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

Chicago Tribune, June 20, 2004
"A forceful . . . challenge to the shelfful of civil rights histories."


New Orleans Tribune
"A compellingly detailed and gripping historical narrative. . . . Without [Hill's] book, the history of the civil rights movement is indeed incomplete."


Brooklyn Rail
"A welcome challenge to the nonviolent mythology and orthodoxy that serve as the basis of civil rights history's master narrative."


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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 rich historical narrative of a working-class armed self-defense movement that defied the entrenched nonviolent leadership and played a crucial role in compelling and federal government to neutralize the Klan and uphold civil rights and liberties.


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