Charles E. Cobb > Quotes

“Many black women also kept guns within easy reach. But it is important to mention that women & their use of guns present the historian of the southern Freedom Movement with a particular problem. Many of the women from this era (like the men) have passed away & cannot be interviewed. And although a few of the men have written or been extensively interviewed about their role in self-defense, the women have publicly left little record & have generally been ignored in the discussion & debate over armed self-defense...For the most part, we do not know what many women who were active in the movement were thinking, or whether & how they organized for self-defense. Historians are therefore dependent on males for portrays & interpretations of women's thoughts & actions.”
― Charles E. Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

“Simply put: because nonviolence worked so well as a tactic for effecting change and was demonstrably improving their lives, some black people chose to use weapons to defend the nonviolent Freedom Movement.”
― Charles E. Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

“People in black communities were willing to do what was necessary to protect fellow blacks who were risking their lives by speaking out against and actively challenging the status quo; the willingness of some to take armed defensive action enabled the civil rights movement to sustain itself during the mid-twentieth century.”
― Charles E. Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

“As noted in 1964 by Robert P. “Bob” Moses, director of the Mississippi project of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): “It’s not contradictory for a farmer to say he’s nonviolent and also pledge to shoot a marauder’s head off.”
― Charles E. Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

“Inexplicably to many whites, blacks continued to express dissatisfaction.”
― Charles E. Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

“We in SNCC were radicalized by working with people in their homes and communities much more than by ideology.”
― Charles E. Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

“As the civil rights struggle intensified in the 1950s, and with it attempts at lethal attacks, most black people did whatever they could to keep themselves and their friends and families safe and alive, and guns were never ruled out—reflecting a propensity for self-defense with weapons that has been basic to human beings since the first person stood upright and walked on the earth.”
― Charles E. Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

“certainly colored by the fact that I am a descendant of Africans who were enslaved. And my specific view of the place of slave revolts in the continuum of the black freedom struggle is affected by my own awareness and understanding of my forebears’ desire for freedom.”
― Charles E. Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible