Part Two: The Armed Nonviolent Civil Rights Movement

is the one and only Jewa Minique. Well, how are you doing on this day of the week That is totally a different day of the week and not just the same day that we recorded the previous It is not still gray out, and then I guess that it's colder because it's a week later into December, and I will say I'm good, still bundled up in these sweaters and under blankets, just making it through the winter time. Excellent, excellent.

And our producer Sophie is out this week because she's on a top secret undercover mission into a land of evil. But our here, Ian is now our producer, Ian, how are you. I'm doing good, Margaret, I'm just honored to be on Mike. I'm just happy to be here. You know, it's you know, sometimes people don't like to know how the sausage is made, but here I am ruining this price.

And our audio engineers, of course, Ian, and our theme music was done for the show by the wonderful musician on Woman, which sometimes people must hear me as saying a woman, but no it is not. I mean, yes, it is a woman, but her name is on Woman, and you can find her music wherever you listen to music. I don't know whatever. So this is part two of a two part series on the armed civil rights movement of the nineteen sixty South, and it probably won't make

much sense if you don't listen to part one. I would never tell you what to do, dear listener, but you might want to consider listening to part one before part two if you haven't done that yet. Where we last left our heroes, they were organizers, just disaggregating places and registering voters. But just as heroic were the armed black families that kept guard over them as they slept and drove back klansmen with rifles and shotguns and revolvers

and apparently molotovs. And some of these people are about to get organized, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. You're excited, you ready, I'm thrilled. That is like a boom moment for me, Like, let's hear about the start

of organization. Yeah. The first organized group of black defenders of the civil rights movement that I was able to find was paradoxically under the name the N Double A c P. Amazing yeah, um, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People who show up sometimes on this show, not just this episode, but other shows, because a ton of RAT people have done work with the NA Double a CP over the years. But during the Civil rights era they were not known as one of the more

radical organizations. They still did. Really not trying to say anything negative about them here, but like you know, they're not known as like in the way that Snick and Corps were, as like pushing the envelope, right, but a chapter of them in Monroe, North Carolina went rogue. Yeah, go on, go on, all right, So you can trace this back to there was a black vet named Benny Montgomery, UM who came home from World War Two. He does steal plate in his skull because he got wounded while

you know, stopping the fucking Nazis. His white employer back in North Carolina treated him like ship I presume was a racist based on everything else that happened in this whole thing. They got into an argument and Benny slid his boss's throat in the resulting fight, So I don't know. He stopped the Nazis and he killed a racist white boss. I've got no problem with Benny Montgomery so far. Benny's really aces for me. It sounds like a hero to the state of North Carolina did not find Benny to

be a hero for this particular action, and they executed him. Um, of course it should have been the end of it. And it was like God and the way it's sometimes written about it presents us if it's like this, like great justice because he didn't get lynched like they the clan tried to before he was executed. They tried to um drag him out of the jail. But it's like, but justice prevailed and he wasn't lynched. He was instead

just as lynch by the state instead whatever. Like yeah, okay, people, that is a wild thing that continues to happen today. We can look at Britney Griner's case where people are like, well, she did a crime, so now she has to go to jail. And I just if you hear people in your circle, imagine if he lils into this podcast. You hopefully don't have those thoughts. But if you, you know, are surrounded by people who are like that, you know,

maybe just remind them we don't necessarily need prisons. Yeah, I mean, just imagine a world where we don't have to lock up people for petty fucking crimes like having very small amounts of weed. It's ridiculous, ridiculous. So so Benny, yeah, gets executed. This should have been the end of it. But the clan they're salty that they They're also like, this is grave injustice that the state is the one who killed him instead of us. Um, okay, so they

try to lynch his dead body. Oh my god. They tell the funeral home director that if they don't hand the body over to them, they'll kill him. Um, this doesn't have spoiler, This doesn't happen. That clan doesn't get their way. A bunch of Black Vets met up at a barber shop and they were like, no, we we can't let that happen. So almost forty Vets with their

service rifles stood guard outside the funeral home. The clan like drove by, ready to like go be evil, and they took one look at the service rifles, which included Benny's own rifle, which I think is yeah, and the clan just noped out of there. They were like, we're gone, goodbye, plan horrible people Westborough back is asked bitches like almost like every time they face any kind of opposition, they're just like, oh wait, never mind, they can fight back.

Oh sorry, yeah, suddenly uninterested, like I'm sure there's counter examples, but I haven't found them yet. Um never find them, I know. So the local Double A CP in Monroe had started out like a lot of n Double A CP chapters, a sort of a social club for middle class black folks. But in the nineteen fifties, the clan started fucking with them in Monroe, and most of the Double A CP members left the organization because they're like, oh this this is hard and scary. But a few

of them remained. Um, and two of them remained were vets, and they immediately started recruiting the working class to the Double A CP. And they did something that no other U A CP was doing. And this one's kind of funny. They formed a chapter of the n r A. Officially, they like wrote the n r A and we're like, we would like to form a chapter called the Monroe Rifle Club or the Blackguards as they called themselves or

get called. What is it? The only story I've found so far at any of my research where the n r A affiliated people did anything cool, but Wow, m are allowed you to go back and look at your history because you're not out here defending black people using stand their ground, you know, like the girls who are being trafficked and then shoot their abusers, you know, maybe

get back into your old hat. Amazing. Yeah, No, totally, And I think there's like within the sort of a political gun culture, there are people who are like, oh, it's cool when people fight against depression, you know, but they're not clearly the dominant arc of the n r A or gun culture in the United States. So you now have the Blackguards. In ninety seven in Monroe, North Carolina, a kid drowned in the unsafe swimming holes that the local black kids were forced to use because the pool

was segregated. So the vice president of the Double A CP was a guy named Dr Perry. He was one of the kind of holdovers from when it was middle class, but he was one of the ones. Maybe he rules and he decides to stay to sit in at the white only pool, and he organizes with a bunch of kids who go and like wait in um in their swim trunks and towels, like waiting to be let into

the pool. And of course they're not that into the pool. Um. And the fucking bravery of those kids, Like it's hard to wrap my head around how brave those kids are to go stand there and there swim trunks and towels. This is and this is three years before the sid In movement. Yeah, that's uh, kids are I feel like kids are aware but naive about end results, right, and so they have this idea of like especially I think

you know, as a black kid for my generation. I can't speak on this generation too much, but like the idea of these are your rights and you should be allowed allowed access to them is the thing that we were taught a lot, and so you know, we would do bold ass things as an adult you know I may not do. And so can you can you tell me any of those legally good stories? Um so, And I tell you that story I will say in broad in broad strokes, when properly eight was happening and we

were marching a lot. This is like my early college years. Uh, you know, there may have been some verbal harassments against some armed government officials as we were moving through the streets that you know today I would not I would definitely not do. But we were angry, and we were young, and we were absolutely willing to tell people about themselves and what they should do with her. Granted, not as brave as these kids, because we were surrounded. There are

thousands of us in the street. Um. I think it's incredibly brave to be in the fifties standing outside of pool. Yeah, you know, without it sounds like any weapons are just and there's one trumps and towels. It's amazing, an amazing decision they made. Yeah, and I don't have any record of anything bad happening to them as a result of it. Um. And so the clan they fucking hate Dr Perry. They already didn't like him vice President a CP. He's black

and middle class and educated. He's throwing down with the working class. He wasn't scared of them. And also he was Catholic, and the clan has this whole thing against the Catholics. Wow, that is a full plate of things that the k k K is not about. No, no, not at all. So they the clan got together their show of force on October five seven. They had a big old rally with a big old cross burning, and then they drove ton our motorcade to Dr Perry's house.

They were going to stop Dr Perry once and for all, but um Dr Perry and the Blackguards they didn't scare and they knew the Clan was coming, and they were they were vets. They're seeing combat before. Okay, so they instead of a scared middle class doctor hiding in his house, they found sand bag fortifications with automatic weapons. Oh hell yeah, like action. They wanted all the smoke. I love it. Yeah, And so the clan shows up and they start shooting.

The Clan start shooting at the sand bag fortifications because they're not known for their intelligence. The Blackguard fire back, and they intentionally fire into the ground because they they it was a defensive gesture, right, and it was meant to scare the clan off, and it worked. The Clan stopped their raids, not just on Dr Perry, but just

in the area. Just the Clan's just done. The next day, the city council bans plan motor kids because they're like, this is we can't have this this will go bad. I love this news. This is a wonderful. That's one thing about the clan. They're consistent and I know because I mean, what is racism, But this ideology of fear, it's this, I want to be in charge all the time of everyone, and everyone has to do what I say,

and I'm afraid that that will change. It's like a perceived threat to your power, your established you know, societal standing, and that scares the ship out of people. It's also it's weird, irrational. I want to stress that word, irrational, fear that if there's equity, black people will try to turn the tables and enslave white people, which is a thing we hear them talk about all the damn time. And it's just like, I just want y'all to know

that slavery sounds hard, like for both people. It's exhausting. I'm not trying to force people to stay or brutalize their body like nobody wants this except you, or trying to make sure we do on backslide okay, black and left alone. Yeah, And it seems, you know, it's very obvious growing up, I mean, having decent politics like this seems very obvious. To me, you know, I really struggle to imagine the mindset of these like nineteen fifties white racists,

and like, but yeah, they fucking you're talking. It's exactly that they're afraid of fucking turning the tables, like whatever. Fucking cowards. So the local leader of the Monroe and Double A CP was a man named Robert Williams. He later wrote a book called Negroes with Guns and as influential on the Black Panthers. He wrote in ninety nine, I wish to make it clear that I do not advocate violence for its own sake or for the sake of reprisals against whites, Nor am I against the passive

resistance advocated by Reverend Martin Luther King and others. My only difference with Dr King is that I believe in flexibility in the freedom struggle. Robert had a rough couple of years as a result of his advocacy for armed defense, as like one of the first prominent black people being like, we actually are completely fine with using violence as necessary

to defend ourselves. Then Double A c CP disavowed him, like canceled the Monroe chapter over the issue of violence, and then he was framed almost certainly by the FEDS. It's like not proven, but we've all read about co intel prob and ship. He was framed for kidnapping a white couple and he had to flee the country. Him and his wife had to flee the country for about a decade later, he was found innocent at trial, and the white couple had been pressured, presumably by the FEDS,

to lie and claim that he had kidnapped them. So that's the first organized black armed civil rights or defense organization I know about. Wasn't the last, wasn't the largest, but it was the first that I found. And they're cool. But I'm gonna tell you about another one, and this one doesn't have a name. This one is in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The clan was running rampant, and so a group of about a hundred or so local folks organized a nameless,

militarily structured, semi secret society of armed Community Defenders. Okay, can we just pause right there. Here's what I love about everything you just said. They said, don't give it a fucking name. Don't let them be able to search us. They can't find us if they don't know who we are. Keep it secret, don't talk about it in public. It was definitely fight club rules. I feel I'm inferring. I really appreciate this approach to it. That's amazing. No, yeah,

you're you're you're really onto what they were onto. Like they and they came from all walks of life. Uh. They were factory workers to businessmen to gang members. Which is not the first time. There's two times I talked about in the last episodes that I did about people fighting the clan, about gang members versus the clan. All of them had combat experience, all of them were picked for being trustworthy and of good character. There's like this

like intense background check to join this secret society. Um, I'm not going to be like these are the rules that other people should use. But you had to be married, you couldn't be a drunk, and you had to have a reputation for keeping your fucking mouth shut. Um. And I think I think this one was all men. Um. We'll talk about later about when this wasn't wasn't And the certainly the decentralized groups included a large number of women, as like you know, a lot of the examples are

like the seven year old woman, the shotgun or whatever. Right, But this nameless organization they avoided all press and publicity. And what they did is they set up armed guards outside of activists residents. Like basically, if someone would like slow down they didn't recognize them, they'd be like keep sucking driving, or sometimes they as people would drive up to places, they would set up a checkpoint and stop them and if the people couldn't prove why they were there,

sometimes shoot at the car or whatever. Yeah, like and uh. And then they would also act as bodyguards to the like non violent. Once again, this is tied in to the non violence movement. So one white activist talked about how she didn't even know she was being protected until later. People just followed her at a distance, concealed carrying, ready to fight if need be, because people were getting killed for this work. You know, before the Defenders, the clan

had run patrols outside of the activist meetings. They would just like drive by and keep track of who was there or whatever. They got faced down one time and they never returned. On July, a few black teenagers went to a movie theater to test desegregation, and over two hundred white racists were there to attack these few black teenagers. So these secret defenders showed up with two cars full of armed men, picked the teenagers up and drove them

away from the mob. But the klansmen were waiting at the entrance to the black neighborhood where they knew that these people would be going right, and they opened fire on the cars. The combat vets open fire right, the fun back, the clan went running, and the clan kept its head down after that. You know what's interesting, Okay, m So if we look at police shooting records, they're all over the map, and if they're shooting against like a lot of gangsters of all ilk like don't have

their terrible shooters because you're not going frequently. But police, you know, they have to do target practice or whatever, and then their police so they're used to drawing or guns or whatever. But going up against military people is an entirely different game changing scenario. Like you are not prepared for battle the way that they are. And I love the idea, man. This I think is something that we're starting to talk about and seymore in our popular culture.

But the return of World War two vets is a huge impact in the civil rights movement. Strictly because like, when you understand what it is to be liberated, you actually have helped liberate cities. You're treated with respect um, and then you come home and expected to you know, for lack of a better word, go back to being a nigga. Like it's really I think empowering to then say you know what, no, we have all of the tools and skills because white America didn't want to go

fight this war. Like that is bananas, Like you made the problem worse. You made the problems by not going to fight it yourself. I love this story, this is beautiful. Yeah, no, totally, And like it's not a coincidence to me. I mean, like obviously, like most of the wars the US has gotten involved in have not been good, right um, And like I know this is like the critique to be

made of the good war or whatever. Like overall, it is good that people wouldn't stop the fucking Nazis, right Whereas yeah, and they had a good time to a stop. The current US wars are not ones that I would be like, oh, that's cool, right, But it's still not a coincidence that some of the people, one of the

people who stop the Colorado. Maybe two of the people who stop the Colorado Spring shooters wells, both of them were vets, Yeah, and complicated feelings about all of it, but learning how to engage in bad situations is a

skill that is useful within our communities. And we've seen a lot of vets become vocal about over policing and the fact that the police haven't describe themselves as being in combat zones when they're like, you are not, and he's if you were, this is not how you'd be allowed to behave if you were part of the military. Get the hell out. And I hope Welly continue to see arise in that because it should be different. And you know, I don't like people playing military like you

either are or you aren't. But to be out here and regale you talking about how you're in an armed force when you've never served a day in your life is pathetic. Yeah, totally, you're in an armed And then also just like talking about that being like, so you're in a war against the American people, great, awesome, cool, if you're in a war against the American people, Well, I'm one of the American you know, Like, I guess it.

I don't even want to say that out loud. But yeah, yeah, well this actually next one will tie into policing in a little bit interesting way. The group from this era that actually, wait, maybe it's time to tell you instead of about this group from this era, maybe it's time to tell you about capitalism and how you can engage in it. And all of us who are on this podcast like routinely eating food. I'm just going on a limb.

You speak for you, but like I like eating food every days, addicted to food, and I like eating it, and I use money for most of my food. My gardening skills are not quite there yet. Yeah, they haven't made it free yet. Yeah, I will say here's the secret though, I get paid whether or not you buy the things from the supposed to know. Yeah, by it out all right? Ads back from ads, Welcome back from ads.

Those are some good services. It's usually pot When I listened to cool Zone shows, I mostly hear ads for other podcasts, which is actually fine by me. I like podcasts. There's a reason past. Yeah, big fan. So we have the unnamed Defenders and now we're going to talk about the group from this era that did all of this most famously into grades effect, we're gonna talk about the

Deacons for Defense and Justice. And it's funny too because I'm like, oh, the most famous group about this, Like, I didn't know about this group until very recently because I just didn't hear much about the armed component of the non violent struggle because when I was in school, they just taught me about pacivism, and then when I was like getting into you know, political radicalism or whatever, I would just mostly hear about the Black Power era,

on the Black Panthers and the stuff that comes later. Um, but so this sort of I didn't hear about the Deacons for Defense and Justice. Nobody talks about the organizers. It's not glamorous, it's not scary or dangerous or cool. It's just work. But it's in this sorry, but it's essential work. It's absolutely necessary work for any of the other things to happen. No, totally, totally, Well, this one is gonna get a little scary, but it's gonna work

out for most of the people in the story. Jonesborough, Louisiana, is a tiny fucking town. About four thousand people lived there in nineteen sixty, not the size of town that most people think about. Very often the soil there was shitty, which meant that there were no plantations there, but it was hella segregated and poor and had a huge clan presence, and most people white or black work for the paper

mill or the chemical factory. There's been an n Double A c PEA chapter there in the forties, but Louisiana passed a law forcing and the Double A c P chapters I think specifically to disclose their memberships because they're racist, and so they changed their name from then Double A CP to the Jackson Parish Progressive Voters League in order to not have to give all of their names to

the funtimes. You got to play these games, okay, even coming here being racist actually gotta outsmart you protected by people that is not to be like, hey, can we get a hit list please? Oh my god, yeah, we changed our name. No more Double A CP because this other thing doesn't even mention race. It's just so happens that everyone who cares about progress in this town is the church, you claim, except everybody so perfect. So in nineteen sixty four, the Voting Rights Act had passed, making

all voter registration and all that ship illegal. But of course nothing changed on the ground in and of itself. And so that's what you know Snick and Cora and all these other groups were doing was in some ways okay. So it's like a maz you're a part of us history,

especially when it comes to race relations. Is the federal government finally fucking passing some basic human decency laws, but then not actually enforcing them or being capable of enforcing them depending on the time and whether or not they care different places. Um, so people actually have to go out and do it right against their own local governments and their sheriffs and their ship and all that ship four Jones burroh Louisiana almost at Alabama, but Jones Burro Louisiana.

The clan is running around being fucked up. They burned like four or five black churches, They burned down a Masonic hall, they burned down a Baptist center, and black and white core organizers came to town to work on voter registration and they had been invited by the local Black Baptist church and they were housed in a house that got called Freedom House that the local community fixed up for them, which is like cool and also has disadvantages.

Most of the time, organizers would come in and stay with a family, which gives a certain amount of protection. But instead the community was able to be like, oh, we have this dilapidated house, will fix up for you and you can all live there. But unfortunately target yeah full of non violent people. Um, and non violent people are a little bit at risk because they're known to not be carrying firearms. So as soon as the core starts coming to town, students in the area start fighting

against segregation, specifically black students. I don't think the white kids were super woke. The clan of course, was like, what's that black people voting and having a say and how their lives are ran There's some of them are swimming in public or reading in the library. We can't have that, um, because that's how they all talk. Totally no that that was a spot on, thank you. I'm definitely not getting any acting jobs out of this podcast.

But and so they started doing more clan ship and they started harassing the house and any picket lines that people were forming. And they first they will like drive by yelling ship at the house, and then they would drive by shooting guns in the air at the house, and then they just drive by shooting the house, right, and since core was non violent, they weren't armed, but a few locals were, including a guy known to history with the awesome name Chili Willie. Hell, Yes, Ernest Chili

Willie Thomas. I'm actually sort of annoyed most history books, like his name is clearly Chili Willie. That's why it's in quote. It's the name he actually wanted to go by. Um, But most people, most of the history books like avoid

specifically calling them that. They just called Ernest over or whatever. Again, listen, if somebody has a dove nickname and it's referred to, that gives you so much character, like depiction and inspiration, Like you understand, like a you don't funk with someone named Chili Willi, Okay, under all circumstances, you do not want to pick a fight, Okay. But it's also it's like that's what he wanted to be called. Just call him that, totally. So, Chili Willie and a few of

his friends started hanging out at Freedom House. They're just start sitting on the porch or shadowing the activists as they moved through town. Basically, the deal was like, y'all can be non violent that's great us. We're not nonviolent. We'll defend you. To quote a CORE organizer, Fred Brooks, if we had a picket line, these guys were standing on the corner on both sides of the street. Wherever we went, it was like a caravan. These guys in the pickup trucks with the high powered rifles up in

the back. White people didn't mess with us. The defenders would come by at night and want to know what the next day's agenda was. Different ones of them took different patrols. We told them. They told us we were not to leave the black community without security. And to quote another organizer about the impact of the experience, he's like writing back to the rest of CORE, the concept that we are going to go south and through love and patients change the hearts and minds of southern whites

should be totally disregarded. So some new defenders. So you have these defends right, they don't have a name. Yet another group of folks want to do it legit as best as they could, so they go to the local as the local high school football coach. His name is Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick, and he goes to the police chief and he's like, let me set up an all volunteer black auxiliary to the police to protect the black community

and Core and the police chief went for it. The black auxillary got no, I know you see, yeah, my mind is melting white. It's gonna get messy, it's gonna get interesting. Um yeah. No. So that the Black auxiliary has given an old cop car and handcuffs, you'll be shocked to know that close relations between the police and the black community didn't last. Chili Willie and the original Defenders, for their part, they are not fucking stoked about this, right.

They do not trust the black cops. They figured these black cops are going to do the dirty work for the white cops. They're all blue. Yeah. Yeah. So that summer we're still some Core organizers get ambushed by the clan who you turned in the middle of the highway to trap the Core organizers. But the Core organizers get out of it with like sick driving skills. They like floor it and they basically like almost run a clan car off the road. I think they almost run someone over,

like they get the funk out of there. That's horrifying. But the clans people they go and and snitch them out for their dangerous driving. The clan people go to the cops and are like, hey, these Core organizers almost killed us on the road. You should arrest them. So the white chief of police tells one of the black deputies go arrest these Core organizers. Deputy is like, that's not so. I have to go back to my community after this. I don't little my mom and the eyes like,

please don't ask me to do this. Yeah, and so, you know, deputy is like, well, that's not what I'm gonna do. So so instead the black deputies go and provide an armed escort to help the Core organizers get out of town away from an arrest warrant. Okay, come on, and so but there's still like, maybe there's something to it, maybe we can still be the black deputies. So then there are ordered to arrest some black teenagers who are

at the swimming pool, and they refused again. And then the final straw, the Klan drove through the black part of town with the police escort throwing out leaflets about outside agitators because that's like been the rhetoric that the right wing is used forever as being like these outside agitators whatever, and Kirkpatrick is finally like, oh yeah, and the clan have a police escort as they're driving through the black community throwing this out, and so the deputies

and Kirkpatrick are like never mind. Specifically, he told the chief of police that if the clan convoy ever comes back through town, quote, there was going to be some killing going on. Well, I thought it was gonna be poetic, like, I just want to let you know, some murder will happen. You have to kill because I'm gonna make some this happens.

After this, the two groups, Kirkpatrick's deputies and Chili Willie's defenders, they feel all right with each other now, and the deputies proved that they weren't going to be pawnsed for the white power structure. Good and as a ship heated up, more and more black defenders started showing up, and the spirit of we're not gonna put up with this was

spreading throughout the town and not just the defenders. At one point, some klansmen tried to burn across in one of the reverend's yards, only to be scared off by the reverend's wife, who started shooting at them with a rifle. Yeah, and once again, majority of these defenders were vets World War Two and the Korean War vets, and they skewed at older than the activists they were protecting. They also had strict membership requirements. Everyone had to be committed to

defense only. Everyone had to be committed to keep been a cool head about them. And then kind of famously, they weren't ideological. A lot of the stuff that comes later, for better and worse, is ideological, right in different ways. These people were not socialists, they were not communists, they

weren't anything as a group. Individuals within them were all kinds of different things, I'm sure, including conservatives, including liberals, and their ideology, as far as I can tell, is basically like we shouldn't let people funk up the black

community and murder civil rights activists. But I think also, you know, to your point, if they're all slightly older than the people they're protecting, there's absolutely like a generational thing of like, you know, our grandparents were enslaved, perhaps some of their parents were enslaved. This is liberation at

a next level. And what we're not going to do is allow you to kill our young without putting up a fight first, yea and I think it's a really beautiful intergenerational play of like, Okay, you guys have this vision for the future, you go out and claim that we'll do our best to keep you safe while you do that. I think that's really beautiful. No, that is so fucking beautiful, and that's so accurate. That's exactly what's happening here. And it's like, wow, I care about that

a lot. I talk sometimes about, like, you know, in the trans community, about how like, oh, well, like I'm I'm not that old, but I'm like, you know, about forty, and I'm like, you know, we do anything to protect the like young trans kids, right and like you know who who don't appreciate it, you know, like and like I that I don't want to draw a direct one

to one struggles. Listen as somebody who is queer, like there isn't absolutely a direct correlation between communities that are actively being haunted, right, like literally hunted, and and and then you know, legislated against is an entirely different mind funk of of how do I just actively live my life in society without being sucked by the government that's supposed to be protecting me, And how we how we treat our young you know, we want them as much

as young people often can't appreciate what's being done for them because their worldview is different, right, Like, they're all we need to be in the streets, So we're going to be vocal. We're going to make the change that you guys couldn't accomplish happen, which is a thing I hear.

You know, a lot of young black activists or even before their activists more more, you know, as they're beginning their journey into activism, ilse say often they're like, well, we're not going to be like you'd be like, okay, we we find had won a lot of battles, but which just it's not done yet, but we will still no matter how you feel, we don't want you to be hurt in the same way as we were hurt,

in the same way we saw our elders hurt. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's generationally, the only thing I think that a lot of marginalized communities can do is do their best to build a wall of protection around the next generation coming up, so hopefully they can get a little bit further. I think there's a direct correlation, no, and that that makes so much sense in it. I think it. You know, if one of the main themes of this episode is about how two different strategies can work together.

In this case, it's non violence and self defense. You know that the like in a similar way that like, you carry this further, but we will stand here and protect you as you do it. Like here are all the resources that we have acquired, that we have built

up so that you can do this thing. Now that's really I really like that, um And I guess that what Alla Baker was doing, you know, um by like being the mentor to snick without like and even if her main advice was you all should figure out what you want to do and don't listen to the charismatic leaders who tell you that you should do what they wanted you to do. I love it, Like I remind you a lot of what Art is doing in her

later years. You know, also like being a symbol of this one very specific and vital movement, but then also you know, actively working behind the scenes to help support this next generation as they continued the fight, I mean, being boots on the ground talking to be like she she's such so much larger than that one moment. But again didn't bother to try and take up space that wasn't that was meant for the people and not for an individual. Just it's so selfless, this work for the

people who are doing it right, and it's just incredibly impressive. Yeah, yeah, totally. And I you know, one of the things I struggle with on this show is that I'm like, oh, I'm talking about cool people, but I don't believe in like heroes. I believe in like role models, or I believe in like respecting the work people have done, you know, and respecting these stories. Not so that we can be like, oh well I'm not as cool as that person ill or do anything, but instead so that people could know,

like we are all. You know, this person wasn't like you know, I doubt when Ella Baker first started, Ella Baker was like, I'm the one who's gonna change all. This ship just did what it was in front of her, you know, I I don't know, Yeah, yeah, she's got to the work just started. She was like, no, this has to be different, and it's yeah, it'll be interesting going forward how we as a society manage our heroes. I think, particularly with the rise of social media, we're

seeing a decline in celebrity. Right, there's we don't have um your Michael Jackson's where people are fainting just passing them in the street. They're like, oh my god, I'm in the vicinity of this person. And I think celebrity is going to become to some degree. I think that I think ale still have popular people that were interested in following their stories. But I think that era of hero icon worship is we're moving past it slowly. Yeah,

it's dead. What we should be worshiping is potatoes. Yeah, potatoes, um and whatever. Literally whatever the first ad you hear once we cut two ads is should be your new God. Awesome. I can't wait to figure out where that is. I hope it's not the Highway State patrol or gold or one of the other many mean and evil and what you're really worshiping is your fear of Yeah, here's some

ads a k A. Your new Gods. Okay, we are back and we were talking about how Chili Willie and Frederick Douglas are getting together, and it was actually this person who was ideologically not an ideologically convinced white core organizer, who was very into non violence, was kind of the one who was like, no, you all need to sit down and actually have these meetings and figure out what

you're doing. His name was Charlie Fenton. He spent most of his summer in jail and then he came to Jonesborough and he was super ideologically committed to non violence um but he he quickly realized that the two things went very well together. That building a non violence resistance movement in Durrance, but Jonesborough required the work of these defenders, and so he was like, hey, maybe you all should

have some structure. And so in November nineteen sixty four, the two groups met up in the Masonic Hall and they formed a protective Association. The core organizer wasn't part of it. Fortunately, he was like, hey, maybe meet up and then dipped out, which is good, that is what he should have done. On January five, sixty five, they formally incorporated with the name they were the Deacons for Defense and Justice. And what's another thing that I think

is really cool. The two founders Chili William Kirkpatrick. They didn't become the leaders. The president was another one of the defenders, the vice president another one of the deputies. The founders stayed part of it, but they didn't take control of it. And they set up a structure as really interesting to me. There's members pay dues of two dollars a month, which is basically pooling money for ammunition. Everyone provided their own rifles, and they set up for

membership tiers, which wasn't like a hierarchy of command. They had a command structure, but it's unrelated when talking about you had your core group of dues paying activists, and then a broader group of people who sometimes paid dues, and then you had an even broader group of reinforcements who could be called upon in time of need. And then you had a fourth tier, which was basically like, look, if you're like doing really good ship, you want to

call yourself a deacon. That's chill, And that seems like a really smart way to run a community defense organization that acknowledges that not everyone is going to make it the center of their lives. It sounds like radical acceptance, like come as you are, Like if you want to be all in, great, if you just kind of want to hang around and see what that's about, Hell cool, We just accept you as you are. Just be about

the mission. Yeah. Yeah. At first, it was more or less all men except some one or two women who were helping on an organizational level. Slowly, more women started becoming involved, especially as Core's influence rubbed off on it, because Core was actually fairly actively gender integrated. And Kirkpatrick, the guy who had been a deputy, he got fired from the high school for starting the deacons, which led

to the deacon's first conflict with the authorities. Students at that school started picking because of his dismissal and for black control of black schools, which stands out from the broader civil rights movement at the time, which was much more focused on desegregation, whereas in this case these students were focused on black autonomy. Um, it's is a fairly major tension that was going to emerge more clearly in

a couple of years. But the kids are picketing their high school and firefighters show up ready to hose them down right because they're being fox The good use of the fire department, super good use of water aces job everyone. Well. The deacons staunch conservative conservationists. They take firing positions and say to the to the firefighters, quote, if you turn those water hoses on those kids, there's going to be

some blood out here today. Okay, again just not mixing the words of just letting you know immediately, don't look around, it's just what what will happen? And the firefighters left goodbye again, we say, because they're just walking around it so ridiculous. And the deacons, after they win this fight, they get popular. A whole new group of people start joining the civil rights movement, folks who have hadn't been attracted to the more middle class sensibilities of the older groups.

Uh and nor the people who hadn't been attracted to the specifically youth non violent spirit. You get the sort of like third basically the people who are like, oh shit, okay, yeah, this is this is the tactic that appeals to us. It works. I it was the response because you when you hear not violence, you're like, I'm not about to be in these shoots getting my ass whooped. Like it just does not sound like it's not feeling at least

to me as an individual anyway. I understand the logic behind doing it, but the peple of like and now we're just gonna allow ourselves to be be as a showing of like what happens to us anyway is God, it's so brave. But then you know this idea of like, oh no, actually you can be armed, and we helped protect and save kids. Those water hoses break bones, like it's really dangerous. That's incredible. Yeah. I could definitely see just regular community folk being like, okay, we have a

system now. Yeah, totally. And So there's another mill town in Louisiana. It's like opposite side of Louisiana, feels like three miles away or some ship. It's called Boga Loosa, and it was one of the worst hot beds of clan activity in the in the in the country. It had the most klansmen per capita anywhere in Louisiana, which is an impressive state to have the most clansmen per capita.

In klansmen held office. They had enough power that when President Lyndon Johnson sent a special aid to go let give a talk about desegregation, he wasn't able to speak the President's fucking aid like. The event was shut down by burning crosses and angry racists. They went out and passed the clans people went out and passed handbills to every white family in town saying if you show up to this meeting, we will kill you. Where they're strong repression,

they're strong resistance. Black farmers in the area already had a very strong They had a lot of advantages the black folks um from a strategic point of view, they had two things going for them. The rural nearby area. The black farmers in that area largely owned their own land, which made them substantially um instead of sharecropping or or anything like that. So they're much more resistant against economic repression.

And then black workers in the town were largely incorporated into a few different unions, and therefore they had a lot of experience organizing. And so for decades the n double a CP had prevented the clan from purging black voters from the rolls. So that town they invite some core activists white some white core activists to come to town and house them in a black home. The clan shows up at the house, but so did armed Black towns people. The clan fucked off, as is their want.

The core organizers tried to drive out of town, but they were followed by an angry mob in a car, and so they took refuge in a black cafe where the same scene repeated. Angry Fox showed up and started trying to surround the cafe, but so did armed defenders, and the clan fucked off again, and the basically the organizers escorted home out of town like by an armed caravan of defenders. One of the organizers later he said, I thought I was a pacifist, but then I realized

I wasn't anymore. That's not a direct quote. Sorry, I said that in might direct quote voice, but that's my paraphrase voice. And so Bogolosa formed the second Deacons chapter after that event. By maye, the mayor of Bogolusa repealed all segregation mandates. And yeah, wow, I'm just trying to think of like, that's such a fast turnaround for a space that has numbers, which I think would be you know, a factor in the speed in which you'd be able

to desegregate a space. Violence where or the threat of violence works, I guess like stopping other people's violence in this case, you know, because it's stopping letting their violence work. And again, it's funny because it's like, I'm not ideologically

committed to non violence. I actually and I find it strategically interesting but not It's not a strategy that I've ever personally particularly employed, but like it's still interesting to me with it's within the tool the toolbox of activist tools, you know. But when the national director of CORE showed up in town, I think the I think the way it went down is that the like local police were like, all right, we'll protect you, and he was like, no,

I'm good, the Deacons will protect me. Actually half people already for that, thank you, Oh my god. So okay. So that's like the either way non violence is relying on armed people, and it's trying to rely on cops and like federal troops and like the state as the armed force, right, and so instead he's saying, no, the armed force I trust are the Deacons, defense and justice.

In the end, after only a few years, the Deacons had twenty one formal chapters and forty six affiliates throughout the country, but by night they were overshadowed by the Black Panther Party, which I'm sure we'll talk about more some other time, and sort of a close to this era. As the sixties were on, tensions are growing within the civil rights movement because it was it was finding itself, it was starting to be about more than just voting

rights and desegregation. And you know this guy named James Meredith. Uh And I first wrote there was this guy, but there is a guy still alive. He's a black man with some Choctaw heritage. He was a vet. He spent nine years in the Air Force from ninety one to nineteen sixty. He's actually fairly conservative, but he's doesn't like white supremacy. He integrated the University of Mississippi, which did

not want to be integrated by him. Miss still doesn't want to be You know, I believe that this is the like democratic governor who said, uh, like I will die before I allowed desegregation in my state or something like that. I can't remember exactly. You're welcome to do that, I know, right. Deacons of defense are like I volunteer um. It took a bunch of applicant aations and a lawsuit with help from the Double A c P and then federal intervention, and then he had to survive a frame

up on voter fraud, all kinds of ship. They did everything they could to try and stop him. But when he finally went to go enroll because he had succeeded these lawsuits. It took four hundred law enforcement folks from various federal agencies and ships to protect him. UM and still racists, including mostly the fucking white racist students at this fucking university, rioted to try and prevent him from enrolling and like fought those four hundred cops or whatever.

So he goes to the school, he graduates, He faces a ton of abuse the whole time from racist students, which is frankly most of the students. For his next degree, for some completely understandable reason, he goes to a university in Nigeria. Yes, get all the way out of no. In nineteen sixty six, he declares that he's going to do a march against fear, and he's going to do it without. He's going to go on a two mile march from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. He didn't want

any of the major civil rights organizations involved. UM And I believe I've read two different things. One is that he started alone and he intended to do it alone. And one is that he specifically said only black men can join me, and I think that meant black men, It absolutely meant no white people. I'm not certain whether he was trying to make a statement about gender, and he's just like, I'm not trying to do this like how other people are doing it. I'm going to do

this thing, a march against fear. Literally the second day of the march, a white sniper shot him. He survived. Wow, right, because he's still alive. He said, I was like, I know, and like after a while in a hospital, he rejoins the march, and he didn't trust the other civil rights organizations, but he considered himself at war with white supremacy. So after this attack, leaders and and or delegates from various civil rights organizations they meet up in Memphis to decide

what to do. Basically, they're like, violence can't stop our movement. We can't allow that to happen. But they were nowhere near consensus beyond this point. This is like it's nineteen sixty six, and it's like coalition is really starting to come apart because they don't actually all want the same things, right, And they reached a compromise. They decided that they're going to go continue this march, which is a little bit funny.

I kind of wonder what he thought about it. Because like his whole thing is he didn't want these people involved. But then again he also got I don't know what he wanted about this, you know, But the civil rights organizations they reached a compromise. Martin Luther King wanted no guns, yes, white people. Snick wanted deacons as an armed defense force and no white people, which fits better with James Meredith's original conception of the march anyway. And so they compromised

white allies yes, deacons for defense yes. And the split in this movement is about ton of things. It's about the role of white organizers, and I think especially about white leadership and like direction. Um, but maybe I'm just saying that. I certain it's about the use of firearms. It's about the growing disenchantment with the political process, specifically, like there's this whole thing that I didn't even get into, where like the Democratic Party was like, nah, we actually

don't care about you, fuck you. And and also there's this question about growing militancy. There's like this question about like what people actually like want, do people want to revolution, do they want to be accepted within mainstream society? And specifically about the desire for desegregation. Versus black power, which is not always a dichotomy, but it's like kind of

presented as one in a lot of these conversations. But both SNICK and the SCLC and you know, these groups that don't like each other, they finished this march, the March Against Fear. Fifteen thousand people are on the march

by the end of the march, including ten Yeah. Yeah, it's fucking cool and like, it's interesting because they had mostly moved away from protest marches, especially the like youth for organizers that are like, no, direct actionism is what matters, right, But I mean, I don't know, I think it's pretty direct action if you're getting shot for trying to do it,

you know, Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it this included uh, ten buses of union auto workers from Chicago came down to join the march, just to shout out that the labor movement did do some good things at various points in the history. And along raise lines, four thousand people were registered to vote. Along the way and where we're going to end it, the last little thing is a sort of the end of this trunk. On June ninety six, snick's president Quam a tour a which is stokely Carmichael

and all the history books. But he changed his name later in life, and so I'm using both so that people know who I'm talking about. But his name was Kami to right. And he gets arrested for trespassing on public property. Um, which is a cool, interesting trick. Yeah, how do you do that? I'm not I think you'd just be black. Um ends in Greenwood, Mississippi in nineteen sixty six. He gets held for several hours. When he

gets out, he goes back to the march. He gets up on the podium and he gives a speech, and he calls up a chant we want black power. It gets called his Black Power speech. It was, in his words, a call for black people in the country to unite, to recognize their heritage and build a sense of community. Quote more from him about this. When you talk about black power, you talk about bringing this country to its knees anytime it messes with the black man. Any white

man in this country knows about power. He knows what white power is, and he ought to know what black power is. And this is not the end of the civil rights movement, but it's one of the places we can point to a split, and so it's kind of where I'm going to end it. Soon enough, you get the Black Panthers, who were ideological eclipsing the Deacons for Defense Snick and Core go radical as hell. They were done with non violence. Um Core at least embraced black nationalism.

The s CLC and the Double A CP in turn rejected black power, not like as a as a slogan, I'm not trying to be like complicated. Yeah, and going forward from there, there's so many other cool people who did cool stuff. But this is where we're going to leave the story. This was an amazing journey so many

people I didn't know about. I love learning about the people who made the big moments possible, and especially hearing about the Rule South where shi it was real as health for people and like how did they deal with this? You know? It's like and also this idea of like we need multiple forms of activism to reach our end goal.

I think that's what's most interesting about this because a lot of people have issues you know, with the in Double A c P at different times, for you know, they're they're focus was legality right first, and it's also like there are a lot of class issues. You know, they were recording a certain type of black person, and I think it's interesting to hear how at the end of the day, like all of these different divisions had to team up and compromise on their visions in order

to move the needle. Um. Yeah, it gives me a lot of hope for where our activism is today and the things that were to accomplish a lot of times that in fighting can seem insurmountable and like it's halting things, but really I think it's just making the entire movement

richer totally. Yeah, I think it's really you know, interesting, because there's no one right way to achieve you know, certain goals, and you might have to borrow from different baskets, and like you all said, it's it's about the combination or the mixture of in the compromise, you know, of all these different tactics to achieve the common goal. And sometimes you know there is in fighting and disagreements, but ultimately it's about just moving the needle forward. And I

think that's really really interesting. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on this this journey with me, um Joel, do you have anything that you'd like to plug here at the end. You know, I just come find me on the internet. It's where I live. I love hearing from you guys. You can find me actual Monique to j O E L L E M L A and I Q you E hell yeah bean, you got anything. I'll just say, listen to us some cool Zone media podcasts. Internet Hate Machine with Bridget Todd is our newest show. What's check

that out? Wherever you listen to your podcasts? Um and yeah, that's all for me. I'll just say that Internet Hate Machine is my favorite way of keeping up on the Internet gossip and it is like not like like gossip about the inner or whatever. It's really good. You should listen to it. That's what. It's really good. It's super timely, especially with what's going on and our current Internet land escape. So yeah, I did episode where we talk about Twitter

and and the Elon Musk change over. If you still need to catch up on that. Yeah, that one's fun. What a fun time we're all facing. Okay. The thing that I would like to plug is a diversity of tactics and learning to accept that not everyone is going to agree with you, but that we can still figure some things out together. That's what I want to shout out here at the end, the community. All right, see

everyone next week. Good Bye bye. Cool People Who did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media, but more podcasts and cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.