1. Hill, Lance Edward. “The Deacons for ... - Freedom Archives

the soil . With the end ofthe Civil War their plight was compounded by more than three
million black freedmen surging across the South in search ofwork and land .
Emancipation thrust blacks into merciless competition with whites for the dearth of work,
land and credit .
The freedmen also looked to the pines for deliverance . Blacks who remained on
plantations lived in constant fear of new forms ofbondage such as gang labor and share
cropping . Thousands of dusty and tattered black families packed their belongings and
trekked into the hills to escape the indignities ofdebt peonage . Like their white
competitor, the freedmen sought the dignity and independence conferred by a few acres
of land and the freedom to sell their labor .
Through a process of social Darwitism, the pine hills were soon peopled by the
most independent and self-sufficient African-Americans ; those willing to risk everything
to escape economic bondage. Their passionate independence flourished in the hills as
they worked as self-employed timber cutters and log haulers . By the middle of the
twentieth century many of their descendants had left the land, drawn to the small
industrial towns that offered decent wages in the lumber and paper mills .
From the end of the Civil War through the 1960s these two fiercely independent
communities, black and white, traveled separate yet parallel paths in the pine hills of
North Louisiana . In the summer of 1964, in the small town ofJonesboro, these two
worlds would finally cross paths-as well as swords .
Jonesboro, Louisiana was one ofthe dozens ofmakeshift mill-towns that sprang
up as Eastern businesses rushed to mine the vast timber spreads of Louisiana .