{"product_id":"9780807857021","title":"The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1964 a small group of African American men in Jonesboro, Louisiana, defied the nonviolence policy of the mainstream civil rights movement and formed an armed self-defense organization—the Deacons for Defense and Justice—to protect movement workers from vigilante and police violence. With their largest and most famous chapter at the center of a bloody campaign in the Ku Klux Klan stronghold of Bogalusa, Louisiana, the Deacons became a popular symbol of the growing frustration with Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent strategy and a rallying point for a militant working-class movement in the South.Lance Hill offers the first detailed history of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who grew to several hundred members and twenty-one chapters in the Deep South and led some of the most successful local campaigns in the civil rights movement. In his analysis of this important yet long-overlooked organization, Hill challenges what he calls \"the myth of nonviolence—the idea that a united civil rights movement achieved its goals through nonviolent direct action led by middle-class and religious leaders. In contrast, Hill constructs a compelling historical narrative of a working-class armed self-defense movement that defied the entrenched nonviolent leadership and played a crucial role in compelling the federal government to neutralize the Klan and uphold civil rights and liberties. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The University of North Carolina Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47007739642096,"sku":"9780807857021","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780807857021_p0.jpg?v=1764105004","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780807857021","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}