If you don't hsve a gun, don't come asking me to bring mine to help you...

"Chronicling the underappreciated black tradition of bearing arms for self-defense, this book presents an array of examples reaching back to the pre-Civil War era that demonstrate a willingness of African American men and women to use firearms when necessary to defend their families and communities. From Frederick Douglass's advice to keep "a good revolver" handy as defense against slave catchers to the armed self-protection of Monroe, North Carolina, blacks against the KKK chronicled in Robert Williams's Negroes with Guns, it is clear that owning firearms was commonplace in the black community."

Surprising and informative, this well- researched book strips away many stock assumptions of conventional wisdom on the issue of guns and the black freedom struggle."