Surveying the landscape in the summer of 1892, Ida B. Wells advised, that “the Winchester rifle deserved a place of honor in every Black home.” This was no empty rhetorical jab. She was advancing a considered personal security policy and specifically referencing two recent episodes where armed Blacks saved their neighbors from lynch mobs.
By the way, Wells was a Republican, as was Harriet Tubman. After all, Republicans brought emancipation; Democrats insisted on the maintenance of slavery.