Moderate Violence In The Civil Rights Movement
In ‘The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement’, Lance Hill argues that militant armed self defense was “the primary source of [the moderate leaders'] negotiating power.” Once the context is set, the following article will mainly consist of quotes and snippets that I deemed interesting to highlight. To complement, I will then also quote Akinyele Omowale Umoja's ‘We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement’ which similarly argues that “armed resistance was critical to the efficacy of the southern freedom struggle and the dismantling of segregation and Black disenfranchisement.” Please consider that I only mean to briefly present the Deacons and some lesser-known elements articulating the civil rights movement's “radical flank”.
Tertium Quid
In the 1960s, the non-violent strategy required the cooperation of the federal government to protect civil rights activists against local police and vigilante violence. This non-violent strategy sought to reassure Whites in the North as it only threatened the caste system in the South, and to secure their support — or at least their non-opposition. Although some of their tactics were illegal, it was incapable to force the State to change and therefore won only few gains.
However, the Watts rebellion then established a looming threat of Black retaliatory violence. The Deacons thus “offer[ed] a middle path, tertium quid, that attracted people who doubted the effectiveness of nonviolence but had no taste for riotous behaviour (on more than one occasion the Deacons played a role in quelling the riots).” (all emphases are mine)
Breaking with “the tradition of self-defense groups remaining anonymous and informal”, the Deacons were a “broad self defense organization in the Deep South” which “had originated, in part, as a police squad” in Louisiana. Its “total national membership was approximately 300” and it was composed of “mature, sober and industrious men, deeply religious and well respected in the community”, “economically independent of the white power structure”, “who wanted nothing more than equality and justice within the framework of the traditional American dream.”
A Bullet For The Ballot
So in July 8, 1965 “when Deacon Henry Austin shot Alton Crowe in defense of a lawful civil rights march”, “[i]t was the first time in the modern civil rights struggle that a black organization had used lethal force to protect civil rights marchers. The incident ultimately helped convince the federal government to change its civil rights legal strategy in the South. The shooting signaled that blacks were prepared to use deadly force if Washington failed to protect their constitutional right of free speech.” “After years of appeasing white supremacists — a policy that led to a decade of unmitigated terrorism, marked by a score of assassinations and thousands of vicious beatings and imprisonments — it finally took the blood of one white man to change the course of history.”
However, “[i]n the days following the Crowe shooting, young blacks in Bogalusa began to independantly retaliate against white harrassment”. “The Deacons were wary of the new fighting spirit (...) forcing [Deacons leader] Charles Sims to berate youg militants for endengering the movement.” Sims had even initially denied that Austin was a Deacon “hoping to distance the Voters League and the Deacons from the shooting.”
And already in Spring 1965 when the Bogalusa Deacons finally “forced city officials and business leaders to agree to abolish all segregation laws, provide equal protection under the law for protesters, integrate city government and police, and carry out physical improvements in the black neighborhoods” and “successfully compel the federal government to intervene against the Klan and official intransigence”, they were “finding themselves cast as moderates in the rapidly radicalizing movement” both because “a teenage element was pushing for bigger demonstrations” and again “with the Watts riot in Los Angeles fresh in people’s minds”.
Gun Rights As Civil Rights
While the question of the exercise of the right to bear arms was controversial inside the civil rights movement, this campaign had another striking moment when “[o]n 14 July [Bogalusa] Mayor Cutrer announced that the city had drafted an ordinance to confiscate guns in the event of an emergency. The Voters League responded to the challenge by promptly organizing a march on Wednesday, 14 July, to protest the threatened confiscation. It was a protest that Martin Luther King or any other civil rights leader would have found unimaginable: a nonviolent march demanding the right to armed self-defense.”
Besides, when they tried to expand in the North, “their self-defense rethoric paled by comparison to the revolutionary fervor of theirs hosts in Detroit”. Indeed, “[t]he Deacons’ emphasis on the right of self-defense was both their strength and their weakness. While it provided credibility in the South, where the foe was vigilante violence, it failed in the North, where racial domination and violence were cloaked in the legitimacy of state authority. The Deacons’ program rested on a belief in constitutional rights (obedience to federal law and authority) rather than revolutionary rights (the right to disobey law and authority).”
The Natchez Model
“The Natchez model, combining economic boycotts with paramilitary defense and the potential for retaliation, proved more effective in winning concessions and social and cultural change on the local level than nonviolent direct action or voter registration campaigns depending on federal protection” as Akinyele Omowale Umoja describes in ‘We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement’.
Regarding the Deacons, “the Natchez chapter maintained their independence from the Louisiana deacons” which “was not anomalous; typically, most chapters regarded themselves as an autonomous local organization within a loose federation.”
The Deaconesses
Hill notes that “[t]he Deacons were a male-exclusive organization, but they did not, for the most part, attempt to relegate their wives to the domestic sphere. Indeed, many Deacons' wives and children were politically active, and there were women auxiliaries for the Deacons in both Jonesboro and Bogalusa, though their role is unclear.”
Outside of reportedly anecdotal armed confrontations, both Hill and Umoja confirm through different source that one clear role these ‘Deaconesses’ (as I call them) took related to coercive counter-intelligence measures to ensure boycott enforcement. They respectively state:
“Because of their regular contact with whites, black domestic workers sometimes came under suspicion. In these cases, the Deacons encouraged women members of the NAACP to take measures against informants” “(...) they would go catch them and beat them up,””
“The Movement suspected that certain Black domestics were providing, either voluntarily or through coercion, information to the White power structure. A team of NAACP women war organized to physically discipline the suspected informants.”
Da Spirit of The Deacons
The Deacons actually contrast with another group dedicated to enforce the economic boycott declared by the NAACP in Natchez.
Umoja asserts on one hand that “[i]t was in Hattiesburg that the enforcer squad received its name “Da Spirit.” James Nix, Hattiesburg organizer of “Da Spirit,” stated that “a spirit is someting you don't see. This is the reason for it.”” while Hill on the other writes “[i]n most cases the “spirit” assumed the form of a brick flying through the window”.
Note that Hill scarequotes, does not capitalize, does not recognize ‘spirit’ “(sometimes known in Belzoni as “The Black Spirits”)” as a proper noun, as an organization of its own, and considers that “[t]his kind of action would be done as individuals, not formally as the Deacons.”
Umoja however distinguishes the two groups in their tactics, and social makeup. “The enforcer squad tended to utilize working-class males in their late teens to early twenties. As opposed to the older Deacons, the recruits of the enforcer squad tended to be less stable and from the more volatile elements of the community.”
Rudy Shields
I would finally like to introduce Rudolph Arthur Shields, a Koren war veteran and prominent ‘Spirit’ organizer in Natchez who according to Umoja went on to “organize economic boycotts in several Mississippi communities, including Yazoo County, Belzoni, West Point, and Indialona. In each of these communities Shields would apply the Natchez model” which “proved to be an effective disruptive campaign that forced White elites to negotiate with segregated Black communities” and eliminate the “de jure segregation of Mississippi.”
Shields later became “an active participant in [Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa (PG-RNA)] activities in Mississippi from 1971 to 1975.” “He also began to support African Liberation Movements in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and identified with the growing Pan-Africanist trend in the Black Power Movement.
Books I read
‘The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement’ by Lance Hill
https://archive.org/details/deaconsfordefens00hill_0
‘We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement’ by Akinyele Omowale Umoja
Books I probably should have read
‘The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights’ by Simon Wendt
https://archive.org/details/spiritshotgunarm0000wend
‘Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era’ by Christopher B. Strain