The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement
400
The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement
400eBook
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Overview
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. 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 to protect movement workers from vigilante and police violence. 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. He 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 Ku Klux Klan and uphold civil rights and liberties.—>
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780807863602 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The University of North Carolina Press |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2005 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Sales rank: | 821,679 |
| Lexile: | 1530L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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What People are Saying About This
An engrossing, well-written study.—Journal of American Studies
Grapples with a topic of great importance. . . . Challenges historians to continue to rethink black freedom movements in relationship to gender and manhood; the divergent strategies of civil rights organizations; the role of indigenous working-class blacks; the importance of our collective memory or amnesia as well as how we choose to remember those civil rights movements themselves.—Journal of Social History
[A] ground-breaking, historical narrative. . . . [Hill's] scholarly reconstruction adds not only to Southern historiography, but to that of the United States as well.—Louisiana History
Hill has written a bold and provocative book challenging the prevailing civil rights narrative. . . . This reviewer recommends this book highly and welcomes the debate it will generate.—Historian
The book both demands and rewards contemplative consideration of its author's views on the differences between cultural and political resistance, on the degree to which nonviolence and black power shared core values and goals, and on the historical continuity of an African American radical tradition. This well-argued revisionist text should spur useful debate and encourage others to recast traditional civil rights-era narratives.—The Journal of American History
Hill's ground-breaking, historical narrative is exhaustively researched. . . . His scholarly reconstruction adds not only to Southern historiography, but to that of the United States as well.—Louisiana History
Hill has written a masterful account of a vital, understudied organization. This will undoubtedly be the book on the Deacons for a long time, and it addresses issues relevant not simply to movement scholarship but also to southern history, African American history, and American history more generally. Hill reminds us that King's fateful choice to preach nonviolence was just that—a choice that had consequences for both the man and the movement and that continues to shape American race relations.—Journal of Southern History
This is a significant book. Hill tells a compelling story of an important organization at a critical juncture of the Freedom movement. . . . Hill raises important questions for his study and others that will follow. This is not a timid book, and Hill deserves considerable credit for venturing into territory where the historiography is still shifting and unsettled. He is not afraid to take on big questions, nor important analyses. His emphasis on the class implications and the timeliness of the self-defense strategy at this stage of the movement seem especially vital.—The North Carolina Historical Review
Hill's history of the Deacons for Defense and Justice is a timely addition to the literature on the African American freedom struggle in the South. Hill joins the ranks of those historians . . . who have begun to uncover the ways that the black community consistently espoused and frequently exercised the right to defend self, family, and property, even in the midst of a civil rights campaign that was publicly committed to nonviolent direct action tactics. . . . An engaging writer with a nice sense of drama and a good ear for the telling anecdote, [Hill's] depiction of the Movement in Bogalusa is particularly compelling. . . . Hill has written a graceful book that fills an important gap in civil rights scholarship.—Florida Historical Quarterly
[Hill's] thorough and original history of the Deacons for Defense and Justice . . . is more than an impressive account of a now-obscure group that left no written records. The Deacons for Defense is also a forceful . . . challenge to the shelfful of civil rights histories that tell a story in which nonviolence was indeed an essential and defining quality of the Southern movement's success. . . . An important corrective to popular simplifications. . . . Highly valuable.—David J. Garrow, Chicago Tribune