From The Federalist:

By the first post–Civil War election in 1868, some southern blacks had begun to arm themselves. In one incident in Tennessee, by brandishing his gun a black man fought off a mob of terrorizing Klansmen who dragged him from his house. “I prevented [one of them] by my pistol, which I cocked, and he jumped back,” the man explained. “I told them I would hurt them if they got away. They did not burn nor steal anything, nor hurt me.”