Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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A paramilitary is an armed, militarized-like force or unit that functions and is organized in a manner analogous to a military force, but does not have professional or legitimate status.[1] The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of the term "paramilitary" as far back as 1934.[2] It has been used by many different political organizations from around the world throughout history.[3] Paramilitaries have widely been synonymous with violence, political repression, ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity.[4] Paramilitaries may use combat-capable kit/equipment (such as internal security/SWAT vehicles), or even actual military equipment (such as armored personnel carriers; usually military surplus resources) that are compatible with their purpose, often combining them with skills from other relevant fields such as law enforcement, coast guard, or search and rescue.[citation needed] A paramilitary may fall under the command of a military, train alongside them, or have permission to use their resources, despite not actually being part of them.[5]
Under the law of war, a state may incorporate a paramilitary organization or armed agency (such as a law enforcement agency or a private volunteer militia) into its combatant armed forces. Some countries' constitutions prohibit paramilitary organizations outside government use.
Depending on the definition adopted, "paramilitaries" may include:
Designating, of, or relating to a force or unit whose function and organization are analogous or ancillary to those of a professional military force, but which is not regarded as having professional or legitimate status.
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
A paramilitary is an armed, militarized-like force or unit that functions and is organized in a manner analogous to a military force, but does not have professional or legitimate status. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of the term "paramilitary" as far back as 1934. It has been used by many different political organizations from around the world throughout history. Paramilitaries have widely been synonymous with violence, political repression, ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity. Paramilitaries may use combat-capable kit/equipment (such as internal security/SWAT vehicles), or even actual military equipment (such as armored personnel carriers; usually military surplus resources) that are compatible with their purpose, often combining them with skills from other relevant fields such as law enforcement, coast guard, or search and rescue. A paramilitary may fall under the command of a military, train alongside them, or have permission to use their resources, despite not actually being part of them.
A fascist paramilitary is a type of paramilitary fighting force – whether armed, unarmed, or merely symbolic – that is independent of regular military command and is established for the defence and advancement of a social-political movement that adheres to the far-right authoritarian and radical nationalist political ideology of fascism. Because fascism is an inherently militarist ideology, there are very few varieties of fascism for which, after any such variety gains significant or centralized power in a polity, paramilitaries do not play a central role in said polity; accordingly, some kind of paramilitary participation is almost always a basic requirement of membership in nearly all fascist movements. Fascist paramilitaries have seen action in both peacetime and wartime. Most fascist paramilitaries' members wear political uniforms indicating their participation in, and allegiance to, a given paramilitary force. Many such organizations have chosen their groups' names on the basis of the colours of their uniforms. The first definite fascist paramilitary was the Blackshirts of Italian Fascism led by Benito Mussolini. While many of the Blackshirts were former members of the Arditi who had fought in World War I or the Fascio of the immediate post-war years, the most direct inspiration for the first fascist paramilitary was Giuseppe Garibaldi's Redshirts. A number of other fascist movements established paramilitaries modeled after the Italian original, most notably Nazism with its racialist view and its Sturmabteilung and Schutzstaffel. Others include: the Fascist Defence Force of the British Union of Fascists the Blueshirts under Eoin O'Duffy in Ireland the Gold Shirts in Mexico the Greenshirts in Brazil the Heimwehr in Austria, in the 1920s and 1930s the Legionary Greenshirts of the Iron Guard in Romania the Iron Wolf organization in Lithuania the Legião Portuguesa in Portugal Several fascist movements took their cue from the Nazi Sturmabteilung rather than the fascist Blackshirts, such as the Greyshirts in South Africa and the Silver Legion of America. Following the Axis invasion of Albania, the occupation forces formed the Albanian Militia under the Blackshirts. Several fascist paramilitaries were active in Romania including the Lăncieri. Some Nazi movements have also established paramilitary youth organizations similar to fascist ones such as the Hitler Youth or the Mocidade Portuguesa. A number of fascist paramilitaries have been deployed in conventional warfare. For example, in the later years of World War II the Italian Blackshirts developed into the Black Brigades. Likewise, the combat wing of the Nazi Schutzstaffel, the Waffen-SS, fought in many major battles of World War II. The Einsatzgruppen were death squads active in Eastern Europe which carried out the Holocaust and other political killings. In an act of desperation, the Nazis deployed remnants of the Hitler Youth and Sturmabteilung against the Red Army in the Battle of Berlin. At the eleventh hour of the war, the Nazis laid plans for a guerrilla resistance movement they called the Werwolf. However, these plans amounted to little more than a handful of sabotages and assassinations which were ineffective. Neo-Nazis have used the white power skinhead scene as a recruitment base for Neo-Nazi paramilitaries like Combat 18. Soccer hooliganism throughout Europe is another source of recruits. Some groups in the white supremacist wing of the militia movement in the United States can be seen as neo-Nazi paramilitaries. The differentiating factor between fascism and Nazism, is the racial aspect of Nazism called Nordicism, where as orthodox fascism was not known to have a viewpoint on race, Nazism believed that the Germanic race was superior. Both ideologies are considered hard-right. Both ideologies agreed on economics and nationalism, however they differed on race, and had different end goals.
The Scorpions (Serbian: Шкорпиони / Škorpioni) were a Serb paramilitary unit active during the Yugoslav Wars. The unit was involved in war crimes during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. After the wars, four members of the unit were found guilty of killing six prisoners during the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 and five were found guilty of killing fourteen civilians, mostly women and children, during the Podujevo massacre in March 1999.
This is a list of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel. It includes any government-sponsored soldiers used to further the domestic and foreign policies of their respective government. The term "country" is used in its most common use, in the sense of state which exercises sovereignty or has limited recognition.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
