"Deacons For Defense" (1964-1967)

Organized in July 1964 in Jonesboro Louisiana,the Deacons for Defense was an armed African American armed self-Defense group charged with protecting local black communities and civil rights volunteers,especially those working for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).After observing a Ku Klux Klan parade accompanied by the local police march through Jonesboro's black neighborhoods,about a dozen residents bandided together to form the Deacons.The group admitted men over the age of twenty-one who could supply their own weapons.Yet,the Deacons,were not nearly as radical as the media protrayed them to be.In a 1965,interview,the vice president of the Deacons,Charles R.Sims, expressed his support of nonviolence and peaceful negootiations "providing the police do their job."For the most part,the Deacons saw their role as complementary to that of other civil rights organizations,particularly the local CORE field-workers who benefited from the protection the Deacons provided.In 1964,African-Americans in Bogulasa,Louisiana,founded the Deacons'second chapter,when the police released from custody a group of six of six local whites who had beaten two civil rights workers.Charles R. Sims,the president of the Bogulasa Deacons,claimed that,at its height,the organization consisted of fifty-three local chapters with thousands of members was larger.Rather than a large membership,the organization relied upon public posturing,the fears,of local whites, and the threat of black violence.In addition to protecting local civil rights activists,the Deacons' most public campaign was to provide armed security for James Meredith's 1966 March  Against Fear.After James was shot shortyly into his march across Mississippi,a colation of civil rights activists,including Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the younger,more radical Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commitee (SNCC),continued James journey.The presence of armed guards was frowned upon by Martin,the Deacons,were allowed to protect the marchers in an effort to reduce violence and show organizational unity.Ironically,.the James Meredith march also signaled the Deacons' demise.Not nearly as radical as the Black Power movement that emerged from the march, the Deacons for Defense faded into the civil rights woodwork.By 1967,the organization was defunct.Instead of creating guerrilla warfare and armed counterinsurgency actions that many whites had feared, the Deacons,quietly,slipped out of existence.