
                    FIREARMS KEY TO CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
                              BY LARRY PRATT

February is "Black History Month".  Many classrooms will have special
lessons on the civil rights movement.  One lesson they probably won't
include is the critical importance of the Second Amendment to the
success of the Civil Rights movement.

Many of us have seen films and docudramas about the Freedom Riders being
beaten in Anniston, Alabama, and the siege at the nearby Montgomery
church which gave refuge to the victims.  We have seen Dr. Martin Luther
King on the phone to Attorney General Robert Kennedy asking for help.
We've seen the people in that little church bravely singing hymns.

But Taylor Branch, in his book "Parting the Waters", reminds us that
those churchgoers did more than just sing:  "some of the men who had
prepared for this moment were slipping our of the pews, reaching for
knives, sticks and pistols in their coat pockets.

Firearms allowed people who knew the police would not protect them to
protect themselves.  After Freedom Riders were beaten by a white mob in
Anniston, Branch writes: "soon, eight cars of Negro churchmen, brimming
with shotguns and rifles, took off down Highway 78 to pick up the
enervated but immensely grateful pacifists."

Civil rights leaders demonstrated by their actions that they believed in
the fundamental right of armed self-defense.  Firearms were readily
available in the home of Dr. Martin Luther King.  Civil rights activist
Bayard Rustin recalled his visit to Dr. King's home during the
Montgomery, AL, bus boycott.  At that time, Rustin "shouted to stop
someone from sitting on a loaded pistol that was lying on the couch."
Other civil rights leaders were known to be personally armed at all
times.  E.W.Steptoe, the leader of the Amite County, Mississippi, NAACP,
never left his house unarmed.

These little-known facts deserve the attention of all Americans.  The
gun control lobby suggests we put all our trust in the government.  They
act as if official abuse of power never happens.  Imagine how Martin
Luther King would have reacted to this sentiment that the government is
and somehow always will be our friend.

One need not think too long as to what some Southern sheriffs might have
done with a registration list of gun owners during the days of civil
rights movement.  Remember that the police in Neshoba County,
Mississippi, were proved to be conspiring with the racists who killed
three civil rights workers in 1964.

The entire Bill of Rights was essential to the civil rights movement.
Those who wish to disarm us today would do well to remember this
important lesson:  an armed citizenry is the ultimate defense against
tyranny.

