July 14, 2015
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These groups”particularly the Deacons for Defense and Justice“often comprised WWII vets who”d killed white racists abroad in the name of freedom and democracy, and were therefore less reluctant to do so at home.
Contrary to the image glorified in numberless PBS documentaries and Hollywood movies”and in defiance of racist “gun control” legislation“many black SNCC, NAACP, SCLC, and CORE field organizers carried firearms, while continuing to promote their organizations as “officially” nonviolent. They feared, correctly, that if their biggest donors”Northern white liberals”found out they were armed, the money would dry up.
Open up either book at random and you”ll likely find a story like this one:
It was just another good time Klan night, the high point of which would come when they dragged Dr. Perry over the state line if they did not hang him or burn him first. But near Dr. Perry’s home their revelry was suddenly shattered by the sustained fire of scores of men who had been instructed not to kill anyone if it were not necessary. The firing was blistering, disciplined and frightening. The motorcade of about eighty cars, which had begun in a spirit of good fellowship, disintegrated into chaos, with panicky, robed men fleeing in every direction. Some abandoned their automobiles and had to continue on foot.
Almost inevitably, such anecdotes finish up with a line like “And the family was never bothered again.”
Of course, it helped that”unlike today’s Muslim terrorists”the average Klansman was willing to kill for his cause, but not die for it.
As a Lumbee Indian said after his tribe foiled an almost comical Klan raid (and were seen in LIFE magazine the following week, strutting around wearing hastily discarded white robes):
“If the Negroes had done something like this a long time ago, we wouldn”t be bothered with the KKK.”
