The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement
Lance Hill
Dec 2020 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Bill Andrew Quinn
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13 hr 3 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
In 1964 a small group of African American men in Jonesboro, Louisiana, defied the nonviolence policy of the mainstream civil rights movement and formed an armed self-defense organization-the Deacons for Defense and Justice-to protect movement workers from vigilante and police violence. With their largest and most famous chapter at the center of a bloody campaign in the Ku Klux Klan stronghold of Bogalusa, Louisiana, the Deacons became a popular symbol of the growing frustration with Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent strategy and a rallying point for a militant working-class movement in the South. Lance Hill offers the first detailed history of the Deacons for Defense and Justice. In his analysis of this important yet long-overlooked organization, Hill challenges what he calls "the myth of nonviolence"-the idea that a united civil rights movement achieved its goals through nonviolent direct action led by middle-class and religious leaders. In contrast, Hill constructs a compelling historical narrative of a working-class armed self-defense movement that defied the entrenched nonviolent leadership and played a crucial role in compelling the federal government to neutralize the Klan and uphold civil rights and liberties.
About the author
Lance Hill is adjunct professor of history at Tulane University.
Bill Andrew Quinn, a nationally recognized commercial and promo voice actor, has been narrating audiobooks since 1993. When not behind the microphone, Bill can be found doing research for his radio show The Bill Andrew Quinn Radio Hour X2, watching his beloved St. Louis Cardinals on the MLB Network, or sampling craft beer.
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