Black History Month 2026: Second day, Second Amendment
Day 2
Before I get into this one, I want to say that I do NOT condone violence of any kind. Non-violence should always be priority one for resolving conflicts and should be the norm at protests. I’m writing this for informational purposes only.
Thanks to the wh1tewashing of history, one of the things that isn’t discussed much is how guns were part of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. owned guns during the 1950s. While King got rid of his guns later, he often had armed supporters, including armed guards. However, King isn’t the focus of this post. I instead want to talk about an organization that worked with him: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
The SNCC was an independent organization founded by Ella Baker in 1960 with the guidance of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) [1]. Their goal was to organize college students for the advancement of the Civil Rights Movement. While they are most well-known for their coordination of sit-ins and freedom rides, they also traveled to the Deep South to register Black voters. This is where guns became important.
While the 15th Amendment gave Black people (at least Black men) the right to vote, the failure of Reconstruction in the late 1800’s had resulted in wh1te Southerners using both lawful and unlawful violence to prevent them from doing so. Even registering to vote was met with violence from racist wh1tes. Starting in the 1960s, the SNCC made it their goal to register as many Black voters in the Deep South as possible.
The SNCC registered Black voters in the South by sending one or two members to stay with Black families who were supportive of their cause [2]. Wh1te people who disapproved responded by either reacted violently or sending organizations like the KKK to act violently on their behalf. The result was sometimes armed clashes between Black neighborhoods where SNCC members stayed and invading wh1te vigilantes (including the KKK) [2]. These shoot-outs almost always resulted in the Black defenders repelling the wh1te invaders from their neighborhoods.
Armed Black locals often accompanied SNCC members when they traveled around to South to register Black voters [2]. These armed “guards” rarely had to use their weapons, but their presence made wh1te vigilantes hesitant to harass and/or assault SNCC members. While the SNCC members themselves were often unarmed, they had the support of armed Black locals.
In addition to being suppressed by racist educational institutions, one of the other reasons we don’t hear more about these incidents is they were intentionally underreported [2]. Many of the incidents weren’t reported by members of the SNCC until years or decades later. Those that were reported at the time they occurred rarely left local SNCC offices. At the time the SNCC was dedicated to non-violence and frowned upon the use of any weapons—even for self-defense! The organization was also still allied with SCLC and concerned word of Black people in the Deep South defending SNCC representatives with guns could damage their alliance and negatively impact the nonviolent movement overall.
The SNCC was not the only Civil Rights group to embrace (albeit unofficially) the Second Amendment. The Black Panthers (more on them on another day), the Deacons for Defense, and even some chapters of the NAACP also believed in carrying guns. While the use and importance of guns during the Civil Rights Movement is controversial, it’s important to know the Civil Rights Movement was multifaceted and some Civil Rights activists believed in guns. In the case of SNCC, their work registering voters eventually led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 [3]. That work would’ve been much more difficult, if not impossible, without guns.
Sources:
[1] https://www.searchablemuseum.com/the-student-nonviolent-coordinating-committee/
[2] This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb, Jr.
[3] https://legaldefensefund.substack.com/p/a-closer-look-at-sncc-how-students
Everything not cited is from my own knowledge acquired through years of racial justice research and living as Black man in America.