Deacons for Defense of Justice Offers Negro Self-Defense

June 5, 1965 - An armed, tough-minded league of Negroes, formed to defend members of their race from white terrorism, is spreading across the South.

The Deacons for Defense and Justice, born last summer in northern Louisiana, has crossed the Mississippi River to Mississippi and Alabama and plans to move into every Southern state.

Members have guns, and they have shown they are willing to use them. Twice in Louisiana they have opened fire on harassing whites.

The organization raises a hard question for advocates of nonviolence: should a civil rights organization committed to nonviolence align itself with the Deacons and accept their services?

The Deacons are causing concern among law enforcement authorities in Louisiana. The FBI has them under surveillance.

The organization was formed largely out of a belief that Negroes could not expect impartial treatment from white lawmen and that, if they were to be defended against church burnings, bombings, beatings, killings, and terrorism, they would have to do it themselves.

Earnest Jones of Jonesboro, La., the 32-year-old vice president and full-time organizer of the Deacons, said today that the organization had 50 to 55 chapters in various states of organization in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Thomas said the deacons were armed with rifles and pistols. “Everybody owns his own piece,” he said.

The organization provides ammunition, which it buys in quantity at a saving. Thomas hopes to standardize the weapons to effect further savings. He favors the .30-caliber Army carbine and the .38-caliber pistol. Some members have automatic carbines that will fire 30 rounds like a machine gun. Most now use shotguns, Thomas said. 

One of their main jobs is to protect civil rights workers and volunteers participating in civil rights activities. A person knowingly exposes himself to white violence when he walks a picket line. But when he goes to bed at night, he is entitled to rest without worry, Thomas said, and that is where the deacons come in.

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