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

to have people going around watching to see who would go in
those stores. And. . . we would go take care of them that night . You
know how we was going to take care of them that night? With
some shot guns . Wouldn't shoot to kill, but take for instance, shoot
through that window. We'd always be in automobiles and we'd
always do it, say, before day four in the morning. You know, why
the law be sleep, you know, they wouldn't know who it was . We'd
always know, if you gon' put a shell in the gun, you'd always have
something on there to cover the shell up so they wouldn't come
back and get the hull and get your finger prints .'
As Black leaders began to win concessions from the white power structure
and local merchants and tensions began to ease, Evers and the NAACP leadership
began to discourage the activity of Shields and the "Da Spirit." While Evers was
willing to ease the boycott on white businesses wishing to comply with some of
the demands , Shields believed in maintaining the pressure to win more gains for
the Black community. Evers began to believe he no longer could control Shields .
The tension between the two men in the Port Gibson boycott eventually led to the
severance of their working and personal relationship . Shield left Port Gibson and
primarily organized in Yazoo County, Mississippi until he died in 1987 . In Yazoo,
Shields reorganized "Da Spirit" as a protective and enforcer squad not only to aid
boycotts in the county but as apermanent armed wing of the Yazoo County
movement."
Due to the solidarity of the Black community and the enforcement by "Da
Spirit," by 1969 several white merchants acquiesced and consented to hire Black
workers. By this point tensions had calmed and the local movement decided to
demobilize the Deacons . In April of 1969, local leaders initiated a second boycott
after the shooting of a Black man, Dusty Jackson, by white police. The death of