Remembering Robert Hicks and the Deacons of Defense

[friendly_iconoclast]

http://www.thesouthernshift.com/news/2010/04/remembering-robert-hicks-and-deacons-defense

Remembering Robert Hicks and the Deacons of Defense
Submitted by Southern Shift on Mon, 2010-04-26 11:32

The story around Robert Hicks and his group Deacons for Defense have all but been erased from public consciousness. You check on familiar touch points like YouTube and there's nothing there. Pictures are hard to find and articles are scant. The thought of armed Black men standing up to the KKK and successfully protecting lives and propert during the harsh days of the Jim Crow South is a scary thought for many. The truth of the matter is many African Americans did not sit back and just allow themselves to be beaten and terrorized by the KKK. Hicks represented an underplayed part of our history..


The passing of Robert Hicks will not be acknowledge on the same scale as the passing of Guru, Dr Dorothy Height and Benjamin Hooks but he is no less important. We tip our hat because he did what many have come to belive was the unthinkable.We also encourage folks to try and pick up a copy of the movie that stars Forest Whitaker


-Davey D-

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/us/25hicks.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=robert%20hicks&st=cse

Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: April 24, 2010

Someone had called to say the Ku Klux Klan was coming to bomb Robert Hicks’s house. The police said there was nothing they could do. It was the night of Feb. 1, 1965, in Bogalusa, La.

The Klan was furious that Mr. Hicks, a black paper mill worker, was putting up two white civil rights workers in his home. It was just six months after three young civil rights workers had been murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.

Mr. Hicks and his wife, Valeria, made some phone calls. They found neighbors to take in their children, and they reached out to friends for protection. Soon, armed black men materialized. Nothing happened.

Less than three weeks later, the leaders of a secretive, paramilitary organization of blacks called the Deacons for Defense and Justice visited Bogalusa. It had been formed in Jonesboro, La., in 1964 mainly to protect unarmed civil rights demonstrators from the Klan. After listening to the Deacons, Mr. Hicks took the lead in forming a Bogalusa chapter, recruiting many of the men who had gone to his house to protect his family and guests....

To this day, some will deny that there was an armed element to the struggle for civil rights.

I salute you, Mister Hicks. You were a true patriot.