Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era

Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era. By Christopher B. Strain. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005. Pp. vii, 254. Acknowledgments, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95, cloth; $19.95, paper.)

In Pure Fire, Christopher B. Strain examines how self-defense developed within the civil rights movement in the very years that nonviolent methods used by Martin Luther King, Jr. were becoming the dominant approach in the struggle for racial justice. Arguing that self-defense has been a crucial element in African-American history, Strain suggests that the 1954 Brown decision and the 1955 murder of Emmett Till instigated the rise of self-defense ideology as a key element of the civil rights movement. Interracial violence had been on the decline for decades, but the 1950s saw a renewed militancy among white southerners. In response, many black activists began openly espousing self-defense as a necessary means of confronting white violence. But, as Strain notes, whites perceived self-defense quite differently, viewing armed blacks as terrorist threats to civility. When whites heard the rhetoric of self-defense, they tended to respond with "fear and force" (p. 176).

Strain skillfully traces the evolution of self-defense, from its antebellum incarnations to its ultimate collapse as a viable tactic by the...