The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement

Hill, Lance

ISBN 10: 0807857025 / ISBN 13: 9780807857021

Published by The University of North Carolina Press, 2006

very good cover. x library. Seller Inventory # 2603310011

Synopsis:

In 1964 a small group of African American men in Jonesboro, Louisiana, defied the nonviolence policy of the mainstream civil rights movement and formed an armed self-defense organization — the Deacons for Defense and Justice — to protect movement workers from vigilante and police violence. With their largest and most famous chapter at the center of a bloody campaign in the Ku Klux Klan stronghold of Bogalusa, Louisiana, the Deacons became a popular symbol of the growing frustration with Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent strategy and a rallying point for a militant working-class movement in the South.

Lance Hill offers the first detailed history of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who grew to several hundred members and twenty-one chapters in the Deep South and led some of the most successful local campaigns in the civil rights movement. In his analysis of this important yet long-overlooked organization, Hill challenges what he calls “the myth of nonviolence” — the idea that a united civil rights movement achieved its goals through nonviolent direct action led by middle-class and religious leaders. In contrast, Hill constructs a compelling historical narrative of a working-class armed self-defense movement that defied the entrenched nonviolent leadership and played a crucial role in compelling the federal government to neutralize the Klan and uphold civil rights and liberties.

About the Author: Lance Hill is adjunct professor of history at Tulane University. Contact the author by email at lhill@tulane.edu.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance ...
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication Date: 2006
Binding: paperback
Condition: Interior is excellent.