Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: the podcast that it was in reruns during the holidays.
Speaker 2: But I bet you'll still like this episode even though
Speaker 2: I recorded a little while ago, because I think that
Speaker 2: the way that people look back and think about the
Speaker 2: old civil rights movement, like, wow, everything was so peaceful
Speaker 2: all the time, Well it's not true. I mean, some
Speaker 2: stuff was peaceful, and nonviolence is an important part of
Speaker 2: political strategy, but it's certainly not the only thing that happened.
Speaker 2: And so we're going to do a rerun about the
Speaker 2: armed civil rights movement. I hope you enjoy it. Hello,
Speaker 2: and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, the
Speaker 2: podcast that is totally not advocating for people to do crime,
Speaker 2: despite being a podcast almost exclusively about people who did crime.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Margaret Hildrey, and our guest this week
Speaker 2: is the one and only Joel Monique. Well, how are
Speaker 2: you doing on this day of the week that is
Speaker 2: totally a different day of the week and not just
Speaker 2: the same day that we recorded the previous.
Speaker 3: It is not still great. I'm going to guess that
Speaker 3: it's colder because it's a week later into December, and
Speaker 3: I will say. I'm good, still bundled up in the
Speaker 3: sweaters and under blankets. It's just making it through the
Speaker 3: winter time.
Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent. And our producer Sophia is out this week
Speaker 2: because she's on a top secret undercover mission into a
Speaker 2: land of evil. But our audio engineer Ian is now
Speaker 2: our producer, Ian, how are you.
Speaker 4: I'm doing good, Margaret. I'm just honored to be on Mike.
Speaker 4: I'm just happy to be here. You know, it's you know,
Speaker 4: sometimes people don't like to know how the sausage is made,
Speaker 4: but here I am ruining the surprise. Yeay.
Speaker 2: And our audio engineers of course, Ian. And our theme
Speaker 2: music was done for the show by the wonderful musician Unwoman,
Speaker 2: which sometimes people mishear me as saying a woman, but
Speaker 2: no it is not. I mean, yes, it is a woman,
Speaker 2: but her name is Unwoman, and you can find her
Speaker 2: music wherever you listen to music. I don't know whatever.
Speaker 2: So this is part two of a two part series
Speaker 2: on the armed civil rights movement of the nineteen sixty South,
Speaker 2: and it probably won't make much sense if you don't
Speaker 2: listen to part one. I would never tell you what
Speaker 2: to do, dear listener, but you might want to consider
Speaker 2: listening to part one before part two if you haven't
Speaker 2: done that yet. Where we last left our heroes, they
Speaker 2: were organizers, just desegregating places and registering voters. But just
Speaker 2: as heroic were the armed black families that kept guard
Speaker 2: over them as they slept and drove back clansmen with
Speaker 2: rifles and shotguns and revolvers and apparently molotovs. And some
Speaker 2: of these people are about to get organized, and that's
Speaker 2: what we're gonna talk about today. You all excited, You're ready.
Speaker 3: I'm thrilled. This is like a boom moment for me.
Speaker 3: Let's hear about the start of organization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the hard parts. The first organized group of black
Speaker 2: defenders of the civil rights movement that I was able
Speaker 2: to find was paradoxically under the name the NAACP. Amazing that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who
Speaker 2: show up sometimes on this show, not just this episode,
Speaker 2: but other shows. Because a ton of rad people have
Speaker 2: done work with the NAACP over the years, but during
Speaker 2: the Civil rights era they were not known as one
Speaker 2: of the more radical organizations. They still did really not
Speaker 2: trying to say anything negative about them here but like
Speaker 2: you know, they're not known as like in the way
Speaker 2: that Snick and Core were as like pushing the envelope, right,
Speaker 2: But a chapter of them in Monroe, North Carolina went rogue. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: go on, yeah, go on, all right, So you can
Speaker 2: trace this back to nineteen forty six. There was a
Speaker 2: black vet named Benny Montgomery who came home from World
Speaker 2: War Two. He had steel plate in his skull because
Speaker 2: he got wounded while, you know, stopping the fucking Nazis.
Speaker 2: His white employer back in North Carolina treated him like shit.
Speaker 2: I presume was a racist based on everything else that
Speaker 2: happened and this whole thing. They got into an argument
Speaker 2: and Benny slid his boss's throat in the resulting fight.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, he stopped the Nazis and he
Speaker 2: killed a racist white boss. I've got no problem with
Speaker 2: Benny Montgomery so far.
Speaker 3: Benny's really for me, sounds like a hero to me.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: The State of North Carolina did not find Benny to
Speaker 2: be a hero for this particular action, and they executed him.
Speaker 2: Of course, it should have been the end of it.
Speaker 2: And it was like God and the way it's sometimes
Speaker 2: written about it presents it as if it's like this,
Speaker 2: like great justice because he didn't get lynched like the
Speaker 2: Klan tried to before he was executed. They tried to
Speaker 2: drag him out of the jail. But it's like, but
Speaker 2: justice prevailed and he wasn't lynched. He was instead just
Speaker 2: I mean, it's lynch by the state instead whatever.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, okay, people, that is a wild thing that
Speaker 3: continues to happen today. We can look at brittany crime,
Speaker 3: You's case where people are like, well, she did a crime,
Speaker 3: so now she has to go to jail. And I
Speaker 3: just if you hear people in your surf, I imagine
Speaker 3: if you listen to this podcast, you hopefully don't have
Speaker 3: those thoughts, but if you, you know, are surrounded by
Speaker 3: people who are like that, you know, maybe just remind
Speaker 3: them we don't necessarily need prisons. Yeah, I mean, just
Speaker 3: imagine a world where we don't have to lock up
Speaker 3: people for petty fucking crimes like having very small amounts
Speaker 3: of lead. It's ridiculous, Yeah, ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Ugh, So so Benny, Yeah, hebe gets executed. This should
Speaker 2: have been the end of it. But the clan, they're
Speaker 2: salty that they they're also like this is grave injustice,
Speaker 2: that the state is the one who killed him instead
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 3: Oh today, okay, so.
Speaker 2: They try to lynch his dead body.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: They tell the funeral home director that if they don't
Speaker 2: hand the body over to them, they'll kill him. This
Speaker 2: doesn't spoiler, this doesn't happen, doesn't get their way. A
Speaker 2: bunch of black Vets met up at a barber shop
Speaker 2: and they were like, no, we can't let that happen.
Speaker 2: So almost forty Vets with their service rifles stood guard
Speaker 2: outside the funeral home. The Klan like drove by, ready
Speaker 2: to like go be evil, and they took one look
Speaker 2: at the service rifles, which included Benny's own rifle, which
Speaker 2: I think is yeah, and the Klan just noped out
Speaker 2: of there. They were like we're gone.
Speaker 3: Goodbye, plan horrible people. Westboro back is ass bitches.
Speaker 4: Like almost like every time they faced any kind of opposition,
Speaker 4: they're like, oh wait, never mind, yeah they can fight back.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, yeah, suddenly uninterested, like I'm sure there's counterexamples,
Speaker 3: but I haven't found them yet. I hope you never
Speaker 3: find them.
Speaker 2: I know you never locate I know. So the local
Speaker 2: NAACP in Monroe had started out like a lot of
Speaker 2: NAACP chapters. It's sort of a social club for middle
Speaker 2: class black folks. But in the nineteen fifties, the Klan
Speaker 2: started fucking with them in Monroe, and most of the
Speaker 2: NAACP members left the organization because they're like, oh this
Speaker 2: this is hard and scary. But a few of them remained,
Speaker 2: and two of them remained were vets, and they immediately
Speaker 2: started recruiting the working class to the NAACP. And they
Speaker 2: did something that no other NAACP was doing. And this
Speaker 2: one's kind of funny. They formed a chapter of the NRA. Officially,
Speaker 2: they like wrote the NRA, and we were like, we
Speaker 2: would like to form a chapter called the Monroe Rifle
Speaker 2: Club or the Blackguards as they called themselves or get
Speaker 2: called what. Okay, I is the only story I've found
Speaker 2: so far at any of my research where the NRA
Speaker 2: affiliated people did anything cool.
Speaker 3: But wow, I want you to go back and look
Speaker 3: at your history, because you're not out here defending black
Speaker 3: people using stand their ground, you know, like the girls
Speaker 3: who were being trafficked and then shoot their abusers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe get back into your old hat. Amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, totally. And I think there's like within the
Speaker 2: sort of a political gun culture, there are people who
Speaker 2: are like, oh, it's cool when people fight against depression.
Speaker 2: You know, they're not clearly the dominant arc of the
Speaker 2: NRA or gun culture in the United States. So you
Speaker 2: now have the blackguards. In nineteen fifty seven in Monroe,
Speaker 2: North Carolina, a kid drowned in the unsafe swimming holes
Speaker 2: that the local black kids were forced to use because
Speaker 2: the pool was segregated. So the vice president of the
Speaker 2: NAACP was a guy named doctor Perry. He was one
Speaker 2: of the kind of holdovers from when it was middle class,
Speaker 2: but he was one of the ones he rules, and
Speaker 2: he decides to stay just sit in at the white
Speaker 2: only pool, and he organizes a bunch of kids who
Speaker 2: go and like wait in their swim trunks and towels,
Speaker 2: like waiting to be let into the pool. And of
Speaker 2: course they're not let into the pool. And the fucking
Speaker 2: bravery of those kids, it's like, it's hard to wrap
Speaker 2: my head around how brave those kids are to go
Speaker 2: stand there and they're swim trunks to tells this is
Speaker 2: and this is three years before the sin in movement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's uh, kids are I feel like kids are
Speaker 3: aware but naive about end results, right, and so they
Speaker 3: have this idea of like especially I think you know,
Speaker 3: as a black kid for my generation, I can't speak
Speaker 3: on this generation too much, but like, the idea of
Speaker 3: these are your rights and you should be allowed allowed
Speaker 3: access to them is a thing that we were taught
Speaker 3: a lot, and so you know, we would do bold
Speaker 3: ass things as an adult, you know, I may not do.
Speaker 2: And so can you tell me any of those legally stories?
Speaker 3: So can I tell you that story? I will say
Speaker 3: in broad in broad strokes. Prop eight was happening, and
Speaker 3: we were marching a lot. This is like my early
Speaker 3: college years. You know. There may have been some verbal
Speaker 3: harassments against some armed government officials as we were moving
Speaker 3: through the streets that you know today I would not
Speaker 3: definitely not do. But we were angry, and we were young,
Speaker 3: and we were absolutely willing to tell people about themselves.
Speaker 2: And what they should do with grant.
Speaker 3: It's not as brave as these kids because we were surrounded.
Speaker 3: There are thousands of us in the street. I think
Speaker 3: it's incredibly brave to be in the fifties standing outside
Speaker 3: of pool. Yeah, you know, without it sounds like any
Speaker 3: weapons or and there's some trump'son towels. It's an amazing,
Speaker 3: an amazing decision they made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't have any record of anything bad
Speaker 2: happening to them as a result of it. And so
Speaker 2: the Klan they fucking hate doctor Perry. They already didn't
Speaker 2: like him, vice president of WACP. He's black and middle
Speaker 2: class and educated. He's throwing down with the working class.
Speaker 2: He wasn't scared of them. And also he was Catholic,
Speaker 2: and the Klan has this whole fucking thing against the Catholics.
Speaker 3: Wow, that is a full plate of things that the
Speaker 3: KKK is not about.
Speaker 2: No, no, not at all. So they the Klan got
Speaker 2: together their show of force on October fifth, nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 2: They had a big old rally with a big old
Speaker 2: cross burning, and then they drove an armed motorcade a
Speaker 2: doctor Perry's house. They were gonna stop doctor Perry once
Speaker 2: and for all. But doctor Perry and the Blackguards they
Speaker 2: didn't scare, and they knew the Klan was coming, and
Speaker 2: they were they were vents.
Speaker 3: Oh shit, they've seen combat before, Okay.
Speaker 4: So they.
Speaker 2: Instead of a scared middle class doctor hiding in this house,
Speaker 2: they found sandbag fortifications with automatic weapons.
Speaker 4: Oh hell yeah, like in describe that they were about
Speaker 4: that action, like they were, Yeah, they wanted all the smoke.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the clan shows up and they start shooting. The
Speaker 2: clan starts shooting at the sand bag fortifications because they're
Speaker 2: not known for their intelligence. The Blackguard fire back, and
Speaker 2: they intentionally fire into the ground because they they it
Speaker 2: was a defensive gesture, right, and it was meant to
Speaker 2: scare the clan off, and it worked. The Klan stopped
Speaker 2: their raids, not just on Doctor Perry, but just in
Speaker 2: the area. Just the Clan's just done.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: The next day, the city council bans clan motorcades because
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, this is we can't have this, this
Speaker 2: will go bad.
Speaker 3: I love this news.
Speaker 4: This is wonderful. That's one thing about the clan. They're
Speaker 4: consistent there, you know, And I love it.
Speaker 2: I know, because I mean, what is racism but this
Speaker 2: ideology of fear, it's this true. I want to be
Speaker 2: in charge all the time of everyone, and everyone wants
Speaker 2: to do what I say, and I'm afraid that that
Speaker 2: will change.
Speaker 4: It's like a perceived threat to your power, your established
Speaker 4: you know, societal standing, and that scares the shit out
Speaker 4: of people.
Speaker 3: It's also its weird irrational. I want to stress that word, irrational,
Speaker 3: fear that if there's equity, black people will try to
Speaker 3: turn the tables and enslave white people, which is a
Speaker 3: thing we hear them talk about all the damn time.
Speaker 3: It's just like, I just want y'all to know, slavery
Speaker 3: sounds hard like for both people. It's not exhausting. I'm
Speaker 3: not trying to force people to stay or brutalize their
Speaker 3: body like nobody wants this except you, or trying to
Speaker 3: make sure we don't backslide, okay yet be black and
Speaker 3: left alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it seems, you know, it's very obvious growing up,
Speaker 2: I mean, having decent politics like this seems very obvious
Speaker 2: to me. You know, I really struggle to imagine the
Speaker 2: mindset of these like nineteen fifties white racists and like,
Speaker 2: but yeah, they fucking you're talking. It's exactly that they're
Speaker 2: afraid of fucking turning the tables, like whatever, fucking cowards.
Speaker 2: So the local leader of the Monroe ANDAACP was a
Speaker 2: man named Robert Williams. He later wrote a book called
Speaker 2: Negroes with Guns and as influential on the Black Panthers,
Speaker 2: and he wrote in nineteen fifty nine, I wish to
Speaker 2: make it clear that I do not advocate violence for
Speaker 2: its own sake or for the sake of reprisals against whites.
Speaker 2: Nor am I against the passive resistance advocated by Reverend
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King and others. My only difference with doctor
Speaker 2: King is that I believe in flexibility in the freedom struggle.
Speaker 2: Robert had a rough couple of years as a result
Speaker 2: of his advocacy for armed defense, as like one of
Speaker 2: the first prominent black p people, being like, we actually
Speaker 2: are completely fine with using violence as necessary to defend ourselves.
Speaker 2: The NAACCP disavowed him, like canceled the Monroe chapter over
Speaker 2: the issue of violence. And then he was framed almost
Speaker 2: certainly by the Feds. It's like not proven, but we've
Speaker 2: all fucking read about co intel pro and shit. He
Speaker 2: was framed for kidnapping a white couple and he had
Speaker 2: to flee the country. Him and his wife had to
Speaker 2: flee the country for about a decade. Later, he was
Speaker 2: found innocent at trial and the white couple had been pressured,
Speaker 2: presumably by the FEDS, to lie and claim that he
Speaker 2: had kidnapped them. So that's the first organized black armed
Speaker 2: civil rights defense organization I know about. Wasn't the last,
Speaker 2: wasn't the largest, but it was the first that I found.
Speaker 2: And they're cool. But I'm gonna tell you about another one,
Speaker 2: and this one doesn't have a name. This one is
Speaker 2: in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The Klan was running rampant until a
Speaker 2: group of about one hundred or so local folks organized
Speaker 2: a nameless, militarily structured, semi secret society of Armed Community Defenders.
Speaker 3: Okay, can we just pause right there. Here's what I
Speaker 3: love about everything you just said. They said, don't give
Speaker 3: it a fucking name. Don't let them be able to
Speaker 3: search us. They can't find us if they don't know
Speaker 3: who we are. Keep it secret, don't talk about it
Speaker 3: in public. It was definitely fight club rules. I feel
Speaker 3: I'm inferring. I really appreciate this approach to it. That's amazing.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, you're you're you're really onto what they were
Speaker 2: onto like they and they came from all walks of life.
Speaker 2: They were factory workers to businessmen to gang members, which
Speaker 2: is not the first time. There's two times I talk
Speaker 2: about in the last episodes that I did about people
Speaker 2: fighting the clan, about gang members versus the clan. All
Speaker 2: of them had combat experience, all of them were picked
Speaker 2: for being trustworthy and of good character. There's like this
Speaker 2: like intense background check to join this secret society. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to be like these are the rules that
Speaker 2: other people should use. But you had to be married,
Speaker 2: you couldn't be a drunk, and you had to have
Speaker 2: a reputation for keeping your fucking mouth shut. And I
Speaker 2: think I think this one was all men. We'll talk
Speaker 2: about later about when this was and wasn't. And the
Speaker 2: certainly the decentralized groups included a large number of women,
Speaker 2: as like you know, a lot of the examples are
Speaker 2: like the seven year old woman in the shotgun or whatever. Right,
Speaker 2: But this nameless organization they avoided all press and publicity.
Speaker 2: And what they did is they set up armed guards
Speaker 2: a side of activist residents. Like basically if someone would
Speaker 2: like slow down, they didn't recognize them, they'd be like
Speaker 2: keep fucking driving, okay. Or sometimes they as people would
Speaker 2: drive up to places, they would set up a checkpoint
Speaker 2: and stop them. And if the people couldn't prove why
Speaker 2: they were there. This is sometimes shoot at the car
Speaker 2: or whatever. Yeah, like.
Speaker 4: And uh.
Speaker 2: And they would also act as bodyguards to the like
Speaker 2: non violent. Once again, this is tied into the non
Speaker 2: violence movement. So one white activist talked about how she
Speaker 2: didn't even know she was being protected until later. People
Speaker 2: just followed her at a distance, concealed carrying, ready to
Speaker 2: fight if need be, because people were getting fucking killed
Speaker 2: for this work. You know, before the Defenders, the Klan
Speaker 2: had run patrols outside of the activist meetings. They would
Speaker 2: just like drive by and keep track of who's there
Speaker 2: or whatever. They got faced down one time and they
Speaker 2: never returned. On July eighth, nineteen sixty four, a few
Speaker 2: black teenagers went to a movie theater to test desegregation,
Speaker 2: and over two hundred white racists were there to attack
Speaker 2: these few black teenagers. So these secret Defenders showed up
Speaker 2: with two cars full of armed men, picked the teenagers
Speaker 2: up and drove them away from the mob. But the
Speaker 2: klans men were waiting at the entrance to the black
Speaker 2: neighborhood where they knew that these people would be going right,
Speaker 2: and they opened fire on the cars. The combat, vets
Speaker 2: opened fire right the fuck back. The klan went running
Speaker 2: and the klan kept its head down after that.
Speaker 3: You know what's interesting, okay m hm. So if we
Speaker 3: look at police shooting records, they're all over the map.
Speaker 3: And if they're shooting against like a lot of gangsters
Speaker 3: of all ilk like don't have they're terrible shooters because
Speaker 3: you're not doing it frequently. But police, you know, they
Speaker 3: have to do target practice or whatever, and then they're police,
Speaker 3: so they're used to drawing their guns or whatever. But
Speaker 3: going up against military people is an entirely different, game
Speaker 3: changing scenario. Like you are not prepared for battle the
Speaker 3: way that they are. And I love the idea.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: This I think is something that we're starting to talk
Speaker 3: about and see more in our popular culture. But the
Speaker 3: return of World War two vets is a huge impact
Speaker 3: in the civil rights movement strictly because like, when you
Speaker 3: understand what it is to be liberated, you actually have
Speaker 3: helped liberate cities, you're treated with respect, and then you
Speaker 3: come home and you're expected to, you know, for lack
Speaker 3: of a better word, go back to being a nigga.
Speaker 3: Like it's really I think empowering to then say you
Speaker 3: know what, No, we have all of the tools and
Speaker 3: skills because white America didn't want to go fight this war.
Speaker 3: Like that is bananas, Like you made the problem worse.
Speaker 3: You made the problems by not going to fight it yourself.
Speaker 3: I love this story. This is beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, totally, And like it's not a coincidence to me.
Speaker 2: I mean, like obviously, like most of the wars the
Speaker 2: US has gotten involved in have not been good, right,
Speaker 2: and like I know there's like a critique to be
Speaker 2: made of the good war whatever, but like overall, it
Speaker 2: is good that people went and stop the fucking Nazis
Speaker 2: right where to end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they had a good time to a stop.
Speaker 2: The current US wars are not ones that I would
Speaker 2: be like, oh, that's cool, right, But it's still not
Speaker 2: a coincidence that some of the people one of the
Speaker 2: people who stopped the Colorado maybe two of the people
Speaker 2: who stopped the Colorado spring shooters were vets.
Speaker 3: Both of them were vets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and complicated feelings about all of it, but but
Speaker 2: learning how to engage in bad situations is a skill
Speaker 2: that is useful within our communities.
Speaker 3: And we've seen a lot of vets. Because I'm vocal
Speaker 3: about over policing and the fact that the police have
Speaker 3: been describe themselves as being in combat zones when they're like,
Speaker 3: you are not, and if you were, this is not
Speaker 3: how you'd be allowed to behave if you were part
Speaker 3: of the military. Get the hell out, And I hopefully
Speaker 3: continue to see arise in that because it should be different.
Speaker 3: And you know, I don't like people playing military like
Speaker 3: you either are or you aren't. But to be out
Speaker 3: here in Regalia talking about how you're in an armed
Speaker 3: force when you've never served a day in your life
Speaker 3: is pathetic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, you're in an armed And then also just
Speaker 2: like talking about that being like, so you're in a
Speaker 2: war against the American people, great, awesome, cool, if you're
Speaker 2: in a war against the American people, well, I'm one
Speaker 2: of the American you know, like I guess I'm a
Speaker 2: I don't even want to say that out loud, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: well this actually next one will tie into policing in
Speaker 2: a little bit interesting way. The group from this era
Speaker 2: that actually, wait, maybe time to tell you instead of
Speaker 2: about this group from this era, maybe it's time to
Speaker 2: tell you about capitalism and how you can engage in
Speaker 2: it and all of us who are on this podcast
Speaker 2: like routinely eating food. I'm just going down a limp
Speaker 2: speak for you. But I like eating food every day,
Speaker 2: delicious addicted to food, and I like eating it. And
Speaker 2: I use money for most of my food. My gardene
Speaker 2: skills are not quite there yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they haven't made it free yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say here's the secret, though, I get
Speaker 2: paid whether or not you buy the things from the margaret.
Speaker 2: They're not supposed to know. Yeah, buy it or dout?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Ads back from ads, Welcome back from ads. Those are
Speaker 2: some good services. It's usually pot When I listened to
Speaker 2: Coole Zone shows, I mostly hear ads for other podcasts,
Speaker 2: which is actually fine by me. I like podcasts. It's
Speaker 2: a recentably big podcast. Yeah, big fan. So we have
Speaker 2: the Unnamed Defenders, and now we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: the group from this era that did all this most
Speaker 2: famously integrated effect. We're going to talk about the Deacons
Speaker 2: for Defense and Justice. And it's funny too because I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: the most famous group about this, Like, I didn't know
Speaker 2: about this group until very recently because I just didn't
Speaker 2: hear much about the armed component of the nonviolent struggle
Speaker 2: because when I was in school, they just taught me
Speaker 2: about pacifism. And then when I was like getting into
Speaker 2: you know, political radicalism or whatever, I would just mostly
Speaker 2: hear about the Black Power era and the Black Panthers
Speaker 2: and the stuff that comes later. But so this sort
Speaker 2: of I didn't hear about the Deacons for Defense and Justice.
Speaker 3: Nobody talks about the organizers. It's not glamorous, it's not
Speaker 3: scary or dangerous or cool. It's just work. But it's
Speaker 3: in this sorry, but it's essential work. It's absolutely necessary
Speaker 3: work for any of the other things to happen.
Speaker 2: No, totally, totally, Well, this one is going to get
Speaker 2: a little scary, but it's going to work out for
Speaker 2: most of the people in the story.
Speaker 4: Yay.
Speaker 2: Jonesborough, Louisiana is a tiny fucking town. About four thousand
Speaker 2: people live there in nineteen sixty, not the size of
Speaker 2: town that most people think about very often. The soil
Speaker 2: there was shitty, which meant that there were no plantations there,
Speaker 2: but it was hella segregated and poor. It had a
Speaker 2: huge clan presence, and most people, white or black, worked
Speaker 2: for the paper mill or the chemical factory. There'd been
Speaker 2: an NAACP chapter there in the forties, but Louisiana passed
Speaker 2: a law forcing NAACP chapters i think specifically, to disclose
Speaker 2: their memberships because they're racist. And so they changed their
Speaker 2: name from the NAACP to the Jackson Parish Progressive Voters
Speaker 2: League in order to not have to give all of
Speaker 2: their names to.
Speaker 3: The fuck Sometimes we got to play these games, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: you and coming here being racist, I just got to
Speaker 3: outsmart you protect by people that is nuts to be, like, hey,
Speaker 3: can we get a hit list please?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh god, yeah, we changed our name. No more NAACP.
Speaker 2: This other thing doesn't even mention race. It's just so
Speaker 2: happens that everyone who cares about progress in this town.
Speaker 3: It's fuck the church claim accepts everybody. So perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in nineteen sixty four, the Voting Rights Act
Speaker 2: had passed, making all voter registration and all that shit illegal.
Speaker 2: But of course nothing changed on the ground in and
Speaker 2: of itself. And so that's what you know, SNICK and
Speaker 2: Core and all these other groups were doing was in
Speaker 2: some ways okay. So it's like a major part of
Speaker 2: US history, especially when it comes to race relations, is
Speaker 2: the federal government finally fucking passing some basic human decency laws,
Speaker 2: but then not actually enforcing them or being capable of
Speaker 2: enforcing them, depending on the time and whether or not
Speaker 2: they care different places, so people actually have to go
Speaker 2: out and do it right against their own local governments
Speaker 2: and their sheriffs and their shit and all that shit.
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty four jones Burg, Louisiana, almost at Alabama, but
Speaker 2: jones Burg, Louisiana, the Klan is running around being fucked up.
Speaker 2: They burned like four or five black churches, They burned
Speaker 2: down a Masonic hall, they burned down a Baptist center,
Speaker 2: and black and white core organizers came to town to work
Speaker 2: on voter registration, and they had been invited by the
Speaker 2: local Black Baptist church, and they were housed in a
Speaker 2: house that got called Freedom House that the local community
Speaker 2: fixed up for them, which is like cool and also
Speaker 2: has disadvantages. Most of the time organizers would come in
Speaker 2: and stay with a family, which gives a certain amount
Speaker 2: of protection, but instead the community was able to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: we have this dilapidated house, will fix up for you
Speaker 2: and you can all live there. But unfortunately target yeah,
Speaker 2: full of non violent people and non violent people are
Speaker 2: alone little bit at risk because they're known to not
Speaker 2: be carrying firearms. So as soon as CORR starts coming
Speaker 2: to town, students in the area start fighting against segregation,
Speaker 2: specifically black students. I don't think the white kids were
Speaker 2: super woke. The Klan, of course, was like, what's that
Speaker 2: black people voting and having a say and how their
Speaker 2: lives are ran There's some of them are swimming in
Speaker 2: public or reading in the library. We can't have that
Speaker 2: because that's how they all talk.
Speaker 3: Totally, No, that was a spot on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, creation, thank you. I'm definitely not getting any acting
Speaker 2: jobs out of this podcast. But and so they started
Speaker 2: doing more clan shit, and they started harassing the house
Speaker 2: and any picket lines that people were forming. And they
Speaker 2: first they were like drive by yelling shit at the house,
Speaker 2: and then they would drive by shooting guns in the
Speaker 2: air at the house, and then they would just drive
Speaker 2: by shooting the house. Right, And since core was nonviolent,
Speaker 2: they weren't armed, but a few locals were, including a
Speaker 2: guy known to history with the awesome name Chili Willie Hell. Yes,
Speaker 2: Ernest Chili Willy Thomas. I'm actually sort of annoyed most
Speaker 2: history books like his name is clearly Chili Willi. That's
Speaker 2: why it's in quotes. It's the name he actually wanted
Speaker 2: to go by. But most people, most of the history books,
Speaker 2: like avoid specifically calling them that. They just call him
Speaker 2: Ernest over or whatever.
Speaker 3: Again, listen, if somebody has a joke nickname and it's
Speaker 3: referred to, that gives you so much character, like depiction
Speaker 3: and inspiration, Like you understand, like a you don't fuck
Speaker 3: with someone named Chili Willy. Okay, that's under all circumstances,
Speaker 3: you do not want to pick a fight, Okay.
Speaker 4: But it's also it's like that's what he wanted to
Speaker 4: be called. Just call him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: So Chili Willy and a few of his friends start
Speaker 2: hanging out at Freedom House. They're just start sitting on
Speaker 2: the porch or shadowing the activists as they move through town. Basically,
Speaker 2: the deal was like, y'all could be non violent, that's great.
Speaker 2: Us we're not nonviolent. Well defend you, to quote a
Speaker 2: core organizer Fred Brooks, if we had a picket line.
Speaker 2: These guys were standing on the corner on both sides
Speaker 2: of the street. Wherever we went. It was like a caravan.
Speaker 2: These guys in the pickup trucks with these high powered
Speaker 2: rifles up in the back. White people didn't mess with us.
Speaker 2: The defenders would come by at night and want to
Speaker 2: know what the next day's agenda was. Different ones of
Speaker 2: them took different patrols. We told them. They told us
Speaker 2: we were not to leave the black community without security.
Speaker 2: And to quote another organizer about the impact of the experience,
Speaker 2: he's like writing back to the rest of cors, the
Speaker 2: concept that we are going to go south and through
Speaker 2: love and patience change the hearts and minds of southern
Speaker 2: whites should be totally disregarded. So some new defenders. So
Speaker 2: you have these defenders, right, they don't have a name.
Speaker 2: Yet another group of folks want to do it legit
Speaker 2: as best as they could. So they go to the
Speaker 2: local as the local high school football coach. His name
Speaker 2: is Frederick Douglas kirkpatri and he goes to the police
Speaker 2: chief and he's like, let me set up an all
Speaker 2: volunteer black auxiliary to the police to protect the black
Speaker 2: community and core and the police chief went for it.
Speaker 2: The black auxillary got no I know you see yeah.
Speaker 3: You're like, my mind is melting white.
Speaker 2: Oh it, it's gonna get messy, it's gonna get interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, So that the black auxiliary is given an old
Speaker 2: cop car and handcuffs. You'll be shocked to know the
Speaker 2: close relations between the police and the black community didn't last.
Speaker 2: Chili Willy and the original Defenders, for their part, they
Speaker 2: are not fucking stoked about this, right. They do not
Speaker 2: trust the black cops. They figure these black cops are
Speaker 2: going to do the dirty work for the white cops.
Speaker 3: They're all blue.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So that summer, we're still in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 2: some Core organizers get ambushed by the Klan who you
Speaker 2: turned in the middle of the highway to trap the
Speaker 2: Core organizers. But the Core organizers get out of it
Speaker 2: with like sick driving skills. Hell yeah, they like floor
Speaker 2: it and they basically like almost run a clan car
Speaker 2: off the road. I think they almost run someone over.
Speaker 2: Like they get the fuck out of there.
Speaker 3: That's horrifying.
Speaker 2: But the clans people they go and snitch them out
Speaker 2: for their dangerous driving. The clan people go to the
Speaker 2: cops and are like, hey, these Core organizers almost killed
Speaker 2: us on the road. You should arrest them. So the
Speaker 2: white chief of police tells one of the black deputies
Speaker 2: go arrest these Corps organizers. The deputy is like, that's
Speaker 2: not what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 3: That's not so I have to go back to my
Speaker 3: community after this. I don't live. My mom in the
Speaker 3: eyes like please don't ask me to do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so, you know, deputy's like, well, that's not
Speaker 2: what I'm gonna do. So instead, the black deputies go
Speaker 2: and provide an armed escort to help the Core organizers
Speaker 2: get out of town away from an arrest warrant. Okay,
Speaker 2: come on, and so but they're still like, maybe there's
Speaker 2: something to it, maybe we can still be the Black deputies.
Speaker 2: So then there are ordered to arrest some the Blo
Speaker 2: teenagers who are at the swimming pool, and they refused again.
Speaker 2: And then the final straw, the Klan drove through the
Speaker 2: black part of town with the police escort, throwing out
Speaker 2: leaflets about outside agitators because that's like been the rhetoric
Speaker 2: that the right wing has used forever as being like
Speaker 2: these outside agitators whatever. And Kirkpatrick is finally like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and the Klan have a police escort as they're driving
Speaker 2: through the black community throwing this out. And so the
Speaker 2: deputies and Kirkpatrick are like never mind. Specifically, he told
Speaker 2: the chief of police that if the clan convoy ever
Speaker 2: comes back through town, quote, there was going to be
Speaker 2: some killing going on.
Speaker 3: I thought it was gonna be poetic, like, I just
Speaker 3: want to let you know, some murder will happen.
Speaker 2: You have to kill people, because I'm gonna make some
Speaker 2: if this happens amazing. After this, the two groups, Kirkpatrick's
Speaker 2: deputies and Chili Willi's defender, they feel all right with
Speaker 2: each other now, and the deputies proved that they weren't
Speaker 2: going to be pawns for the white power structure.
Speaker 3: Good for you, deputies, And.
Speaker 2: As a shit heated up, more and more black defenders
Speaker 2: started showing up, and the spirit of we're not going
Speaker 2: to fucking put up with this was spreading throughout the town,
Speaker 2: and not just the defenders. At one point, some clansmen
Speaker 2: tried to burn across in one of the reverend's yards,
Speaker 2: only to be scared off by the reverend's wife, who
Speaker 2: started shooting at them with a rifle. Yeah yeah, it
Speaker 2: love it. And once again, majority of these defenders were
Speaker 2: vets World War II, in the Korean War vets, and
Speaker 2: they skewed at older than the activists they were protecting.
Speaker 2: They also had strict membership requirements. Everyone had to be
Speaker 2: committed to defense only. Everyone had to be committed to
Speaker 2: keeping a cool head about them. And then kind of famously,
Speaker 2: they weren't ideological. A lot of the stuff that comes later,
Speaker 2: for better and worse, is ideological, right in different ways.
Speaker 2: These people people were not socialists, they were not communists,
Speaker 2: they weren't anything as as a group. Individuals within them
Speaker 2: were all kinds of different things, I'm sure, including conservatives,
Speaker 2: including liberals, and their ideology, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: was basically like we shouldn't let people fuck up the
Speaker 2: black community and murder civil rights activists.
Speaker 3: Well, I think also, you know, to your point, if
Speaker 3: they're all slightly older than the people they're protecting, there's
Speaker 3: absolutely like a generational thing of like, you know, our
Speaker 3: grandparents were enslaved, perhaps some of their parents were enslaved.
Speaker 3: This is liberation at a next level. And what we're
Speaker 3: not going to do is allow you to kill our
Speaker 3: young without putting up a fight first. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: think it's a really beautiful intergenerational play of like, Okay,
Speaker 3: you guys have this vision for the future, you go
Speaker 3: out and claim that we'll do our best to keep
Speaker 3: you safe while you do that. I think that's really beautiful.
Speaker 2: No, that is so fucking beautiful and that's so accurate.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what's happening here, and it like, wow, I
Speaker 2: care about that a lot. I talk sometimes about, like
Speaker 2: you know, in the trans community, about how like oh, well,
Speaker 2: like I'm I'm not that old, but I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm about forty, and I'm like, you know, do anything
Speaker 2: to protect the like young trans kids, right, and like
Speaker 2: you know who don't appreciate it, you know, like and
Speaker 2: like I that I don't want to draw a direct
Speaker 2: one to one struggle.
Speaker 3: Ye, like listen as somebody who's queer, like there isn't
Speaker 3: absolutely a direct correlation between communities that are actively being haunted, Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: like literally hunted and and and then you know, legislated against,
Speaker 3: which is an entirely different mind fuck of of how
Speaker 3: do I just actively live my life in society without
Speaker 3: being fucked by the government that's supposed to be protecting me.
Speaker 3: And how we how we treat are young you know,
Speaker 3: we want them as much as young people often can't
Speaker 3: appreciate what's being done for them because their worldview is different, right,
Speaker 3: Like they're, oh, we need to be in the streets. Oh,
Speaker 3: we're going to be vocal. We're going to make the
Speaker 3: change that you guys couldn't accomplish happen, Which is a
Speaker 3: thing I hear. You know, a lot of young black activists,
Speaker 3: or even before they're activists more more, you know, as
Speaker 3: they're beginning their journey into activism, I'll say often they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we're not going to be like you be like.
Speaker 4: Chill.
Speaker 3: Okay, we find won a lot of battles, but with
Speaker 3: just that, it's not done yet. Yeah, but we will
Speaker 3: still no matter how you feel, we don't want you
Speaker 3: to be hurt. Yeh, in the same ways we were hurt,
Speaker 3: in the same way we saw our elders hurt. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it's generationally, it's the only thing I think
Speaker 3: that a lot of marginalized communities can do is do
Speaker 3: their best to build a wall of protection around the
Speaker 3: next gener coming up, so hopefully they can get a
Speaker 3: little bit further. I think there's a direct correlation.
Speaker 2: No, and that that makes so much sense in it.
Speaker 2: I think it you know, if one of the main
Speaker 2: themes of this episode is about how two different strategies
Speaker 2: can work together. In this case, it's non violence and
Speaker 2: self defense. You know that they like in a similar way,
Speaker 2: the like you carry this further, but we will stand
Speaker 2: here and protect you as you do it, Like here
Speaker 2: are all the resources that we have acquired, that we
Speaker 2: have built up so that you can do this thing. No,
Speaker 2: that's really I really like that. And I guess that
Speaker 2: what Ala Baker was doing, you know, by like being
Speaker 2: the mentor to snick without like and even if her
Speaker 2: main advice was you all should figure out what you
Speaker 2: want to do and don't listen to the charismatic leaders
Speaker 2: who tell you that you should do what they wanted
Speaker 2: you to do.
Speaker 3: I love it, Like I reminds me a lot of
Speaker 3: what Rose Park is doing in her later years, you know,
Speaker 3: also like being a symbol of this one very specific
Speaker 3: and vital movement, but then also you know, actively working
Speaker 3: behind the scenes to help support this next generation as
Speaker 3: they continued the fight. Yeah, I mean being boots on
Speaker 3: the ground talking to be like she she's so much
Speaker 3: larger than that one moment. But again, didn't bother to
Speaker 3: try and take up space. That wasn't that was meant
Speaker 3: for the people and not for an individual. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: so selfless this week, but the people who are doing
Speaker 3: it right and it's just incredibly impressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. And I you know, one of the
Speaker 2: things I struggle with on this show is that I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about cool people, but I don't believe in
Speaker 2: like heroes. I believe in like role models, or I
Speaker 2: believe in like respecting the work people have done, you know,
Speaker 2: and respecting these stories. Not so that we can be like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not as cool as that person. I'll never do anything,
Speaker 2: but instead so that people can know like we are all.
Speaker 2: You know, this person wasn't like, you know, I doubt
Speaker 2: when Ella Baker first started, Elbaker was like, I'm the
Speaker 2: one who's gonna change all this shit just did. But
Speaker 2: it was in front of her, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, she's got to the work. Yeah just started.
Speaker 3: She was like, no, this has to be different, and
Speaker 3: it's Yeah, it'll be interesting going forward how we as
Speaker 3: a society manage our heroes. I think, particularly with the
Speaker 3: rise of social media, we're seeing a decline in celebrity. Yeah,
Speaker 3: right there, we don't have you're Michael Jackson's where people
Speaker 3: are fainting just passing them in the street. They're like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I'm in the vicinity of this person, right,
Speaker 3: And I think celebrity is going to become to some degree.
Speaker 3: I think I think also have popular people that were
Speaker 3: interested in following their stories. But I think that era
Speaker 3: of hero icon worship is we're moving past it slowly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Instead, what we should be worshiping is uh, potatoes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: potatoes and whatever. Literally whatever. The first ad you hear
Speaker 2: once we cut to ads is should be your new God.
Speaker 3: Awesome. I can't wait to figure out where any god is.
Speaker 2: I hope it's not the Highway State patrol or gold
Speaker 2: or one of the other man.
Speaker 3: Meaning and evil and what you're really worshiping is your
Speaker 3: fear of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's some ads aka your new gods. Okay, we
Speaker 2: are back. And we were talking about how Chili Willy
Speaker 2: and Frederick Douglass are getting together, and it was actually
Speaker 2: this person who was ideologically not an ideologically convinced white
Speaker 2: core organizer, who was very into non violence, was kind
Speaker 2: of the one who was like, no, you all need
Speaker 2: to sit down and actually have these meetings and figure
Speaker 2: out what you're doing. His name is Charlie Fenton. He
Speaker 2: spent most of his summer in jail and then he
Speaker 2: came to Jonesborough and he was super ideologically committed to nonviolence,
Speaker 2: but he he quickly realized that the two things went
Speaker 2: very well together, that building a non violence resistance movement
Speaker 2: in Durance Jonesborough required the work of these defenders, and
Speaker 2: so he was like, hey, maybe you all should have
Speaker 2: some structure. And so in November nineteen sixty four, the
Speaker 2: two groups met up in the Masonic Hall and they
Speaker 2: formed a protective association. The core organizer wasn't part of it. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: he was like, hey, maybe I'll meet up and then
Speaker 2: dipped out, which is good. That is what he should
Speaker 2: have done. On January fifth, nineteen sixty five, they formally
Speaker 2: incorporated with a name. They were the Deacons for Defense
Speaker 2: and Justice. And what's another thing that I think is
Speaker 2: really cool. The two founders, Chili William and Kirkpatrick. They
Speaker 2: didn't become the leaders. The president was another one of
Speaker 2: the defenders, the vice president another one of the deputies.
Speaker 2: The founders stayed part of it, but they didn't take
Speaker 2: control of it, and they set up a structure as
Speaker 2: really interesting to me. There's members pay dues of two
Speaker 2: dollars a month, which is basically pooling money for ammunition.
Speaker 2: Everyone provided their own rifles, and they set up four
Speaker 2: membership tiers, which wasn't like a hierarchy of command. They
Speaker 2: had a command structure, but it's unrelated when talking about
Speaker 2: you had your core group of dues paying activists, and
Speaker 2: then a broader group of people who sometimes paid dues,
Speaker 2: and then you had an even broader group of reinforcements
Speaker 2: who could be called upon in time of need. And
Speaker 2: then you had a fourth tier, which was basically like, look,
Speaker 2: if you're like doing really good shit, you want to
Speaker 2: call yourself a deacon. That's chill, And that seems like
Speaker 2: a really smart way to run a community defense organization
Speaker 2: that acknowledges that not everyone is going to make it
Speaker 2: the center of their lives. Right.
Speaker 3: It sounds like radical acceptance, like come as you are,
Speaker 3: Like if you want to be all in, great, if
Speaker 3: you just kind of want to hang around and see
Speaker 3: if that's about help, cool, We just accept you as
Speaker 3: you are, just be about the mission.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. At first it was more or less all men,
Speaker 2: except some one or two women who were helping on
Speaker 2: an organizational level. Slowly, more women started becoming involved, especially
Speaker 2: as Core's influence rubbed off on it, because Core was
Speaker 2: actually fairly actively gender integrated. And Kirkpatrick, the guy who
Speaker 2: had been a deputy, he got fired from the high
Speaker 2: school for starting the Deacons, which led to the deacons
Speaker 2: first conflict with the authorities. Students at that school started
Speaker 2: picketing because of his dismissal and for black control of
Speaker 2: black schools, which stands out from the broader civil rights
Speaker 2: movement at the time, which was much more focused on desegregation,
Speaker 2: whereas in this case these students were focused on black autonomy.
Speaker 2: It is a fairly major tension that was going to
Speaker 2: emerge more clearly in a couple of years. But the
Speaker 2: kids are picketing their high school and firefighters show up
Speaker 2: ready to hose them down right because they're being fucks.
Speaker 3: It's the good use of the fire department, super good
Speaker 3: use of water. Yeah, aces job everyone.
Speaker 2: Well, the deacons staunch conservative conservationists. They take firing positions
Speaker 2: and say to that, to the fire fighters. Quote, if
Speaker 2: you turn those water hoses on those kids, there's going
Speaker 2: to be some blood out here today.
Speaker 3: Okay, again, just not mixing the words up, just letting
Speaker 3: you know immediately, don't fuck around.
Speaker 2: It's just what will happen. And the firefighters.
Speaker 3: Left goodbye again, we say, because they're just walking around
Speaker 3: so ridiculous.
Speaker 2: And the deacons, after they win this fight, they get popular.
Speaker 2: A whole new group of people start joining the civil
Speaker 2: rights movement, folks who hadn't been attracted to the more
Speaker 2: middle class sensibilities of the older groups, and nor the
Speaker 2: people who hadn't been attracted to the specifically youth nonviolent spirit.
Speaker 2: You get the sort of like third basically the people
Speaker 2: who are like, oh shit, okay, yeah, this is the
Speaker 2: tactic that appeals to us.
Speaker 3: It works. I bet it was the response because you
Speaker 3: when you hear non violence, you're like, I'm not about
Speaker 3: to be in the streets getting my ass whopped. Like
Speaker 3: it just does not sound like it's not appealing at
Speaker 3: least to me as an individual anyway. I understand the
Speaker 3: yeah behind doing it, but the peel of like and
Speaker 3: now we're just gonna allow ourselves to be be as
Speaker 3: a showing of like what happens to us anyway is right, God,
Speaker 3: it's so brief. But then you know this idea of like,
Speaker 3: oh no, actually you can be armed, and we helped
Speaker 3: protect and save kids. Now those water hoses break bones,
Speaker 3: like it's really dangerous. That's incredible. Yeah. I could definitely
Speaker 3: see just regular community folks being like, oh, okay, we
Speaker 3: have a system now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And So there's another mill town in Louisiana.
Speaker 2: It's the opposite side of Louisiana. It feels like three
Speaker 2: hundred miles away or some shit. It's called Bogolusa, and
Speaker 2: it was one of the worst hot beds of clan
Speaker 2: activity in the in the country. It had the most
Speaker 2: clansmen per capita anywhere in Louisiana, which is an impressive
Speaker 2: state to have the most clansmen per capita. In klansmen
Speaker 2: held office. They had enough power that when President lynd
Speaker 2: And Johnson sent a special aid to go give a
Speaker 2: talk about desegregation, he wasn't able to speak. The President's
Speaker 2: fucking aid like. The event was shut down by burning
Speaker 2: crosses and angry racists. They went out and passed the
Speaker 2: clans people went out and passed handbills to every white
Speaker 2: family in town saying if you show up to this meeting,
Speaker 2: we will kill you. Where there's strong repression, there's strong resistance.
Speaker 2: Black farmers in the area already had a very strong
Speaker 2: They had a lot of advantages the black folks from
Speaker 2: a strategic point of view, they had two things going
Speaker 2: for them. The rural nearby area. The black farmers in
Speaker 2: that area largely owned their own land, which made them
Speaker 2: substantially sort of sharecropping or anything like that, so they're
Speaker 2: much more resistant against economic repression. And then black workers
Speaker 2: in the town were largely incorporated into a few different unions,
Speaker 2: and therefore they had a lot of experience organizing. And
Speaker 2: so for decades the NAACP had prevented the clan from
Speaker 2: purging black voters from the roles. So that town they
Speaker 2: invite some core activists white some white core activists to
Speaker 2: come to town and house them in a black home.
Speaker 2: The clan shows up at the house, but so did
Speaker 2: armed Black Towns people. The Klan fucked off, as is
Speaker 2: their want. The core organizers tried to drive out of town,
Speaker 2: but they were followed by an angry mob and a car,
Speaker 2: and so they took refuge in a black cafe where
Speaker 2: the same scene repeated. Angry fucks showed up and started
Speaker 2: trying to surround the cafe, but so did armed defenders,
Speaker 2: and the klan fucked off again, and the basically the
Speaker 2: organizers escorted home out of town by an armed caravan
Speaker 2: of defenders. One of the organizers later he said, I
Speaker 2: thought I was a pacifist, but then I realized I
Speaker 2: wasn't anymore. That's not a direct quote. Sorry, I said
Speaker 2: that in my direct quote voice, but that's my paraphrase voice.
Speaker 2: And so Bogolusa formed the second Deacons chapter after that event.
Speaker 2: By May twenty third, nineteen sixty five, the mayor of
Speaker 2: bogolu So repealed all segregation mandates. And wow, yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow, I'm just trying to think of, like, that's such
Speaker 3: a fast turnaround for a space that has numbers, which
Speaker 3: I think would be, you know, a factor in the
Speaker 3: speed in which you'd be able to desegregate a space
Speaker 3: violence where or the threat of violence works.
Speaker 2: I get like stopping other people's violence in this case,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's stopping letting their violence work. And
Speaker 2: again it's funny because it's like, I'm not ideologically committed
Speaker 2: to nonviolence. I actually and I find it strategically interesting,
Speaker 2: but not It's not a strategy that I've ever personally
Speaker 2: particularly employed. Sure, but like it's still interesting to me.
Speaker 2: It's within the tool the toolbox of activist tools, you know.
Speaker 2: But when the national director of CORE showed up in town,
Speaker 2: I think the I think the way it down is
Speaker 2: that the like local police were like, all right, we'll
Speaker 2: protect you, and he was like, no, I'm good, the
Speaker 2: Deacons will protect me.
Speaker 3: Actually that half people are ready for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Oh my god. So okay. So that's
Speaker 2: like the either way nonviolence is relying on armed people,
Speaker 2: and it's trying to rely on cops and like federal
Speaker 2: troops and like the state as the armed force, right,
Speaker 2: and so instead he's saying, no, the armed force I
Speaker 2: trust are the Deacons for Defense and Justice. In the end,
Speaker 2: after only a few years, the Deacons had twenty one
Speaker 2: formal chapters and forty six affiliates throughout the country, But
Speaker 2: by nineteen sixty eight they were overshadowed by the Black
Speaker 2: Panther Party, which I'm sure we'll talk about more some
Speaker 2: other time, and sort of a close to this era.
Speaker 2: As the sixties wear on, tensions are growing within the
Speaker 2: civil rights movement because it was it was finding itself.
Speaker 2: It was starting to be about more than just voting
Speaker 2: rights and desegregation. And there's I named James Meredith, and
Speaker 2: I first wrote there was this guy. But there is
Speaker 2: a guy. He's still alive. He's a black man with
Speaker 2: some Choctaw heritage. He was a vet. He spent nine
Speaker 2: years in the Air Force from nineteen fifty one to
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty. He's actually fairly conservative, but he's doesn't like
Speaker 2: white supremacy. He integrated the University of Mississippi, which did
Speaker 2: not want to be integrated by him.
Speaker 3: Missis Sippy still doesn't want to be No.
Speaker 2: I believe that this is the democratic governor who said, like,
Speaker 2: I will die before I allowed desegregation in my state,
Speaker 2: or something like that. I can't remember it exactly.
Speaker 3: You're welcome to do that, sir, I know, right.
Speaker 2: Deacons of defense are like I volunteer. It took a
Speaker 2: bunch of applications and a lawsuit with help from the NAACP,
Speaker 2: and then federal intervention, and then he had to survive
Speaker 2: a frame up on voter fraud, all kinds of shit.
Speaker 2: They did everything they could to try and stop him.
Speaker 2: But when he finally went to go enroll because he
Speaker 2: had succeeded, these lawsuits. It took four hundred law enforcement
Speaker 2: folks from various federal agencies and shit to protect him,
Speaker 2: and still racists, including mostly the fucking white racist students
Speaker 2: at this fucking university, rioted to try and prevent him
Speaker 2: from enrolling and like fought those four hundred cops or whatever.
Speaker 2: So he goes to the school, he graduates, he faces
Speaker 2: a ton of abuse the whole time from racist students,
Speaker 2: which is frankly most of the students. For his next degree,
Speaker 2: for some completely understandable reason, he goes to a university
Speaker 2: in Nigeria.
Speaker 3: Yes, get all the way out of you're like no.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty six, he declares that he's going to
Speaker 2: do a march against fear, and he's going to do
Speaker 2: it without. He's going to go on a two hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty mile march from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 2: He didn't want any of the major civil rights organizations involved.
Speaker 2: And I believe I've read two different things. One is
Speaker 2: that he started alone and he intended to do it alone.
Speaker 2: And one is that he specifically said only black men
Speaker 2: can join me, and I think that meant black men.
Speaker 2: It absolutely meant no white people. I'm not certain whether
Speaker 2: he was trying to make a statement about gender, and
Speaker 2: he's just like, I'm not trying to do this like
Speaker 2: how other people are doing it. I'm gonna do this thing,
Speaker 2: a march against fear. Literally the second day of the march,
Speaker 2: a white sniper shot him. He survived.
Speaker 3: Wow, wow, right, because he's still alive, you said, I.
Speaker 2: Was like, no, I know, And like, after a while
Speaker 2: in a hospital, he rejoins the march, and he didn't
Speaker 2: trust the other civil rights organizations, but he considered himself
Speaker 2: at war with white supremacy. So after this attack, leaders
Speaker 2: and and or delegates from very civil rights organizations they
Speaker 2: meet up in Memphis to decide what to do. Basically,
Speaker 2: they're like, violence can't stop our movement. We can't allow
Speaker 2: that to happen. But they were nowhere near a consensus
Speaker 2: beyond this point. This is like it's nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: and this like coalition is really starting to come apart
Speaker 2: because they don't actually all want the same things right,
Speaker 2: And they reach a compromise. They decide that they're going
Speaker 2: to go continue this march, which is a little bit funny.
Speaker 2: I kind of wonder what he thought about it because
Speaker 2: like his whole thing is he didn't want these people involved.
Speaker 2: But then again he also got s. I don't know
Speaker 2: what he wanted about this, you know, but the civil
Speaker 2: rights organizations they reach a compromise. Martin Luther King wanted
Speaker 2: no guns, yes, white people. Snick wanted deacons as an
Speaker 2: armed defense force and no white people, which fits better
Speaker 2: with James Meritith's original conception of the march anyway, And
Speaker 2: so they compromised white allies yes, deacons for defense yes.
Speaker 2: And the split in this movement is about a ton
Speaker 2: of things. It's about the role of white organizers, and
Speaker 2: I think especially about white leadership and like direction. But
Speaker 2: maybe I'm just saying that. I not one hundred cent
Speaker 2: certain it's about the use of firearms. It's about the
Speaker 2: growing disenchantment with the political process specifically, Like there's this
Speaker 2: whole thing that I didn't even get into, where like
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party was like, nah, we actually don't fucking
Speaker 2: care about you. Fuck you. And also there's this question
Speaker 2: about growing militancy. There's like this question about like what
Speaker 2: people actually like want. Do people want a revolution? Do
Speaker 2: they want to be accepted within mainstream society? And specifically
Speaker 2: about the desire for desegregation versus black power, which is
Speaker 2: not always a dichotomy but is like kind of presented
Speaker 2: as one in a lot of these conversations. But both
Speaker 2: SNICK and the SCLC and you know, these groups that
Speaker 2: don't like each other. They finish this march, the March
Speaker 2: Against Fear. Fifteen thousand people are on the march by
Speaker 2: the end of the march, including ten Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: fucking cool and like, it's interesting because they had mostly
Speaker 2: moved away from protest marches, especially the like youth for
Speaker 2: organizers that are like, no direct action is what matters, right,
Speaker 2: But I mean, I don't know, I think it's pretty
Speaker 2: direct action if you're getting shot for trying to do it.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: And this this included ten buses of union auto workers
Speaker 2: from Chicago came down to join the march just to
Speaker 2: shout out that the labor movement did do some good
Speaker 2: things at various points in the history. And along race lines,
Speaker 2: four thousand people were registered to vote. Along the way
Speaker 2: and where we're going to end it, the last little thing,
Speaker 2: because it's sort of the end of this chunk. On
Speaker 2: June sixteenth, nineteen sixty six, Snick's president Kuame Toure, which
Speaker 2: is stokely Carmichael and all the history books, but he
Speaker 2: changes name later in life, and so I'm using both
Speaker 2: so that people know who I'm talking about. But his
Speaker 2: name was Kwame Tore And he gets arrested for trespassing
Speaker 2: on public property, which is a cool, interesting trick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how do you do that?
Speaker 2: I'm not I think you just be black. And in Greenwood, Mississippi,
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty six, he gets held for several hours.
Speaker 2: When he gets out, he goes back to the march,
Speaker 2: he gets up on the podium and he gives a speech,
Speaker 2: and he calls up a chant we want black power.
Speaker 2: I guess called his black power speech. It was, in
Speaker 2: his words, a call for black people in the country
Speaker 2: to unite, to recognize their heritage and build a sense
Speaker 2: of community. Quote more from him about this. When you
Speaker 2: talk about black power, you talk about bringing this country
Speaker 2: to its knees anytime it messes with a black man.
Speaker 2: Any white man in this country knows about power. He
Speaker 2: knows what white power is, and he ought to know
Speaker 2: what black power is. And this is not the end
Speaker 2: of the civil rights movement, but it's one of the
Speaker 2: places we can point to a split, and so it's
Speaker 2: kind of where I'm going to end it. Soon enough,
Speaker 2: you get the Black Panthers, who were ideological eclipsing the
Speaker 2: Deacons for Defense Snick and Core go radical as hell.
Speaker 2: They were done with nonviolence. Core at least embraced black nationalism.
Speaker 2: The SCLC. The NAACP in turn rejected black power, not
Speaker 2: like as a as a slogan, I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: be like whatever complicated, yeah, and going forward from there,
Speaker 2: There's so many other cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 2: But this is where we're going to leave the story.
Speaker 3: This was an amaze journey so many people I didn't
Speaker 3: know about. I love learning about the people who made
Speaker 3: the big moments possible, and especially hearing about the rural
Speaker 3: South where shit was really help for people, and like
Speaker 3: how did they deal with this? You know? It's like
Speaker 3: and also this idea of like, we need multiple forms
Speaker 3: of activism to reach our end goal. I think that's
Speaker 3: what's most interesting about this because a lot of people
Speaker 3: have issues, you know, with the NAACP at different times.
Speaker 3: For you know, their focus was legality right first, and
Speaker 3: it's also like a lot of class issues, you know,
Speaker 3: they were recording a certain type of black person, And
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting to hear how at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, like all of these different divisions had
Speaker 3: to team up and compromise on their visions in order
Speaker 3: to move the needle. Yeah, it gives me a lot
Speaker 3: of hope for where our activism is today and the
Speaker 3: things that we've been to accomplish. A lot of times
Speaker 3: that in fighting can seem insurmountable and like it's halting things,
Speaker 3: but really I think it's just making the entire movement
Speaker 3: richer totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's really you know, interesting, because there's
Speaker 4: no one right way to achieve you know, certain goals,
Speaker 4: and you might have to borrow from different baskets, and
Speaker 4: like Joel said, it's about the combination or the mixture
Speaker 4: in the compromise, you know, of all these different tactics
Speaker 4: to achieve the common goal. And sometimes you know, there
Speaker 4: is infighting and disagreements, but ultimately it's about just moving
Speaker 4: the needle forward. And I think that's really really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, thanks for coming on this journey with me, Joelle.
Speaker 2: Do you have anything that you'd like to plug here
Speaker 2: at the.
Speaker 3: You know, I please come find me on the Internet.
Speaker 3: It's where I live. I love hearing from you guys.
Speaker 3: You can find me actual money. Get j O E
Speaker 3: L L E M O N I q u E.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Ian you got anything.
Speaker 4: I'll just say, listen to some cool Zone media podcasts.
Speaker 4: Internet Hate Machine with Bridget Todd is our newest shows
Speaker 4: now and check that out wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Speaker 4: And yeah, that's all for me.
Speaker 2: I'll just say that Internet Hate Machine is my favorite
Speaker 2: way of keeping up on the Internet gossip, and it
Speaker 2: is like not like like gossip about the Internet out
Speaker 2: or whatever. It's really good. You should listen to it,
Speaker 2: That's what.
Speaker 4: It's really good. It's super timely, especially with what's going
Speaker 4: on in our current Internet landscape.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the episode where we talk about Twitter and
Speaker 3: the Elon Musk change over if you still need to
Speaker 3: catch up on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one's fun. What a fun time we're all facing.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: The thing that I would like to plug is a
Speaker 2: diversity of tactics and learning to accept that not everyone
Speaker 2: is going to agree with you, but that we can
Speaker 2: still figure some things out together. That's what I want
Speaker 2: to shout out here at the end. YAY community all right,
Speaker 2: see everyone next week. Goodbye, bye bye.
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