A review by clarehiyama
This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb Jr.

challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Fascinating and easy to read, this book provides crucial insights into the mechanisms that powered freedom movements in the 1940s-‘60s. As Cobb notes, this is not the classic civil rights history most of us learned in school. His insights in this book are relevant to today’s movements as well. Non-violence and armed self-defense are not mutually exclusive tactics; in fact, each bolsters the other. The framing of non-violence as a tactic rather than an all-encompassing philosophy or way of life was also new to me; some in the movement were dedicated to it fully, but many saw it as useful and strategic, rather than something that needs to define them fully. Cobb’s emphasis on the importance of grassroots organizing is something else I’ll take with me from this book. Actually having a network of people in relationship with each other, who are there for each other, who are doing lots of smaller scale things regularly and can be counted on to be there for bigger scale things, is so antithetical to much of the US’s culture but is clearly a CRUCIAL part of successful movements. I really learned a lot from this book! Thanks, Mr. Cobb.