QOTD: Rely on the Protection of the Crown

Louis XIV in 1864 by Hyacinthe Rigaud, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The disarming of the militia was part of the monarchy’s long effort to disarm its subjects, especially its potentially troublesome ones. . . . In the interest of public order, minority groups and privileged elements were urged to rely on the protection of the crown, not upon their own devices. In the case of the Huguenots, this reliance was to be ill placed; in 1685 Louis XIV withdrew the state’s protection and began a policy of persecution.

— Lee Kennett and Jules LaVerne Anderson, The Gun in America (1975), p. 185, emphasis added

Sociology of Guns Class Student Final Reflection #2

As noted previously, for the final assignment of the semester in my Sociology of Guns Seminar in Spring 2019, students were asked to write a 1,000 to 2,000 word essay in which they would:

revisit your previous personal experience with and understanding of guns in the U.S. (as expressed, e.g., in the field trip reflection essay) in light of your consideration of the role guns actually do play in American society. Reflecting on what you learned from completing your major writing assignment, as well as the class more generally, discuss how your mind has (and/or has not) changed. Conclude this paper by considering what more you need to know in order to make informed choices about your own participation with and the place of guns in the communities in which you live and will live in the future.

Here is the second of several such essays (see the first), written by a student whose initial reflections on our field trip to the gun range can be found here.

The Black Church Tradition of Arms, W.E.B. DuBois, and Bethel Church of Philadelphia

Thus one can see in the Negro church to-day, reproduced in microcosm, all the great world from which the Negro is cut off by color-prejudice and social condition. In the great city churches the same tendency is noticeable and in many respects emphasized. A great church like the Bethel of Philadelphia has over eleven hundred members, an edifice seating fifteen hundred persons and valued at one hundred thousand dollars, an annual budget of five thousand dollars, and a government consisting of a pastor with several assisting local preachers, an executive and legislative board, financial boards and tax collectors; general church meetings for making laws; sub-divided groups led by class leaders, a company of militia, and twenty-four auxiliary societies. The activity of a church like this is immense and far-reaching, and the bishops who preside over these organizations throughout the land are among the most powerful Negro rulers in the world.

A “company of militia”? Well, that got my attention.

Reading an excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk by the great African-American intellectual W.E.B. DuBois for my sociological theory class last week, I came across the interesting description of Philadelphia’s Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church copied above, including the reference to “a company of militia.”

For reasons I discuss below, I was not altogether surprised that Mother Bethel had a “militia” — because racism and the need to defend the church and its community — only that DuBois mentioned it in passing, without remarking on it further.

Statue of founder Richard Allen outside Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Sandra Stroud Yamane