Thread: Were African-Americans allowed to own guns in the South during the Periods of 1880s up into the 1960s?

As opposed to the North and West Coast, were African-Americans allowed to own guns in the South during the Periods of 1880s up the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s? If so then link it please.

The US constitition allowed it so yes.

Whether they flaunted their ownership of those guns is another matter, but there are quite a few stories of black Africans barricading themselves in and holding shot guns when lynch mobs were on the prowl.

I can only talk about the sixties, when I knew a man in Nam who joked about is rifles back home, this bloke was a bit of a charactor and a little shady. How ever when we were drinking in the seventhfleet club in the phillipines, we often talked about weapons and certain parts of America it was definately not on to carry or own a weapon.

Yes. Everybody could own guns, even in the South. Indeed, In parts of the South, Louisianna in particular, and parts of other states, Free Blacks, even some slaves were allowed to own firearms. Recipts from various stores frequented by blacks, had notations of them buying amunition with their money. Blacks used their weapons for hunting food, for themselves, to suppliment the food given to them by their masters, or as Actual assigned "Hunters" --Like "Holt Collier",Later known as "the Black Davy Crokett" who supplied game meat for the Hinds plantation.

There were no restrictions that I know of after the Civil War on black ownership of guns. However during slavery, like everything else, local laws varied with geographic areas and the whims of the individual masters, as to what the blacks had and could not have.--Guns, education, or whatever.

Most modern gun control laws originated during that period, as an attempt to disarm the Blacks. "May Issue" gun permits were written so "...blacks and other undesirables" could be denied firearms. "Saturday Night Special" laws were to create economic bans to keep guns from the poorer people, mostly minorities.

These laws restricted Blacks all across the nation, with NYC's Sullivan Law being one of the predominate ones.