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From International Socialist Review, Vol.24 No.2, Spring 1963, p.63.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Negroes With Guns
by Robert F. Williams
edited by Marc Schleifer with prologues by Martin Luther King and Truman Nelson
Marzani and Munsell, Inc. New York. 1962. 128 pp. $1.95.
People With Strength – The Story of Monroe, N.C.
by Truman Nelson
Published by the Committee To Aid The Monroe Defendants, 168 West 23rd Street, N.Y., 37 pp. $0.35.
Taken together, the book by Williams and the pamphlet by Truman Nelson, represent a thorough-going presentation of the history of Negro struggle against segregation in Monroe, N.C. The extensive distortion of Monroe events, as reported in the commercial press and by all too many proponents of pacifist approaches to the segregation problem, make the publishing of these two pieces of literature welcome. An even greater need is served because the book and the pamphlet present what must ultimately prove to be the most tenable approach to desegregation, the self defense program of Robert F. Williams.
The doctrine of self defense that Williams and Nelson so effectively defend is not at all a new doctrine. It is the self-same doctrine that appears in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. In the schools of this country, at least those I attended, we were taught that the right to bear arms was provided for such innocuous purposes as hunting. But the reality of the matter is that the left wing of the American Revolutionists, who forced this doctrine into the constitution, understood full well that when governments fail to protect the rights of the people, the people themselves must be prepared to defend their rights, through self defense if necessary, even carrying that defense as far as the overthrow of oppressive state powers.
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Last updated on 22 May 2009