In the middle of a strip of industrial, single-story buildings, it’s easy to miss the offices of 901 Brothers Sisters Keeper gun club, the Memphis chapter of the National African American Gun Association (Naaga).
Inside the office multiple flags hang: the Black Lives Matter flag; the thin green line flag, which is often used by members and supporters of the US military; an American flag; and the Naaga flag, a red, black and green version of the country’s flag that reads: “community engagement”, “tactical training”, “safe storage”, “kid’s gun safety”, “self defense” and “mentoring” – tenets of the organization.
To some, the flags may indicate a clear contradiction, but for the members of Naaga, an organization made up of former law enforcement officers and families concerned about gun safety, they represent the layers of gun ownership within Black communities. Bennie Cobb, a retired police officer and former commander of the Shelby county sheriff’s office’s special weapons and tactics (Swat) team, thought that Memphis needed a Naaga Chapter after he found out about the national organization.
Despite his own law enforcement background, no one in his family had ever touched a gun. Many young people with whom he interacted were familiar with guns, but not with gun safety.
“African Americans are getting more in tune to gun ownership,” Cobb said. Between 2019 and 2021, 2.9% of US adults newly became gun owners. Approximately half of those adults were women, while about 20% were Black. “Guns are powerful tools, training young people on gun ownership [is important].”
Founded in 2015 in Atlanta, Naaga has seen regular waves of growth over the last decade. Membership spiked after Trump’s first time in office, said Philip Smith, the organization’s founder, and in the years since, chapters have popped up across the country. Instances of nationally publicized police violence, rises in violent rhetoric and acts from hate groups, and mass shootings have also led to spurts of membership growth. Naaga now has more than 100 chapters across the country and five regional directors.
The majority of the organization’s members, both nationwide and locally, Cobb said, are women: mothers, grandmothers and single women who joined the Memphis chapter to learn self-defense or to help their children learn about gun safety. Though Black and Latino populations experienced the sharpest decline in gun homicides in 2023 nationally, gun violence is still a concern in Memphis, where Black people are 4.2% more likely than whites to die from gun violence.
Memphis’s mayor, Paul Young has specifically worked to address gun violence in the city, writing earlier this year: “I want Memphis, America’s largest majority-Black city, to be a leader in finding ways to get the community to put our guns down and to solve our gun violence problems; I want Memphis to be the model.”
Last year, the city saw a 30% decline in homicides, a 29% decline in murder and a 39% decline in motor vehicle theft, according to data from the city of Memphis and its police department. Still, Naaga believes it’s important to ensure the community remains educated about gun safety by reaching people of all ages, including children ages six to 17. Those classes, in which a parent or adult is required to bring and stay with the child or children the entire time, are almost entirely chaperoned by women.
Katina Davis, an early member of the Memphis branch, said she joined the organization because of its community focus. Since joining, she has worked to ensure she is imparting the knowledge she learns to others. “If I’m not telling my grandbabies about safety, I don’t even bring [her firearm] out around them.”
History of Black gun ownership
In March of 1892, a white mob lynched three Black men: Thomas Moss, a close friend of the journalist Ida B Wells, and his business partners, Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell, because their prosperous People’s Grocery was taking business away from a white man’s store that had previously held a monopoly in a Black neighborhood in Memphis. In her autobiography, Wells noted they were the first lynchings in Memphis since the American civil war.
Writing in 1892, Wells responded to the year – full of lynchings and terror, and in which her newspaper offices in Memphis were destroyed by a white mob – with a call for self-defense: “The lesson this teaches and which every Afro American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give,” she wrote.
That call has echoed throughout Black history. It was adopted in the 1950s and 60s by members of the Mississippi Freedom Movement, who responded to Jim Crow-era violence with a desire to defend their families; in 1962, by civil rights activist Robert F Williams, who wrote the book Negroes With Guns, about Black gun defense in light of white violence; in 1964, by the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who formed to protect civil rights activists; and by Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale, in 1966, when they founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
Though there is a rich history of Black gun ownership in the US, Black people have consistently faced barriers to gun access. In the 1600s, Virginia banned all people of African descent, whether they were enslaved or free, from owning guns. Before the civil war, slave codes likewise prevented all Black people from gun ownership; following the civil war, those laws were replaced with “black codes”, which also prohibited Black gun ownership. Many of those codes still shape laws about gun ownership in the country. The strict gun laws for which California is known came about as a direct result of white politicians attempting to curb Black gun ownership after 30 members of the Black Panthers protested on the steps of the California statehouse with their weapons.
Centuries of repression of Black gun ownership have led to Black Americans having some of the lowest gun rates compared with other races: today, 24% of Black Americans own a gun, compared with 38% of white Americans. About seven in 10 gun owners, or 72%, say protection is a major reason why they own a gun.
‘We want all people to know how to defend themselves’
By offering events for children as young as six, the Memphis chapter of Naaga hopes to ensure that the next generation of Black gun owners is knowledgable about both safety and self-defense.
“I try to get the kids to go so they can know when you are with your friend in the house and they play with guns, you [need] to go home,” Davis said. “You don’t want to be involved with it because it can change your life or you could possibly lose your life.”
After attending the classes, Davis takes the children out to eat, lets them relax and asks them about what they learned as a way to reinforce their training.
Cobb says that the organization has trained all sorts of people. A week prior, a woman called and told him that her 65-year-old mother, who had never shot a gun, needed gun safety training; some women call to schedule day parties that are gun safety training opportunities instead of brunch; grandmothers in wheelchairs and those who are legally blind have taken classes as well.
Once a month, Naaga’s Memphis chapter hosts women-only classes. Many of the participants are first-time gun owners who want to ensure they have proper training, Cobb said. The organization also offers non-lethal self-defense classes, in which they teach people how to safely use pepper spray or batons.
Cobb said that law enforcement officials flocking to the organization makes sense, as officers will want to join an organization in which they can continue weapons training. But having an organization that welcomes former and current authorities, as well as community members who may have a negative relationship with law enforcement can provide unique opportunities, he said. “Tennessee has permitless carry, and more people want training and understanding about what they can and can’t do.”
Having people who are trained in the law lead the trainings helps ensure that those who attend 901 Brothers Sisters Keeper gun club’s events are learning not only about gun safety and gun use, but they are also learning how to ensure their gun usage is within the law. One common issue, Cobb said, is explaining to people that they cannot legally use their guns lethally just because someone is, for instance, breaking into their vehicles.
“We want all people to know how to defend themselves,” Cobb said, noting that police can take an extended period of time to arrive after an incident. “We want people to know how to protect themselves.”
