The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America

by Carol Anderson

The Second Amendment, on the other hand, is fundamentally different. It was designed and has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.

In South Carolina’s estimation, armed Blacks were infinitely more dangerous and frightening than the might of the British military and the wrath of a king dealing with American traitors.

On September 25, 1789, Congress sent the amendments to the states. In less than two years, three-fourths of them had ratified the Bill of Rights, and the Second Amendment came into being on December 15, 1791, steeped in anti-Blackness, swaddled in the desire to keep African-descended people rightless and powerless, and as yet another bone tossed to keep the South mollified and willing to stay aligned with the grand experiment of the United States of America.145

could—especially after the stores banned ammunition sales to African Americans—and prepared for war. Black people defending themselves against a slaughter, however, only further enraged the mob. Some members of the horde ran to authorities, lied, said that African Americans had killed a couple of their group and that the fine people of Knoxville needed reinforcements. Tennessee was determined to give it and responded with the state militia and two machine guns. With the cry “Let them have it!” the troops began to fire wildly for minutes on end into the Bowery district, where African Americans worked and lived. Blacks retreated deeper into the neighborhood. The machine guns and troops moved forward and unloaded another lethal blast. Although it had been the white mob that broke into the jail, beat the sheriff, and ransacked his home looking to lynch a Black man accused of rape and murder, the state’s lethal power was fully directed at African Americans engaged in community self-defense. None of this was lost on Black people in Knoxville. One man noted, “And once again it has been made but too apparent that not only have the authorities no intention of protecting the Negro in his rights but that when he beats back the wanton aggression of white mobs these are