Abolitionists turned activists such as Frederick Douglass argued that newly freed slaves deserved the right to defend themselves against nightriders and white lynch mobs because local authorities failed to do so. Yet black disarmament campaigns continued for decades, leading to a state of affairs historian David Schenk describes succinctly: “Without political agency, or the means of an organized community militia to generate such power, the realization of freedom and the rights of citizenship for African Americans remained unobtainable for nearly 100 years.”
