Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus
boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol.
"Just for self-defense," King assured him. It was not the
only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors
remembered the reverend's Montgomery, Alabama, home as "an
arsenal." Like King, many ostensibly "nonviolent"
civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to
self-protection-yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American
freedom struggle has been long ignored by history. In This
Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, Charles E. Cobb Jr. recovers
this history, describing the vital role that armed self-defense has
played in the survival and liberation of black communities. Drawing
on his experiences in the civil rights movement and giving voice to
its participants, Cobb lays bare the paradoxical relationship between
the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the long history and
importance of African Americans taking up arms to defend themselves
against white supremacist violence.