Erin ’s Reviews > This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible > Status Update

Klan violence in Tuscaloosa's Black community ended when Klansmen discovered that attack would be met by an organized armed response. Police violence also slowed.

Some of SNCC's key leaders felt strongly that they would be selling out by devoting time and energy to voter registration when more immediate and everyday forms of discrimination persisted all across the South.

After the Civil War, Reconstruction did not fail; it was destroyed, crushed by more than a decade of savage campaigns of violence carried out both by local governments that largely remained intact and by vigilante terrorists.

"Our niggers are happy and satisfied with their lives because we whites are good to them all this violence and trouble is instigated by outside agitators and Communists."

From the Klan's perspective black people swimming with white people was akin to sexual assault

Black veterans returning home were considered dangerous and disarming them was a priority for the white supremacists.

Many politicians feared the rise of communism would lead to "social equality" among the races.

The Kennedy administration constantly admonished nonviolent activists to "go slow", be patient and give southern racists a chance to change.

The federal government remained reluctant to rein in white supremacists and often allied with them.

Black veterans were thought to be largely responsible for Black agitation that white Americans saw in evidence all around them.