The Deacons for Defense - Annotated by Lance Hill (Paperback)

About the Book

Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement

Book 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.

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.

Review Quotes

"An engrossing, well-written study."
-- "Journal of American Studies"

"An engaging writer, Hill has written a graceful book that fills an important gap in civil rights scholarship."
"Florida Historical Quarterly"

"Hill has written a masterful account of a vital, understudied organization. This will undoubtedly be "the" book on the Deacons for a long time."
"The Journal of Southern History"

"Hill's ground-breaking, historical narrative adds not only to Southern historiography, but to that of the United States as well."
"Louisiana History"

"This is a significant book."
"The North Carolina Historical Review"

"This well-argued revisionist text should spur useful debate and encourage others to recast traditional civil rights-era narratives."
"The Journal of American History"