Lest we forget, the American government only illegalized chattel slavery and it’s attendant horrors out of economic and military necessity, and even then reluctantly. Following Emancipation, white supremacy did not end, but merely took new forms. Here’s a basic reading list related to that history and questions of tactics.
The Long History of White Resistance to Black Freedom
The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne
The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W. E. B. DuBois
Reconstruction Updated Edition: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression by Robin D. G. Kelley
We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement by Akinyele Omowale Umoja
Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward
American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton
Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, 2nd Edition by Doug McAdam
Sunbelt Revolution: The Historical Progression of Civil Rights in the Gulf South by Samuel C. Hyde
The Tallahassee Bus Boycott by Gregory D. Padgett *PDF*
At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance – A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire
It Was Like All of Us Had Been Raped: Sexual Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle by Danielle L. McGuire *PDF*
A World More Concrete: Real Estate and The Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida by N. D. B. Connolly
From Sit-in to Race Riot: Businessmen, Blacks, and the Pursuit of Moderation in Tampa, 1960–1967 by Steven F. Lawson *PDF*
The Success of the Unruly by William A. Gamson *PDF*
The Use of Terrorism by Ernest Evans *PDF*
The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement by Lance Hill
This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb Jr.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Black Panther Party
Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E . Martin
The Huey P. Newton Reader by Huey P. Newton *PDF*
To Die for the People by Huey P. Newton *Foreward PDF*
Philosophical and Sociological Reflections and Historical Case Studies on Violence
Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan
Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America by Ward Churchill *PDF*
The Success of the Unruly by William A. Gamson *PDF*
The Use of Terrorism by Ernest Evans *PDF*
The Contribution of Social Movement Theory to Understanding Terrorism by Colin J. Beck *PDF*
