Charles E. Cobb's This Nonviolent Stuff Ll Get You Killed

As Charles E. Cobb sat down with Eddie Conway to discuss his book This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed he began to speak about the importance of self-defense and the use of weapons in the Civil Rights Movement. The sense of community and organizing among African Americans during the sixties was unlike any other time in history. Throughout the south African Americans were often victims of sexual and physical violence. After countless attacks, rapes, and murders individuals began to take the safety of their families into their own hands. Cobb highlights this in the interview when he spoke about Hartman Turnbow a farmer from Mississippi and leader of his local NAACP. Turnbow did not believe non-violence was the answer to solving civil rights issues. In 1964 when Turnbow’s farm was targeted by night riders he was able to drive them away with his Winchester. Turnbow saw having a gun as a means of protecting his family because if he was not protecting them no one would be. In his book Cobb speaks on this same point in Chapter 1 when when he points out that black

Without students in organizations like SNCC and CORE, sit-ins and issues such as voting rights would not have been at the forefront of this movement. Although student activism is highly regarded now, Cobb recalls the perspectives of adults in 1960’s when he says, “We were under a lot of pressure as an organization, say, as SNCC, because a lot of people thought we were too radical.” As an organization run by student they were extremely successful which made some individuals feel threatened. In his book, Cobb highlights the fact that in 1960 Amzie Moore was the first adult civil rights leader to embrace SNCC. Overall, the generational rift between the “children” of the sixties and older generations was another important part of Cobb’s story as well as many college aged students in the