Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

offensive by the local Movement andCORE activists, the Klan and local police
began to harass Movement activists and members of the Black community. Klan
nightriders invaded and terrorized the Black community in the evenings .
Blacks however responded . In July of 1964, local white supremacists were
mobilized by the presence of two white CORE activists, Bill Yates and Steve
Miller . The Bogulusa chief of police and a Washington Parish deputy sheriff came
to the home of Robert Hicks, the Voters League vice president, who was to pro-
vide lodging to the visiting activists. The two law enforcement officials informed
Hicks that a white mob of well over 1700 was mobilizing downtown and that
Adeste and Miller needed to leave town that evening . Hicks asked the officers for
protection but was refused . Before leaving, the officers noted a growing number
of armed Black men, over seventy five people, who were arriving at the fucks
residence to protect him and the CORE workers . Hicks believed that the officers
awareness of the presence of armed Blacks prevented a lynch mob from invading
his home that evening. Later that summer, six white racists came into a Black
Bogalusa neighborhood and physically attacked two civil rights activists . They
were apprehended by Black civilians, who held them until the police arrived .
Blacks were alarmed that the police did not arrest the white civilians , but allowed
them to go free. These kind of incidents led Bogalusa Blacks to the conclusion
that the Black community needed an organized armed force to protect its neigh-
borhoods and the Movement.'
On February 21, 1965, Earnest Thomas of the Jonesboro Deacons was
present at a meeting in Bogalusa in his capacity as spokesperson for the Deacon
for Defense and Justice . The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the formation