The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement

Reed, Roy, The Arkansas Historical Quarterly

The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement. By Lance Hill. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. x, 363. Acknowledgments, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.)

Lance Hill declares that, contrary to conventional wisdom, violence by angry African Americans was as important as nonviolence in achieving the victories of the civil rights movement. To illustrate his thesis, he tells the history of a nearly-forgotten group of black vigilantes known as the Deacons for Defense and Justice. The Deacons, he argues, added legitimacy and direction to a violent impulse that had long existed, mostly dormant, in the southern black …

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Publication information: Article title: The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement. Contributors: Reed, Roy - Author. Journal title: The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. Volume: 64. Issue: 1 Publication date: Spring 2005. Page number: 100+. © Arkansas Historical Association, Department of History, University of Arkansas Autumn 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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