Negroes and the Gun Read online

  The Reeds resisted both blandishments and threats in pursuit of their full measure of justice in the courts. With Mary Ruth’s white neighbor backing up her story, there was reason to be hopeful. But Medlin’s lawyer had a good feel for the dynamics of the place and time. He pursued a two-prong defense, arguing first that Medlin was innocent because he was just “drunk and having a little fun.” Next, he brought Medlin’s wife to the stand, introduced her as “a pure flower of life . . . one of God’s greatest gifts.” Then he asked the jury of twelve white men whether it was plausible that Medlin would have strayed from his beautiful southern flower—then pointing to Mary Ruth—“for that!” The jury deliberated for about half an hour and then acquitted Medlin.14

  Blacks in the balcony of courtroom erupted in anger. Medlin was skirted out the side door. Robert Williams, who had urged calm and pressed people to let the system work, was besieged by the angry and the tearful. Some of them, most cuttingly the women, who over time had come to trust Williams as a man in the community they could depend on, actually blamed him for urging restraint. It was a tipping point for Williams. Later, he would recall it in grander themes, invoking the long American tradition of armed resistance to tyranny. But on the day of the acquittal, his reaction was visceral, provoked by raw impulses of sex, race, and a code of honor as old as the South. The case had drawn enough attention that national news organizations were on hand to broadcast Williams saying this.

  We cannot take these people who do us injustice to the court and it becomes necessary to punish them ourselves. In the future we are going to have to try and convict them on the spot. We cannot rely on the law. We can get no justice under the present system. If we feel that injustice is done, we must right then and there, on the spot be prepared to inflict punishment on these people. Since the federal government will not bring a halt to lynching in the South, and since the so-called courts lynch our people legally, if it’s necessary to stop lynching with lynching, then we must be willing to resort to that method.15

  Williams’s statement triggered the perennial worry. An organized program of violence risked an overwhelming violent response and promised to alienate essential white allies. It also highlighted the paradox that despite the worry about political violence hurting the broader freedom movement, armed self-defense was a crucial private resource for blacks. Through rhetoric, policy, and practice, emerging leaders and ordinary black folk tried to accommodate these two concerns by maintaining a clear boundary between foolish political violence and righteous self-defense. In the view of some people, Robert Williams had crossed over the line.

  The headlines blazed, “NAACP Leader Urges Violence.” The Carolina Times called it the biggest civil-rights story of 1959. Southern editorials attributed Williams’s “bloodthirsty remark” directly to the national office. The Charleston News and Courier ranted, “Hatred is the stock in trade of the NAACP. High officials of the organization may speak in cultivated accents and dress like Wall Street lawyers, but they are engaged in a revolutionary enterprise.”16

  When word of Williams’s statement reached NAACP headquarters in New York, Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins was immediately on the phone to him. The gravity of the situation was plain, and Wilkins recorded the call. Hearing that Williams was planning to make a follow-up statement on national television, Wilkins warned, “You know, of course, that it is not the policy of the NAACP to advocate meeting lynching with lynching. You are going to make it clear that you are not speaking for the NAACP?” After a tense exchange, and realizing that Williams’s statement was now firmly linked to the NAACP, Wilkins dispatched a telegram suspending him as branch president.17

  At a press conference the next day, Williams dialed back his tone, stating that he was not advocating any sort of group political violence by blacks and was not advocating retaliatory lynching. But still he insisted, “Negroes have to defend themselves on the spot when they are attacked.” At NAACP headquarters, Roy Wilkins was not convinced by Williams’s contrition and worried privately that Williams’s rhetorical opposition to political violence was a facade deployed to win sympathy and perhaps gain reinstatement.

  With Wilkins unmoved, Williams appealed his dismissal directly to the membership at the 1959 annual convention. The body upheld Wilkin’s decision but added an important caveat: “We do not deny but reaffirm the right of an individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults.” The report of the Resolutions Committee that brought the issue to the floor noted in its preamble, the NAACP’s long support of the right of self-defense, “by defending those who have exercised the right of self-defense, particularly in the Arkansas Riot Case, the Sweet case in Detroit, the Columbia, Tennessee Riot cases and the Ingram case in Georgia.”18

  This view was underscored and systematized by Martin Luther King’s separate assessment of the Williams controversy. King’s treatment is the signal statement of the thrust and boundaries of the black tradition of arms, capturing the organic policy and practice of generations.

  In a widely reprinted exchange of essays with Williams, King articulated three distinct categories of response to violent attacks and political oppression. The first, pure nonviolence, is difficult, King said. It “cannot readily or easily attract large masses, for it requires extraordinary discipline and courage.” The second response, said King, was implicit in the freedom struggle and should not discourage outsiders from supporting the movement:

  Violence exercised merely in self-defense, all societies, from the most primitive to the most cultured and civilized, accept as moral and legal. The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi. . . . When the Negro uses force in self-defense, he does not forfeit support—he may even win it, by the courage and self-respect it reflects.

  This explicit endorsement of armed self-defense, contrasted with King’s third assessment, illustrates vividly the core theme of the black tradition of arms. The third approach, Williams’s approach, said King, advocated “violence as a tool of advancement, organization as in warfare . . . [and posed] incalculable perils.” Political goals, King argued, were best achieved by nonviolent, “socially organized masses on the march.”19

  King’s assessment was only one aspect of a robust community engagement of the issue. Louis Lautier of the influential Baltimore Afro-American argued that Williams had not advocated political violence, but merely that “colored people should defend themselves if and when violence is directed at them.” In the Arkansas State Press, legendary activists Daisy and L. C. Bates, longtime gun owners who soon would fire shots in self-defense, were equivocal on Roy Wilkins’s contention that Williams had crossed the line into advocacy of political violence. Wilkins offered the Bateses a series of blandishments to secure their support in the fight against Williams. Wilkins got his vote, but Daisy and L. C. Bates remained firm on the principle of private self-defense, warning that “nonviolence never saved George Lee in Belzoni, Miss., or Emmett Till, nor Mack Parker at Poplarville, Miss.” Anne Braden, enduring white activist for racial justice, reprinted the King and Williams essays in the Southern Patriot, and her summary succinctly captured the black tradition of arms. No one disputes the right to defend home and family, she explained, “What the nonviolent movement says is that the weapons of social change should be nonviolent.”20

  The NAACP national office received protests from the branches that supported Williams. In Monroe, the branch showed its continuing support for Williams by electing his wife, Mabel, president in his place. The Brooklyn branch wired Roy Wilkins in protest of the “illegal and arbitrary removal from office of Robert F. Williams for expressing sentiments to which we subscribe.” This and other support for Williams raised the question of whether some in the community had abandoned the traditional commitment to avoid political violence at all costs. As we will see, this was neither the first nor the last time that this commitment would be challenged.21

  Fig. 1.1. Robert and Mabel Williams in the 195
0s. (From the personal collection of Mabel R. Williams.)

  A more moderate tone was exhibited by black journalist John McCray, in a Baltimore Afro-American article titled, “There’s Nothing New about It.” McCray’s assessment confirmed the basic boundaries of the black tradition of arms. On issues of social change, he said, “A minority group cannot hope to win in campaigns of violence.” On the other hand, McCray acknowledged without criticism that black self-defense had deep roots. “Today, thousands of our people have secured ‘protection’ in their homes, mostly with the intent to repel night riders who, years ago, were terrors to their forbearers.”22

  With debate raging, Roy Wilkins defended his position in a pamphlet titled The Single Issue in the Robert Williams Case, arguing that his approach was consistent with the black tradition of arms. “There is no issue of self-defense. . . . The charges are based on his call for aggressive, premeditated violence. Lynching is never defensive.” Here, Wilkins wrapped himself a century-old philosophy. While condemning political violence as a hazard to the movement, he recognized armed self-defense as a crucial private resource. At a June 1959 fundraising dinner in Chicago, Wilkins pressed the point, drawing applause and Amens. “Of course, we must defend ourselves when attacked. This is our right under all known laws.”23

  Wilkins reiterated this position throughout his life. On national television in 1967, Wilkins affirmed his support for private firearms ownership. The nation was wrestling with urban rioting, militant rhetoric, and violence from black radicals, and was weighing proposals for sweeping firearms restrictions. Asked whether he would endorse a “massive effort to disarm the Negroes in the ghettos,” Wilkins maintained the legitimacy of armed self-defense. “I wouldn’t disarm the Negroes and leave them helpless prey to the people who wanted to go in and shoot them up. Every American wants to own a rifle. Why shouldn’t Negroes own rifles?” In his 1982 memoir, Wilkins confirmed, “Like [Robert] Williams, I believe in self-defense. While I admire Reverend King’s theories of overwhelming enemies with love, I don’t think I could have put those theories into practice myself. But there is a difference between self-defense and murder, and I had no intention of getting the NAACP into the lynching business.”24

  The Williams affair is remarkable for the detail in which it elaborates the black tradition of arms and shows the community openly endorsing armed self-defense. But it is just a single episode in a more-than-century-long tradition of Negroes with guns, one where the legitimacy and utility of firearms was an article of faith and where the best people in the community were armed.

  This is the story of those people and that tradition.

  “The True Remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill is a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap.”

  —Frederick Douglass, 18541

  There was no sign of anything special happening when the slave boy Fred Bailey stood up and fought the rawboned Maryland planter they called “Covey the Nigger-breaker.” Negroes had been striking back against the prosaic violence of slavery since the beginning. The nature of that resistance and its impulses are contested today, and these cavils may never be settled. But at the core, the deeds and decisions of earlier generations of slaves, fugitives, and freemen ground Martin Luther King’s twentieth-century debate with Robert Williams and frame the black tradition of arms.

  Violence in the freedom struggle resonates differently over time. Political nonviolence so dominates the story of the modern civil-rights movement that it obscures the tradition of individual self-defense. And while the folly of political violence seems plain today, the case against it did not always sway black folk. Indeed, luminaries of the nineteenth-century leadership class advocated organized violent resistance against slavery as a matter of considered policy. And before that, cryptic accounts of early American slavery, evidence abundant individual and organized resistance.

  Martin King and Robert Williams debated the boundaries of an established tradition. But the roots of that tradition, like births and deaths and black family trees that fade to dust under slavery, are not fully recorded in the fashion of other important American developments. So the early story, we piece together—some of it from rare accounts by black folk and more of it as remnants from the stories of the conquering class.

  Partly this yields unsympathetic renderings of quick, violent outbursts and loosely organized, swiftly quashed revolts—the widely recounted insurrections of Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Charles Deslandes, Nat Turner, and an estimated 250 more obscure episodes. In other brief accounts and sterile court records, we see the familiar, unplanned human reflex to meet violence with violence that reflects why philosophers speak of a natural right to self-defense.2

  Some scholars argue that early arrivals from Africa were culturally inclined against organized violence and favored individual combat charged with African ritual. Others contend that lingering tribal rivalries and language barriers hindered planning for group resistance. Still others say that organized slave revolts had a clear African base and that it was American-born blacks who adopted practical survival strategies that eschewed suicidal rebellions.

  Records of early criminal convictions suggest that direct violence against masters or other whites was more likely from “unseasoned” slaves new to the Americas. “Seasoned” slaves, acclimated to the culture, were more likely to resist surreptitiously. Eighteenth-century prosecutions and executions for arson and poisoning suggest that this was not uncommon.3 Many acts of resistance defy rigid boundaries, demonstrating both a personal fight against the immediate violence of slavery and a political resistance against the slave system. The black tradition of arms grows out of this milieu.4

  Fred Bailey’s situation was common. He had been rented out to Edward Covey by his master, Thomas Auld. Bailey was young, just coming into manhood. Some said that the handsome mulatto had been coddled. And Auld perhaps thought that too. A year away with Covey would train him up right.

  Covey wrung a living out of the silty loam of Maryland’s eastern shore. He drove Negroes hard. With a nod and a knowing smile, men called him “Nigger-breaker,” in earnest respect for his particular talent and general disposition. Like others of his type, Covey was the slavers’ medicine for young bucks with too much spirit.

  Fred Bailey was not the typical problem, though. Relatively speaking, he was soft, his early life spent in the comparative comfort of the Baltimore home of Hugh Auld, Thomas’s brother. It was there, as bonded companion to Hugh and Sophia Auld’s young son Tommy, that Bailey learned to read from the Bible at the knee of the kindly Sophia.

  Bailey surely was a slave, presented to Tommy as “his Freddy,” and formally charged with serving and protecting the younger boy. But the work of servile big brother was not taxing and often left Bailey free to roam the streets and docks of Baltimore. Fieldwork under Covey’s lash was a jolting immersion into the more common experience of American Negro slavery.

  One steamy afternoon in 1833, the August heat dragged down the tenderfoot. Part of a team of four assigned to threshing, Bailey lagged, stumbled, and then passed out. His job was to carry raw, stalked grain to the thresher. When he stopped working, the threshing stopped. The commotion of threshing was profit. Silence was loss. And Covey was quick to investigate.

  Bailey was laid out in a shady spot next to the thresher when Covey approached and demanded explanations. Bailey, in a heat daze, mumbled excuses. Covey figured first to kick him back to work and planted a boot hard in his side. Bailey rose partway, fell back, got another kick, and then another. Crab-walking, attempting to stand, then falling again, Bailey was somewhere between up and down when Covey bashed him in the head with an oak-barrel stave. The blood flowed. And this time Bailey stayed down, resigning himself to dying right there if that was his fate.

  The beating was having the opposite effect Covey wanted. He was worn out from giving it, and Bailey was no closer to resuming work. Covey stomped off in disgust. Bailey, splayed out on the g
round, bleeding from the head, resolved, if he survived the moment, to flee.

  At the first clear chance, Bailey crawled off into the woods, barefoot and bleeding. His destination was St. Michaels, seven miles away. There, he imagined finding relief in the self-interest of Master Thomas. It was fair to think that Auld would object to Covey abusing his valuable property. Bailey might even have thought to prevail on whatever advantage rested in the whispers that Auld was actually his father. It was not an unreasonable hope. Auld had twice rescued Bailey from the fate of a field hand, arranging for soft duty in Baltimore with Hugh, Sophia, and Tommy.

  The welcome in St. Michaels was disappointing. Bailey looked how you would expect from a kid who had dropped from heatstroke, taken a beating, and then fled barefoot through seven miles of forest and swamp. But Thomas Auld had little sympathy either for Bailey’s appearance or for his story. Auld knew Covey. Covey was a good man. Whatever had happened, Bailey must have deserved it. And, of course, as a matter of law, there was really nothing to be done. Covey had leased Bailey for a full year. It would be legally, nay, morally wrong to welsh on the bargain.

  In another era, biographers, speculating about the blood connection and Auld’s multiple rescues, would claim that there had been something like love binding Fred Bailey and Thomas Auld. Maybe this exaggerates things. But whatever affection there was, Auld’s refusal to intervene with Covey was the end of it for Bailey. Bailey’s later depictions of Auld exhibit only disdain.

  Early the next morning, ordered to return to Covey or be whipped and returned by force, Fred Bailey reversed course and trudged seven miles back to the scene of his escape. Climbing over the rail fence into the front pasture, he encountered Covey charging toward him, bullwhip in hand. Whatever impulse had moved Bailey to run off, Covey intended to beat out of him. But he had to catch him first.