In 1964, on this day White Citizens' Councils received copies of "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice" as the US Government braced the country for a fresh wave of negro insurgency code-named "Freedom Summer".

Freedom SummerThe author of the publication was French lieutenant colonel David Galula who as a research fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs had set down the lessons of his experience in the Algerian War. His bold introduction "a Negro movement trying to exploit the Negro problem as the basis for a [violent] insurgency in the United States .. would be doomed from the start" had captured the attention of University professors that had contacted the US military leadership who were increasingly desperate for answers.

Unsurprisingly the man considered by the US military leadership to be the putative head of the negro insurgency, Robert F. Williams strongly disagreed with Galula's assessment that the armed struggle was doomed. Williams had been carrying a pistol ever since he revitalized a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Marion, North Carolina. And in "Negroes With Guns" he had published an influential manifesto that rejected nonviolent tactics and argued for black self-defense. Several groups adopted this policy. The best known of these, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, consisted largely of veterans of World War II and the Korean War who were now at war with their former colleagues in the military.