -- Political aspects -- Mississippi -- History -- 20th century
• Mississippi -- Race relations | History -- 20th century

Language

eng

Summary

"The notion that the civil rights movement in the southern United States was a nonviolent movement remains a dominant theme of civil rights memory and representation in popular culture. Yet in dozens of southern communities, Black people picked up arms to defend their leaders, communities, and lives. In particular, Black people relied on armed self-defense in communities where federal government officials failed to safeguard activists and supporters from the violence of racists and segregationists, who were often supported by local law enforcement. In We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement, Akinyele Omowale Umoja argues that armed resistance was critical to the efficacy of the southern freedom struggle and the dismantling of segregation and Black disenfranchisement. Intimidation and fear were central to the system of oppression in Mississippi and most of the Deep South. To overcome the system of segregation, Black people had to overcome fear to present a significant challenge to White domination. Armed self-defense was a major tool of survival in allowing some Black southern communities to maintain their integrity and existence in the face of White supremacist terror. By 1965, armed resistance, particularly self-defense, was a significant factor in the challenge of the descendants of enslaved Africans to overturning fear and intimidation and developing different political and social relationships between Black and White Mississippians. This riveting historical narrative relies upon oral history, archival material, and scholarly literature to reconstruct the use of armed resistance by Black activists and supporters in Mississippi to challenge racist terrorism, segregation, and fight for human rights and political empowerment from the early 1950s through the late 1970s."--Publisher's website

Biography type

contains biographical information

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

323.1196/0730762

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

E185.93.M6

LC item number

U46 2013

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography