Deacons for Defense and Justice" which first sprang up in Jonesboro, Louisiana. Jonesboro is a small town of some 4,000 inhabitants, about one-third of them Negroes. The people of Jonesboro own guns as do most rural Southerners, both black and white, but this fact has taken on new and untraditional expressions over the past year.
The parentage of the Deacons was -the long, bitter history of. black-white relations in the United States. The midwife that assisted in bringing the Deacons into the world was the civil-rights campaign of the summer of 1964, Young field workers of the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE] came to Jonesboro last summer. They were threatened by some local white youths and within minutes word spread through the Negro community. In very short order dozens of Negroes appeared carrying guns to defend the civil-rights workers. It was decided at a later meeting to organize a self-defense group and to let the white community know that they were prepared to protect the lives of Negroes and civil-rights workers.
Although not a shot was fired for many months, the mere existence of the Deacons had a salutary effect. On:several occasions, for example, they have informed county law-enforcement officers that they were interested in the treatment given Negroes who had been arrested for minor law violations, The authorities were uncommonly careful about how they treated these Negro prisoners -- unusual in the South where Negroes are beaten and even killed by law-enforcement officials.
Another example of the powerful effect of the Deacons! defensive tactics involved a 17-year-old Negro who had been accused of kissing a white girl against her will. While a white posse hunted for the youth, the Deacons found him and took him into protective custody. The white girl later changed her story about the unwilling kiss. One member of the Deacons told a New York Times reporter, "If it hadn't been for this club, doubtless this boy would have been lynched."
The Deacons carefully explain that they are not a terrorist organization; they are a disciplined self-defense formation. Their aim is to protect Negroes and civil-rights workers who have not been protected to date by the established law-enforcement agencies.
They are very efficient protectors. Using citizens-band radios they patrol the Negro neighborhood and every white-driven car that enters is closely watched. : Earnest Thomas, 32-year-old fulltime organizer for the Deacons, explained, “Usually, when they knew
they were under surveillance, they'd just go on through and not stop.' In this manner the Deacons! patrols have ended cross-burnings and harassments by whitesin the Negro community.
It wasn't until April 10 (almost a year after the formation of the Deacons) that shots were exchanged between whites and Negroes, Elmo Jacobs, 38-year-old Jonesboro Negro, was driving a car full of white civil-rights volunteers from the University of Kansas. A group of white teenagers shot into. the car and Jacobs fired back, He and Oretha Castle, a field secretary for:CORE, later counted 14 bullet holes in Jacobs! car.
From its fairly modest beginnings in Jonesboro, the Deacons have spread out into other Lousiana towns and other southern states, Although membership figures are not given out, it is estimated that from 5,000 to 15,000 Negroes are organized in about 50 to 55 chapters in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama,
The Bogalusa chapter has been receiving national attention because of the many racial explosions that have been taking place in that Louisiana town. Bogalusa is a lumber-mill town of about 27,000 persons, It is located some 160 miles from Jonesboro. Because of its closeness to the Mississippi border, many of Bogalusa'ts workers come from Mississippi. Earlier this year James Farmer, national leader of CORE, stated that Bogalusa would be a major target of his organization,
At the beginning of April the CORE-inspired Bogalusa Civic and Voters League launched a drive-for fuller voting rights and employment opportunities. The situation in the town was packed with social dynamite: the Ku Klux Klan had been revived in 1963 and during the course of the civil-rights campaign was meeting and passing out leaflets and threats; the mayor, Jesse Cutrer, was considered a racial moderate but as soon as a crisis loomed he hurriedly appealed to Negroes to halt demonstrations, to the governor to send state troops and to racists to avoid "another Selma"; the Bogalusa Voters League persisted in attempts to upgrade Negro life in the city; the Deacons were on the scene. .
~The head . of the , Bogalusa Deacons is Charles Sims who spent four years in the United States army as a technical sergeant in charge of arms instruction -- good training ground for a real fight to protect and extend freedom!
"T never had a chance to fight for freedom before," Sims told a Los Angeles television audience. "Now I want a whole lot of freedom. Through the civil-rights movement, with the Deacons! help, we. can get it."
The Deacons have been active in the Bogalusa civil-rights campaign and they have been needed because: the racists have been attacking demonstrators and civil-rights activists throughout ‘the.
2] a
campaign. On April 8, for example, whites attacked the residence of Robert Hicks, member of the Deacons and vice-president of the Bogalusa Voters League. Hicks was providing housing for CORE field workers. A brick was thrown from a car driving past the Hicks! home}; ‘the brick shattered the rear window of a station wagon parked in the yard, Shots were fired from the Hicks! house at ‘the fleeing car; the occupants of the car retaliated. Then a second’ group of cars sped’ past the house but by this time a dozen Deacons, armed with shotguns and rifles, were on the scene and responded to this second attack.
Other instances of racist violence occurred during May when crowds of whites tried to chase Negroes out of a park the Negroes were trying to integrate and during June when whites repeatedly beat up Negro pickets, On June 2 a Negro deputy sheriff was killed and. his companion deputy wounded. Police arrested a white man, Ernis McElveen, who they claim shot the deputies as he drove past them in his truck.
On July 8 a Negro. shot and seriously wounded a white man who had attacked him during a civil-rights march. The Negro, Henry Austin, told television newsmen that he was a Deacon, The white man, Alton Crowe, had rushed up to Austin and a Negro companion swinging ~his fists. Don Lee Keith, a reporter from the New Orleans Times- Picayune, said he saw the white man attack the Negroes and then he heard two shots. The white walked away, stumbled and fell. He was taken to a hospital and the police immediately arrested the two Negroes and took them to an unidentified jail. Austin,- who had a 58-caliber pistol, told police that he had shot Crowe. CORE officials called the shooting self-defense,
_ .It is apparent from the above material that CORE and the Deacons have maintained a sympathetic and close working relationship. The birth of the Deacons, it was noted, was precipitated by the need to defend CORE field workers. The Deacons have continued to protect CORE activisits in Jonesboro and Bogalusa and this is publicly acknowledged by both groups. Richard Haley, southern director of CORE, explained, "The Deacons made the difference between safety and bad health last summer for CORE workers in Jonesboro." Sims, head of the Bogalusa Deacons has said, "If those three civil-rights work= ers who were killed in Mississippi last’ year had been in Bogalusa, nothing would have happened to them.,'
This working relationship between CORE and the Deacons has been criticized by other civil-rights leaders and organizations, Clarence Laws, Southwest regional director. of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], stated:
“Wwe don't want to see such groups as the Deacons spread but we are afraid they will unless legitimate. law enforcement agencies, from federal to local level, start giving adequate protection to all citizens. —
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., severely attacked CORE's rela-
tionship with the Deacons. ,bhe line between "aggressive and defen-' sive violence is very slim," said King. "We can't win our struggle with violence and to cloak’ it under the name of defensive violence
really is no answer, a
"The Negro must have allies to win his struggle for equality, " King continued, "and our allies will not surround a violent movement. What protects us from the Klan is to expose its brutality. We can't outshoot the Klan. We would only alienate our allies and lose sympathy for our cause."
King and his lieutenants have been frantically preaching against self-defense moves within the Negro community -- but the plain facts of life and death in a racist society are very potent. Although CORE is officially pledged to a philosophy of nonviolence, the events: of the last year have impelled them to seek and support the work of the Deacons and the whole concept of self-defense,
James Farmer, answering King's attack, stated: "CORE is in the rights business and the Deacons are in the protecting business, I don't believe in electric chairs, because that is the society retaliating violently, but I do believe in the personal right to self.defense and can only work and hope that that right is nigialy disciplined through organizations such as the Deacons."
Farmer reiterated’ that "CORE is and will remain a nonviolent organization." He insisted that nonviolence must still be the rule inside demonstrations, i.e., civil-rights demonstrators must accept any violence from whites without striking back or defending themselves. In the next breath, however, Farmer states, "But I believe that when threatened any man has the right to protect his life. ..HI can't find. fault with a man for exercising his constitutional rights to protect his home, with weapons if necessary."
There are some obvious contradictions in what CORE preaches and what it practices -- contradictions brought about by the force-' ful reality of the Freedom Now struggle. The organization of the Deacons and the controversy between CORE and King are indicative of the seething creativity of the Negro masses who set about to solve their problems without benefit of approval from the capitalistchosen Negro leaders and without regard to the tender feelings of "allies" who would be horrified because black men exercise rights proclaimed in the Constitution of the United States.
The passing of civil-rights legislation and the appointment of Negroes to high offices and the token integration of bus stations and restaurants and schools has not lessened the need for self-defense against racist terror. The continued violence against black freedom fighters and their white allies makes it increasingly imperative to continue and spread groups such as the Deacons. Negroes recognize this need and they are dragging their "leaders" along with them on this question. That is why James Farmer can write in an article for
the Harlem weekly, The Amsterdam News:
"Negroes in this nation are down.to about their last ounce of patience. For all the hoopla and the speechmaking and legislation, very little has changed in the reality of Negro life in this country --.rats still bite kids and the citizens of Bogalusa still don't have the vote...And if violence is on the horizon, I would certaialy prefer to see it channeled into a defense discipline."
The last words on this matter properly come from spokesmen for the Deacons for Defense and Justice. “Martin Luther King and I have never seen eye to eye, "says Charles Sims, head of the Bogalusa Deacons. "He has never been to Bogalusa. ‘If we didn't have the Deacons here there is no telling how many killings there would have been.
“We stand guard here in the Negro ‘quarter, " Sims continued. "We are the defensive team. We will never go on the offensive. But if the Klan or anybody else comes in here to hit us, I guarantee they will get hit back. "
Sims and Robert Hicks, vice-president of the Bogalusa Voters League, were in Detroit on August 22 in order to speak at a Freedom Dinner sponsored by the Group on Advanced Leadership [GOAL]. The dinner was-organized to publicize the work of the Deacons and the League and to secure financial contributions .so that they could continue their work in the South. During his talk Hicks pointed out the Similarities in the struggles in Bogalusa and Detroit:
"Qur main goal is freedom. I don't mean token freedom, The people in.Bogalusa want the whole hog, hair and all!...We'tre trying to get jobs, a police review board ~- same as you are trying to get here,"
In a personal interview with this writer, Hicks and Sims described other support gained from the North. “on the West Coast, CORE initiated the San Francisco "Concern for Bogalusa." Members of this group have been picketing and sitting-in at the home offices of the Crown-Zellerbach Corp. whose paper mill and container factory provides the main employment in the Bogalusa area. The pickets, echoing the demands of the Bogalusa Negroes, are demanding that Crown-Zellerbach establish fair promotion policies for Negroes and place black men in better jobs. On the East Coast there is the "Friends of the Deacons" in Boston which provides moral and financial support.
The August 21 Michigan Chronicle reported that residents of Austin, Texas, have organized the "Committee to Aid the Deacons" in order to publicize Deacons! activities, win favorable public opinion and raise money. Mark Klein, spokesman for the Texas group, stated:
“Any civil-rights supporter who is tired of reading about bomb--
ings, beatings and murders should be heartened to learn about the Deacons. Racist terrorism has stopped where the Deacons have organized. But they need our help."
The Deacons need the help of all | people concerned with freedom now -= and all people struggling for freedom need the help of the Deacons. As was frequently commented during the Freedom Dinner in Detroit: "We could use some Deacons here!"