Freedpeople claimed Second Amendment self-defense rights during Reconstruction disarmament.

Evidence

African Americans pushed back. Many had held on to their wartime firearms and resisted the neo-Confederate government’s demand to disarm. They fought back as white state militias and paramilitary organizations worked closely with local governments to seize their weapons. Black people asserted, in publications such as The Christian Recorder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and The Loyal Georgian, that they had Second Amendment rights and that stripping them of their guns was denying them the right to self-defense. The Loyal Georgian quoted a report by an officer of the Freedmen’s Bureau saying that disarming Black people would be “placing them at the mercy of others.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 803

Categorization

• CANDY: The Freedmen’s Bureau officer quote ‘placing them at the mercy of others’ is a compact, shareable line.
• SEED: Angle: the Second Amendment as originally a Black civil-rights demand, a contrarian frame for gun-rights debates.