The Deacons for Defense and Justice were an armed African American civil rights organization in the U.S. Southern states. Charles Sims founded the group in Jonesboro, Louisiana on July 10, 1964 to protect civil rights workers against the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. A.Z. Young and Robert Hicks founded another chapter in Bogalusa, Louisiana.

The Deacons were African Americans and most of them were war veterans with combat experience from the Korean War and World War II. In some cases, they had a symbiotic relationship with other civil rights groups that advocated and practiced non-violence: the willingness of the Deacons to provide low-key armed guards facilitated the ability of groups such as the NAACP and CORE to stay, at least formally, within their own parameters of non-violence. Nonetheless, their willingness to respond to violence with violence, lead to tension between the Deacons and the nonviolent civil rights workers whom they sought to protect. Moreover, the tactics of the Deacons attracted the attention and concern of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which ordered an investigation of the group. However, with the advent of the militant Black Power Movement, the involvement of the Deacons in the civil rights movement declined, with the presence of the Deacons all but vanishing by 1968.

References

"By Any Means Necessary", Mike Marqusee, The Nation, July 5, 2004, p.54-56. A review of Lance Hill's book (see Further reading).

Further reading

The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, Lance Hill, Univ. of North Carolina Press (2004, ISBN 0807828475)

External links

• http://www.africanaonline.com/orga_deacons_for_defense.htm
• "Niggers Ain't Gonna Run This Town":
• Deacons for Defense (2003) entry from the Internet Movie Database

See also

• Robert F. Williams