The Untold History of Black NRA Gun Clubs and the Civil Rights Movement

With the violent crime rate increasing disproportionately in urban communities, it's no surprise that a recent phone survey of black voters found that 80 percent felt gun violence was an “extremely serious” problem. However, it seems this surge in violence actually has many in the black community changing their views on gun ownership.

In 1993, 74 percent of African-Americans favored gun control. Fast forward to 2018, and a Crime Prevention Research Center report found that concealed carry permits are on the rise – especially among minorities. In Texas alone, the number of blacks with permits has grown by almost 140 percent since 2012. Overall, this growth in the number of permits for blacks is happening 20 percent faster than for whites.

This increasingly positive attitude toward firearms might not be a new paradigm, but rather a return to form.

In this three-part series on militias in America, Early American Militias: The Forgotten History of Freedmen Militias from 1776 until the Civil War and American Militias after the Civil War: From Black Codes to the Black Panthers and Beyond provide detailed looks at the history of militias in early and post-Civil-War America. This guide takes a final look at how militias played a vital role in the Civil Rights Movement, an important piece of America that's missing from our history books.

Table of Contents

• Robert F. Williams and Armed Black Self-Defense
• Ronald Reagan, The Black Panthers and Gun Control
• Pacifists Outsourcing Violence: The Curious Tale of C.O. Chinn and Martin Luther King
• The Marin County Courthouse Incident and Increasing Militancy
• The NRA as an Organ of Individual and Collective Self-Defense

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