Black Shirt is a term for the armed squads who supported Benito Mussolini’s Fascist movement in Italy. They received this informal name because they wore black shirts as part of their uniforms. Most Black Shirts were young, middle-class Italian men who had fought in World War I (1914-1918). Armed with guns, knives, and clubs, they terrorized northern Italy from 1920 to 1922. They attacked socialists, Communists, labor unions, and strikers. In October 1922, the Black Shirts marched on Rome and forced King Victor Emmanuel III to appoint Mussolini prime minister of Italy. In 1923, Mussolini dissolved the Black Shirts and established the Voluntary Militia for National Security, which absorbed most former Black Shirts. 
