The Armed Civil Rights Defenders
The Civil Rights Movement is known for nonviolent civil disobedience. Less known is that it also had guys with guns, ready to use them against violent racists. By the time the movement began in the 1950s, the KKK had long preyed upon African Americans with impunity. Close cooperation between the Klan and law enforcement was pervasive. Southern cops frequently denied civil rights activists police protection, and sometimes cooperated with the KKK to murder them.
In 1964, for example, police in Philadelphia, Mississippi, detained three civil workers, then coordinated with the Klan to lynch them. Such violence prompted many activists to arm themselves. Dr. Martin Luther King’s home had so many firearms, that visitors compared it to an arsenal. Police demonstrated that black lives did not matter, so armed self-defense black groups emerged. Most notable among them were the Deacons for Defense and Justice.
“The Freedom Summer” of 1964 saw widespread volunteer efforts to register black voters in the South. One organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) set up a Freedom House as a base for volunteers in Jonesboro, Louisiana. In response, the KKK went on a terror spree, attacked volunteers and blacks, burned five black churches, a Baptist center, and a Masonic lodge.
Local black WWII and Korean War veterans founded a self-defense group to protect civil rights workers and their families, and the black community in general. It was led by Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) activist and an ordained minister, and Earnest “Chilly Willy” Thomas. Because of the members’ religiosity – most were practicing Christians who sought to serve their community in a Christian manner – the group was named the Deacons for Defense and Justice.
