134 Akinyele Omowale Umoja w i t h the objective of creating a general uprising. N o r t h e r n Blacks also created secret societies to aid the escape of fugitives and to p l a n for general insurrection. I n 1919, the A f r i c a n Blood Brotherhood (ABB) emerged as a radical Black secret society i n American urban centers. The ABB advocated that Black people "organize i n trade unions, b u i l d cooperatively o w n e d businesses, and create paramilitary self-defense u n i t s . " The ABB dissolved as an organization i n the late 1920s as its members decided to become the Black cadre of the American Communist Party. I n the 1950s and 1960s, i n several southern towns and rural locations, armed clandestine networks protected civil rights activists and activities, retaliated i n response to acts of W h i t e supremacist violence and served as an accountability force w i t h i n the Black c o m m u n i t y d u r i n g economic boycotts of W h i t e owned business districts. The secretive, paramilitary Deacons for Defense and Justice, considered by many to be the armed w i n g of the southern C i v i l Rights M o v e ment f r o m 1965 t h r o u g h 1969, never identified the majority of its membership or revealed the size of its organization. Deacons selectively recruited and its members understood that revealing organizational secrets could result i n death. I n 1969, activists i n the southern movement formed a clandestine paramilitary organization to retaliate against W h i t e supremacists w h o committed heinous acts of violence o n southern Blacks. * The early 1960s saw the emergence of the Revolutionary A c t i o n Movement ( R A M ) as a radical clandestine organization w i t h i n the Black liberation movement. R A M was initiated i n 1962 by northern Black radicals w h o defined themselves as "revolutionary Black nationalists" seeking to organize an armed struggle to w i n national liberation for the "colonized Black n a t i o n " i n the U S A . I n 1963, due to political repression, R A M cadre decided to "go u n d e r g r o u n d . " I n 1964, R A M members involved i n SNCC projects i n the Mississippi delta w o r k e d w i t h SNCC field staff to develop armed self-defense units to defend the project. I n the Spring of 1964, R A M chairman Robert Williams, w h o was a political exile i n Cuba, published an article titled "The USA: The Potential for a M i n o r i t y Revolt." Williams stated that i n order to be free, Black people "must prepare to wage an u r b a n guerilla w a r . " D u r i n g the fall of the same year, R A M organizers presented a 12-point p r o g r a m to Black y o u t h at a National A f r o American Student Conference i n Nashville, Tennessee, i n c l u d i n g "development of Liberation A r m y (Guerilla Y o u t h Force)." R A M cadre were active i n urban 10
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Theodore G. Vincent, Voices of the Black Nation (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1991), p. 123. For more information, see Akinyele Umoja, "Eye for an Eye: the Role of Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement," PhD dissertation, Emory University, 1996. Ibid., pp. 202-04. Robert Brisbane, Black Activism: Racial Revolution in the United States 1954-1970 (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1974), p. 182. Robert Williams quoted in Robert Earl Cohen, Black Crusader: A Biography of Robert Franklin Williams (Secaucas, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1972), pp. 271-72. "USA: The Potential of a Minority Revolt" originally appeared in the May-June issue of Williams' newsletter The Crusader. Maxwell C. Stanford, "Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a Case Study of a Urban Revolutionary Movement in Western Capitalist Society," Masters thesis, Atlanta University, Atlanta, 1986, p. 99. 10
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