Traditional historiography of the Civil Rights Movement marvels at the “achievements” achieved during the decade-long struggle of the movement’s “heroic period” between 1954 and 1965. Much praise is given to the diligent adherence of this period to nonviolence resistance. This ideology propagated by leading figures and organizations of the civil rights movement such as Dr. Martin Luther King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has become the standard legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. Furthermore, both conservative and liberal commentators on the movement have embraced this classification of the movement as nonviolent, distinct from the self-defense policies associated with black radicals, particularly Malcolm it was a movement without supporters of armed self-defense, that's not true. To suggest that elements of the Civil Rights Movement did not involve armed self-defense tactics is to ignore the complex schisms within the Civil Rights Movement. Armed self-defense advocates existed as prominent members of the civil rights movement and as civil rights organizations. However, these factions have been ignored or little mentioned in the historiography of the civil rights movement. Sustained armed self-defense existed in the context of the civil rights movement. This article seeks to achieve three goals: to illuminate the efforts of self-defense advocates while demonstrating that the existence of such advocates is the determining factor in the success of the marches, demonstrations, and sit-ins of the heroic period of the Civil Rights Movement . ; to explain that while the ideological conflict b...... at the center of the card ......ds achieves equality. Even Dr. King's disciples, Stokley Carmichael and Floyd Mckissick, believed King's reliance on nonviolence was outdated. The Meredith March highlighted the complex contradiction, but necessary compatibility between nonviolence and armed self-defense. King and the traditional civil rights movement focused on achieving equality. The Deacons focused on surviving white oppression. King and others were willing to die for the cause of black struggle without physically fighting, while the Deacons sought to advance civil rights causes through self-defense and, if necessary, violence. When the Deacons lost national prominence in 1967, they had already created a legacy of empowerment for black Americans. They fought oppression through self-defense and marked a critical transition in the civil rights movement to the radicalized black power movement.