Description“Strapped: A Historical Analysis of Black Women and Armed Resistance, 1959-1979” is an intellectual and cultural study that broadens our understanding of the Black freedom movement by analyzing Black women who engaged in armed resistance from 1959 to 1979. I argue Black women increasingly embraced the tactic of armed resistance as a tool to achieve full freedom in post-World War II America. This work is significant because it offers a departure from previous scholars who have overwhelmingly assumed that armed resistance was the primary domain of Black men including Tim Tyson and Lance Hill. My doctoral project offers a different interpretation by separating armed self-defense from masculinity. I draw from and build on the histories of Black women, gender theories, and social movement scholarship to show that armed resistance was prevalent among Black women. Using a vast array of primary source materials such as newspapers, interviews, organizational documents, and government surveillance records, I analyze how the government's response to citizens' demands for civil and human rights shaped the tactics Black women employed, including armed resistance. I trace the evolution of the philosophy of armed resistance in the mid-twentieth century.