We Will Shoot Back
Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

A fine book. The gist of it is this: the prevailing narrative about black Americans is that we were passive actors in our own liberation in the U.S. Even the Civil Rights Movement has been re-characterized as passive, glorifying non-violence as a state-of-being rather than the political act it is an......more

Another wonderful example of the relatively recent surge of historiography dedicated to dispelling the notion that the nonviolence and pacifism championed by mainstream civil rights movement leaders were the predominant strategy and philosophy of the African-American freedom struggle during the 50s,......more

Reading Akinyele Omowale Umoja’s brilliant We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (NYU Press, 2013), in the midst of the national celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, was striking to say the least. Whereas the national narrative, from political speeches......more

I really enjoy reading about people laying down the bible and picking up the gun. Or in some cases hiding their guns in their bibles. Very interesting and important history for anybody interested in a more accurate picture of the civil rights movement than is taught and portrayed. Do kids learn abou......more

This is a story about “Bad Negroes.” The Black men and women from Mississippi—one of the most violently anti-Black places in 20th Century America—who committed themselves and their communities to organized collective armed resistance in the face of unceasing white terror. As author Akinyele Umoja ex......more