CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Armed Nonviolent Civil Rights Movement
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Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, the podcast that was in reruns during the holidays. But I bet you'll still like this episode, even though I recorded it a little while ago, because I think that the way that people look back and think about the old civil rights movement, like, wow, everything was so peaceful all the time.

Well, it's not true. I mean, some stuff is peaceful, and nonviolence is an important part of political strategy. But it's certainly not the only thing that happened. And so we're going to do a rerun about the armed civil rights movement. I hope you enjoy it. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, the podcast that is totally not advocating for people to do crime, despite being a podcast almost exclusively about people who did crime.

I'm your host, Margaret Kiltoy. And our guest this week is the one and only Joelle Monique. Joelle, 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 episode? It is not still gray out. I'm going to 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. It's just making it through the wintertime.

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 audio engineer, Ian, is now our producer. Ian, how are you? I'm doing good, Margaret. I'm just honored to be on mic. I'm just happy to be here. You know, sometimes people don't like to know how the sausage is made, but here I am ruining the surprise. Yay! Yay!

And our audio engineer is, of course, Ian. And our theme music was done for the show by the wonderful musician Unwoman, which sometimes people mishear me as saying a woman, but no, it is not. I mean, yes, it is a woman, but her name is Unwoman, 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 1960s 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, desegregating 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 going to talk about today.

You all excited? You ready? I'm thrilled. This is like a boom moment for me. Like, let's hear about the start of organization. Yeah. The hard parts. The first organized group of Black defenders of the civil rights movement that I was able to find was paradoxically under the name the NAACP. Amazing. Yeah. 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 rad people have done work with the NAACP 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 SNCC and CORE were, as, like, pushing the envelope, right? But a chapter of them in Monroe, North Carolina...

went rogue. Yeah. Okay. Go on. Amazing. Yeah. Go on. All right. So you can trace this back to 1946. There was a black vet named Benny Montgomery who came home from World War II. He had a steel plate in his skull because he got wounded while, you know, stopping the fucking Nazis. And he was

His white employer back in North Carolina treated him like shit. 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. Sounds like a hero to me. I don't know. The state of North Carolina did not find Benny to be a hero for this particular action. And they executed him. 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 as if it's like this like great justice because he didn't get lynched. Like they, the Klan tried to, before he was executed, they tried to drag him out of the jail. But it's like, but justice prevailed and he wasn't lynched. He was instead just, I mean, he was lynched by the state instead, whatever, like. Yeah, um.

But okay, people, that is a wild thing that continues to happen today. We can look at Brittany 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, I imagine if you listen to 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. Yeah. Ridiculous.

So Benny, yeah, he gets executed. This should have been the end of it, but the Klan, they're salty. They're also like, this is grave injustice that the state is the one who killed him instead of us. Oh boy, 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. Spoiler, this doesn't happen. The Klan doesn't get their way.

A bunch of black vets met up at a barbershop, and they were like, no, we can't let that happen. So almost 40 vets with their service rifles stood guard outside the funeral home. The Klan, 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 a cool bit of symbol. Oh, that's really beautiful. Yeah.

And the Klan just noped out of there. They were like, we're gone. Goodbye, Klan, you horrible people. Westboro Baptist ass bitches, like, what? Almost like every time they face any kind of opposition, they're just like, oh, wait, never mind. Yeah. They can fight back. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Suddenly uninterested. Like, I'm sure there's counterexamples, but I haven't found them yet. Um...

I hope you never find them. I know. They don't exist and you never locate them. I know. So the local NAACP in Monroe had started out like a lot of NAACP chapters as sort of a social club for middle class black folks. But in the 1950s, the Klan started fucking with them in Monroe and most of the NAACP members left the organization because they were like, oh, this is hard and scary.

But a few of them remained, and two of them remained were vets. And they immediately started recruiting the working class to the NAACP. And they did something that no other NAACP was doing. And this one's kind of funny. They formed a chapter of the NRA.

officially, they like wrote the NRA and we were like, we would like to form a chapter called the Monroe Rifle Club or the Black Guards, as they call themselves or get called. What? Okay. Is it the only story I've found so far in any of my research where the NRA affiliated people did anything cool? Wow. All right, I want you to go back and look at your history because you're not out here defending Black people using sand in their ground.

you know, like the girls who are being trafficked and then shoot their abusers. Yeah. You know, maybe get back into your old hat. Amazing. Yeah. No, totally. And I think there's like within the sort of apolitical gun culture, there are people who are like, oh, it's cool when people fight against oppression, you know, but they're not clearly the dominant arc of the NRA or gun culture in the United States. So you now have the Black Guards.

In 1957, 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 NAACP 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, I mean, he rules. And he decides to stage a sit-in at the white-only pool. And he organizes with a bunch of kids who go and like wait in their swim trunks and towels, like waiting to be let into the pool. And of course, they're not let into the pool.

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 in their swim trunks with towels. And this is three years before the sit-in movement. Yeah. 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, like, 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 access to them is a thing that we were taught a lot. And so, you know, we would do bold ass things that as an adult, you know, I may not do. And so, yeah. Can you tell me any of those legally? Do you have any good stories? So can I tell you that story?

I will say in broad strokes, when Prop 8 was happening and we were marching a lot, this is like my early college years.

you know, there may have been some verbal harassment against some armed government officials as we were moving through the streets that, you know, today I would not, definitely not do, but we were angry and we were young and we were absolutely willing to tell people about themselves. Yeah. Yeah.

and what they should do with various granted not as brave as these kids because we were surrounded by thousands of us in the street um i think it's incredibly brave to be in the 50s standing outside a pool yeah you know without it sounds like any weapons are just in their own trunks and towels that's yeah it's amazing an amazing decision they made yeah and i i don't have any record of anything bad happening to them as a result of it um

And so the Klan, they fucking hate Dr. Perry. They already didn't like him, vice president of the NAACP. 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 Klan has this whole fucking thing against the Catholics. Wow, that is a full plate of things that the KKK is not about. No, no, not at all. So...

The Klan got together their show of force on October 5th, 1957. They had a big old rally with a big old cross burning. And then they drove an armed motorcade to Dr. Perry's house. They were going to stop Dr. Perry once and for all. But Dr. Perry and the Black Guards, they didn't scare. And they knew the Klan was coming. And they were vets. Oh, shit. So they've seen combat before. Okay. So...

Instead of a scared middle-class doctor hiding in his house, they found sandbag fortifications with automatic weapons. Oh, hell yeah. They were ready. They were about that action. Like, they were ready for it. Right, right. Come get this heat. Yeah. They wanted all the smoke. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

And so the Klan shows up and they start shooting. The Klan starts shooting at the sandbag fortifications because they're not known for their intelligence. The Blackguard fired back. And they intentionally fire into the ground because it was a defensive gesture, right? Sure. And it was meant to scare the Klan off. And it worked. The Klan stopped their raids, not just on Dr. Perry, but just in the area. The Klan's just done. Okay.

The next day, the city council bans Klan motorcades because they're like, oh, we can't have this. This will go bad. I love this news. This is wonderful. That's one thing about the Klan. They're consistent. They're afraid. They're fucking scared. And I love it. I know. Because, I mean, what is racism but this ideology of fear? It's so true.

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 societal standing. And that scares the shit out of people. It's also this 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 time.

all the damn time and it's just like I just want y'all to know slavery sounds hard like for both people it sounds exhausting I'm not trying to force people to stay or brutalize their body like nobody wants this except you we're trying to make sure we don't backslide okay that's a y'all thing we don't do that it should be 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 1950s 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 NAACP was a man named Robert Williams.

He later wrote a book called Negroes with Guns and is influential on the Black Panthers. He wrote in 1959, 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. Mm-hmm.

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. The NAACP 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 fucking read about COINTELPRO and shit. 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.

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.

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 really on to what they were on to. And they came from all walks of life. They were factory workers to businessmen to gang members, which is not the first time. There's two times I talk about in the last episodes that I did about people fighting the Klan, about gang members versus the Klan members.

All of them had combat experience. All of them were picked for being trustworthy and of good character. There was like this like intense background check to join the secret society. 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 this one was all men. We'll talk about later about when this was and wasn't. And certainly the decentralized groups included a large number of women as like, you know, a lot of the examples are like the 70-year-old woman with a 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 activist residents. Like basically if someone would like slow down and they didn't recognize them, they'd be like, keep fucking driving.

Okay. 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. Get the hell out. And they would also...

act as bodyguards to the non-violent. Once again, this is tied into the non-violence movement. So one white activist talks 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 fucking killed for this work, you know? Before the defenders, the Klan had run patrols outside of the activist meetings. They would just drive by and keep track of who was there or whatever. They got face down one time and they never returned.

On July 8th, 1964, a few black teenagers went to a movie theater to test desegregation. And over 200 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 opened fire right the fuck back,

The Klan went running and the Klan kept its head down after that. You know what's interesting? Okay. 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. Oh, yeah. Frequently. But please, you know, they have to do target practice or whatever. And then they're police. So they're used to drawing their 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. And this, I think, is something that.

We're starting to talk about and see more in our popular culture, but the return of World War II vets is a huge impact in the civil rights movement, strictly because when you understand what it is to be liberated, you actually have helped liberate cities. You're treated with respect. And then you come home and you're 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 problem worse 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, obviously, most of the wars the US has gotten involved in have not been good, right? And I know there's the critique to be made of the good war or whatever, but overall, it is good that people went and stopped the fucking Nazis, right? They needed to end. Yeah. And they had a good time to a stop.

The current U.S. 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 stopped the Colorado, maybe two of the people who stopped the Colorado Springs shooters were vets. Both of them were vets. Yeah, and complicated feelings about all of it, but learning how to engage in combat

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 often describe themselves as being in combat zones when they're like, you are not. And even 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 we continue to see a rise 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 in regalia 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 I'm in a... I don't even want to say that out loud. But yeah, um...

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...

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Those are some good services. It's usually pot. When I listen to Cool Zone shows, I mostly hear ads for other podcasts, which is actually fine by me. I like podcasts. There's a reason I make podcasts. 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 and to greatest effect. We're going to 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 nonviolent struggle. Because when I was in school, they just taught me about pacifism. And then when I was like getting into, you know, political radicalism or whatever, I would just mostly hear about the Black Power era and the Black Panthers and the stuff that comes later. 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 essential work. It's absolutely necessary work for any of the other things to happen. No, totally. Totally. Well, this one is going to get a little scary, but it's going to work out for most of the people in the story. Yay. Jonesboro, Louisiana. Yeah.

is a tiny fucking town. About 4,000 people lived there in 1960. 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. It had a huge Klan presence. And most people, white or black, worked for the paper mill or the chemical factory.

There had been an NAACP chapter there in the 40s, but Louisiana passed a law forcing NAACP chapters, I think specifically, to disclose their memberships because they're racist. And so they changed their name from the NAACP to the Jackson Parish Progressive Voters League in order to

not have to give all of their names to the fucking sometimes we got to play these games okay yeah you come in here being racist i just gotta outsmart you protect my people that is nuts be like hey can we get a hit list please yeah oh we're gone yeah we changed our name no more naacp we have this other thing doesn't even mention race it just so happens that everyone who cares about progress in this town is like it's the church you claim accepts everybody so perfect yeah

So, in 1964, the Voting Rights Act had passed, making all voter registration and all that shit illegal. But, of course, nothing changed on the ground in and of itself. And so that's what SNCC and CORE and all these other groups were doing, was in some ways

Okay, so it's like a major part of U.S. 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. So people actually have to go out and do it, right, against their own local governments and their sheriffs and their shit and all that shit.

1964, Jonesboro, Louisiana. I almost said Alabama, but Jonesboro, Louisiana. The Klan 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. They burned down a church.

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 we'll fix up for you and you can all live there.

But unfortunately... Yeah, we have a specific target. Yeah, full of nonviolent people. And nonviolent people are a little bit at risk because they're known to not be carrying firearms. So as soon as 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 Klan, of course, was like, what's that? Black people voting and having a say in how their lives are ran? Some of them are swimming in public or reading in the library. We can't have that because that's how they all talk.

Totally. No, that was a spot on recreation. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I'm definitely not getting any acting jobs out of this podcast. And so they started doing more Klan shit and they started harassing the house and any picket lines that people were forming. And they first they would like drive by yelling shit at the house and then they would drive by shooting guns in the air at the house and then they would just drive by shooting the house. Right.

And since Cora was nonviolent, 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 quotes. It's the name he actually wanted to go by. But most people, most of the history books, like,

avoid specifically calling them that they just call them earnest over whatever again listen if somebody has a dope nickname and is referred to that gives you so much character like depiction and inspiration like you understand like a you don't fuck with someone named chili willy okay that guys go 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. Yeah. It's so easy. It's so easy to do. Totally. So Chilly Willy and a few of his friends start hanging out at Freedom House. They just start sitting on the porch, foreshadowing the activists as they move through town. Basically, the deal was like, y'all can be nonviolent. 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 these 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 patience change the hearts and minds of Southern whites should be totally disregarded. So some new defenders. So you have these defenders, 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, it's 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 auxiliary got, no, I know you see. My mind is melting. What? How? It's going to get messy. It's going to get interesting. Yeah, no. So the black auxiliary is 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 Willy and the original defenders, for their part, they are not fucking stoked about this, right? They do not trust the black cops. They figure 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 in 1964, some core organizers get ambushed by the Klan, 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. Hell yeah. They like floor it and they basically like almost run a Klan car off the road. I think they almost run someone over. Like they get the fuck out of there. That's horrifying. But the Klan's people...

They go and snitch them out for their dangerous driving. The Klan 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.

The deputy is like, that's not what I'm going to do. So I have to go back to my community after this? I don't look my mom in the eyes? Please don't ask me to do this. Yeah. And so, you know, the deputy's like, well, that's not what I'm going to do. So instead, the black deputies go and provide an armed escort to help the court 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 they're 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 a police escort, throwing out leaflets about outside agitators. Cause that's like been the rhetoric that the right wing has used forever as being like these outside agitators, whatever. And Kirkpatrick is finally like, oh yeah. And the Klan have a police escort as they're driving through the black community, throwing this out.

And so the deputies and Kirkpatrick are like, nevermind. Specifically, he told the chief of police that if the Klan convoy ever comes back through town, quote, there was going to be some killing going on. I thought it was going to be poetic. No, I think it's poetic. Just gentle. He's like, I just want to let you know some murder will happen. Yeah. They will have to kill people. Have you seen Dead Bodies? Because I'm going to make some if this happens. Amazing.

After this, the two groups, Kirkpatrick's deputies and Chilly Willy's defenders, they feel all right with each other now. And the deputies proved that they weren't going to be pawns for the white power structure. Good for you, deputies. And as shit heated up, more and more black defenders started showing up. And the spirit of we're not going to fucking put up with this was spreading throughout the town and not just the defenders.

At one point, some Klansmen tried to burn a cross 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. Yes, wifey. Yeah. Love it. Love it. And once again, majority of these defenders were vets, World War II 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 keeping 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, including...

Their ideology, as far as I can tell, was basically like we shouldn't let people fuck up the black community and murder civil rights activists. Well, 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 yeah um 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 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 not that old, but I'm, like, you know, I'm about 40. And I'm, like, you know, we'd do anything to protect the, like, young trans kids, right? And, like, you know, who don't appreciate it, you know? Like, and, like, I don't want to draw a direct one-to-one conversation.

No, but you can. You can. Listen, as somebody who is queer, there is absolutely a direct correlation between communities that are actively being...

haunted. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like literally hunted and, and, and then, you know, legislated against, which is an entirely different mind fuck of, of how do I just actively live my life in society without being fucked 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 oh we need to be in the streets oh we're going to be vocal we're going to make the change that you guys couldn't accomplish happen right which is a thing i hear you know a lot of young black activists or even before they're activists more more you know as they're beginning their journey into activism i'll say often they're like well we're not going to be like you'd be like

Calm down. Chill. Okay. We fought and won a lot of battles, but it's not done yet. Yeah. But we will still, no matter how you feel, we don't want you to be hurt in the same ways we were hurt and the same way we saw our elders hurt. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's...

And generationally, it's 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 makes so much sense. And 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 nonviolence and self-defense, you know, that

the like in a similar way the 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 no that's really i really like that um and i guess that what alla baker was doing you know um totally 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. Love it. Like, it reminds me a lot of what Rosa Parks is doing in her later years, you know, like

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 continue the fight. Yeah. I mean, being boots on the ground, talking to people like she she is 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. Yeah. Just, it's so selfless, this work, with 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,

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. I'll never do anything. But instead so that people can 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 going to change all this shit. She just did what was in front of her. You know, I'm, I don't know.

Yeah, she's got to the work. Yeah, just started. She was like, no, this has to be different. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Right. There's we don't have your Michael Jackson's where people are fainting just because

them in the street. Like, oh my God, I'm in the vicinity of this person. Right. And I think celebrity is going to become to some degree, I think, I think also have popular people that were interested in following their stories. But I, I think that era of here,

Hero icon worship is we're moving past it slowly. Yeah. Instead, what we should be worshiping is potatoes. Yeah, potatoes. And whatever, literally whatever the first ad you hear once we cut to ads is should be your new God.

I can't wait to figure out who our new god is. I hope it's not the Highway State Patrol or gold or one of the other many terrible ads we get. Some gods are mean and evil. And what you're really worshipping is your fear of them. So it's totally fine. Oh my god. Here's some ads, a.k.a. your new gods.

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Okay, we are back and we were talking about how Chili Willie and Frederick Douglass are getting together.

And it was actually this person who was ideologically not an ideologically convinced white core organizer who was very into nonviolence 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. Uh, and then he, he came to Jonesboro and he was super ideologically committed to nonviolence. Um,

But he quickly realized that the two things went very well together, that building a nonviolence resistance movement in Jonesboro required the work of these defenders. And so he was like, hey, maybe you all should have some structure. And so in November 1964, 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 you all should meet up, and then dipped out, which is good. That is what he should have done.

On January 5th, 1965, they formally incorporated with a name. They were the Deacons for Defense and Justice. And another thing that I think is really cool, the two founders, Chili Willie and 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 that's really interesting to me. There's members pay dues of $2 a month, which is basically pooling money for ammunition.

Everyone provided their own rifles and they set up four membership tiers, which wasn't like a hierarchy of command. They had a command structure, but it's unrelated to what I'm 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 shit, 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. Right. 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. 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 deacons' first conflict with the authorities.

Students at that school started picketing 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, which 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 fucks. It's a good use of the fire department. Right. Super good use of water. Yeah. Ace's job, everyone. Well, the deacons, staunch conservationists, they take firing positions and say 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 up. Just letting you know immediately. Don't fuck around. It's just what will happen. And the firefighters left. Goodbye. Again, we say, because they're just walking around. 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 hadn't been attracted to the more middle class sensibilities of the older groups and nor the people who hadn't been attracted to the specifically youth nonviolent spirit. You get the sort of like third, basically the people who are like, oh shit, okay, yeah, this is the tactic that appeals to us.

It works, I bet, was the response. Because when you hear nonviolence, you're like, I'm not about to be in these streets getting my ass whooped. It just does not sound like it's not appealing, at least to me as an individual anyway. I understand the logic behind doing it, but the appeal of like, and now we're just going to allow ourselves to be beat as a showing of 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, oh, okay, we have a system now. Yeah, totally. And so there's another mill town in Louisiana. It's like opposite side of Louisiana. It feels like 300 miles away or some shit. It's called Bogalusa. Bogalusa.

And it was one of the worst hotbeds of Klan activity in the country. It had the most Klansmen per capita anywhere in Louisiana, which is an impressive state to have the most Klansmen per capita in. Klansmen held office. They had enough power that when President Lyndon Johnson sent a special aide to go give a talk about desegregation, he wasn't able to speak.

The president's fucking aide. Like, the event was shut down by burning crosses and angry racists. They went out and passed, the Klan's 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 there's strong repression, there's strong resistance. Black farmers in the area already had a very strong response

They had a lot of advantages, the black folks, 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, instead of sharecropping 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 NAACP had prevented the Klan from purging black voters from their roles. So that town, they invite some white core activists to come to town and house them in a black home. The Klan shows up at the house, but so did armed black townspeople. The Klan 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 fucks showed up and started trying to surround the cafe, but so did armed defenders and the Klan fucked off again. And basically the organizers were escorted home out of town 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 my direct quote voice, but that's my paraphrase voice. And so Bogalusa formed the second deacon's chapter after that event. By May 23rd, 1965, the mayor of Bogalusa repealed all segregation mandates. Wow. 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 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 nonviolence. I actually, and I find it strategically interesting, but not, it's not a strategy that I've ever personally particularly employed. Sure. But like, it's still interesting to me. It's within the toolbox of activist tools, you know. But when the national director of CORE showed up in town,

I think the way it went down is that the local police were like, all right, we'll protect you. And he was like, no, I'm good. The deacons will protect me. Actually, I have people already for that. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, my God. So, okay. So that's like the... Either way, nonviolence 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? Yeah.

And so instead, he's saying, no, the armed force I trust are the deacons for defense and justice. In the end, after only a few years, the deacons had 21 formal chapters and 46 affiliates throughout the country. But by 1968, 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 60s wear on,

Tensions are growing within the civil rights movement because it was finding itself. It was starting to be about more than just voting rights and desegregation. And you have this guy named James Meredith. And I first wrote there was this guy, but there is a guy. He's still alive. He's a black man with some Choctaw heritage. He was a vet. He spent nine years in the Air Force from 1951 to 1960. He's actually fairly conservative, but he doesn't like white supremacy.

He integrated the University of Mississippi, which did not want to be integrated by him. Mississippi still doesn't want to be integrated. No. 2022. I believe that this is the like Democratic governor who said, like, I will die before I allow desegregation in my state or something like that. I can't remember exactly. You're welcome to do that, sir. I know, right? Deacons of defense are like, I volunteer. Yeah.

It took a bunch of applications and a lawsuit with help from the NAACP and then federal intervention. And then he had to survive a frame up on voter fraud, all kinds of shit. They did everything they could to try and stop him.

But when he finally went to go enroll because he had succeeded at these lawsuits, it took 400 law enforcement folks from various federal agencies and shit to protect him. 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 400 cops or whatever. So he goes to this 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 here. Yeah. Like, no. In 1966, 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 220 mile march from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. He didn't want any of the major civil rights organizations involved. 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. Wow. Right, because he's still alive. You said. I was like, no. 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 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 1966, and this coalition is really starting to come apart because they don't actually all want the same things, right? Right.

And they reach a compromise. They decide 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 shot. I don't know what he wanted about this, you know? But the civil rights organizations, they reach a compromise. Martin Luther King wanted no guns, yes, white people. SNCC 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 a ton of things. It's about the role of white organizers, and I think especially about white leadership and direction. But maybe I'm just saying that. I'm not 100% certain. It's about the use of firearms. It's about the growing disenchantment with the political process. Specifically, there's this whole thing that I didn't even get into where the Democratic Party was like, nah, we actually don't fucking 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 wants. Do people want a 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 is like kind of presented as one in a lot of these conversations.

Both SNCC and the SCLC and these groups that don't like each other, they finish this march, the March Against Fear. 15,000 people are on the march by the end of the march, including 10... Wow. Yeah. Yeah, it's fucking cool. And it's interesting because they had mostly moved away from protest marches, especially the youthful organizers. They're like, no, direct action is what matters, right? Yeah.

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 this included 10 buses of union autoworkers from Chicago came down to join the march. Just a shout out that the labor movement did do some good things at various points in history and along race lines. 4,000 people were registered to vote along the way. And where we're going to end it, the last little thing, because it's sort of the end of this chunk of

On June 16th, 1966, SNCC's president, Kwame Ture, which is Stokely Carmichael in 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 Kwame Ture. And he gets arrested for trespassing on public property, which is a cool, interesting trick. Yeah, how do you do that? I'm not... I think you just be black in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1966. Yeah.

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. He 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 a 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. SNCC and CORE go radical as hell. They were done with nonviolence. CORE at least embraced Black nationalism. The SCLC and the NAACP in turn rejected Black power. Not like as a slogan. I'm not trying to be like,

No, no, no. I got you. It's 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. Yeah. And especially hearing about

the rural south where shit was real as hell yeah 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 naacp at different times for you know

Their focus was legality, right? First. And it's also a lot of class issues. They were courting a certain type of Black person. And I think it's interesting to hear how at the end of the day, all of these different divisions had to team up and compromise on their visions in order to move the needle. Yeah. It gives me a lot of hope for...

where our activism is today and the things that we're trying to accomplish. A lot of times that infighting can seem insurmountable and like it's halting things, but really I think it's just making the entire movement richer. Totally. Yeah.

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

It's about just moving the needle forward. And I think that's really, really interesting. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on this journey with me. Joelle, do you have anything that you'd like to plug here at the end? You know, find me on the internet. It's where I live. I love hearing from you guys. You can find me at Joelle Monique. It's J-O-E-L-L-E-M-O-N-I-Q-U-E. Hell yeah. Ian, you got anything?

I'll just say listen to some cool zone media podcasts. Internet Hate Machine with Bridget Todd is our newest show. It's going on right now. Check that out wherever you listen to your podcasts. And yeah, that's all for me. I'll just say that Internet Hate Machine is my favorite way of keeping up on internet gossip. And it is like not like

Like gossip about the internet. I don't know, 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 in our current internet landscape. So yeah, I did the episode where we talk about Twitter and, and the Elon Musk changeover. 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. Yay, community. Love it. Yay.

All right. See everyone next week. Goodbye. Bye. Bye.

On Field, an app where curious people come to connect, you have the

breathing room to explore your own desires and go on a journey wherein the person you discover is yourself. In fact, 62% of field members evolve their sexuality, interests, and desires within their first year on the app. You have the freedom to explore who you are and what you like in ways you haven't imagined. As part of this community, you'll quickly find that people regularly practice honesty and openness. See any field bio. Download Fields, F-E-E-L-D, on the App Store or Google Play. PK!

Hey there, it's Scott Patterson from I Am All In Again podcast. Life's short, talk fast. Stream Gilmore Girls on Hulu. That's right, grab your coffee and get cozy because all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls are now on Hulu. Stream all the witty banner heartwarming moments and awkward Friday night dinners with Lorelei Rory.

and the eclectic mix of characters. Whether you're re-watching or going Gilmore for the first time, Hulu has you covered. It's a show. It's a lifestyle. It's now streaming on Hulu.

Have you ever brought your magic to Walt Disney World like, "Hey, we came to play"? Did you tip your tiara to a Creole princess or get goofy officially? Step up like a boss and save the day? Or see what life's like under the tree of life? Did you? If you could, would you? When we come through, it's true magic, 'cause we came to play. Bring the magic at Walt Disney World Resort.

Whether you shop delivery, pickup, or in-store, Kroger brand has all your favorite things. Kroger, fresh for everyone.

Whether you're ordering wings for the game, whipping up a seven-layer dip, or ordering pizza, there's something about football that makes you want to eat. And this football season, Uber Eats has the best deals on game day food. No matter what you're craving, from two-for-one pizza to buy one, get one wings, Uber Eats will be dropping new deals each week, all season long. Uber Eats, official on-demand delivery partner of the NFL. Order now. Terms and conditions apply. See app for details.