[When white-supremacists resort to terrorist violence, disciplined
and strategic self-defense is not only justified — its required. The
federal government has the means and the resources to protect people
from white-supremacist terrorism...] [[link removed]]

THE BOGALUSA LESSON  
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Bruce Hartford
December 12, 2020
Civil Rights Movement Archive
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_ When white-supremacists resort to terrorist violence, disciplined
and strategic self-defense is not only justified — it's required.
The federal government has the means and the resources to protect
people from white-supremacist terrorism... _

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As I watch images of violent white-supremacist mobs in the streets and
armed Trumpites threatening to lynch election officials, I'm reminded
of the lessons that we of the 1960s Freedom Movement learned from the
Bogalusa struggle in 1965.

Back then, Bogalusa Louisiana (pop 23,000) was still a
thoroughly-segregated company town in open defiance of the Civil
Rights Act that we had forced through Congress the year before. Cops
and Klan were joined at the hip, working together to enforce
segregation and white-supremacy with jail, clubs, mob violence, and
gunfire. By day, nonviolent pickets and sit-ins were mobbed, beaten,
attacked by police dogs, and arrested, at night shotgun-toting KKK
nightriders threatened the Black community.

Operating in tight strategic alliance with CORE's nonviolent
organizers and protesters, the armed Deacons for Defense protected
both the Black community and Bogalusa's interracial group of civil
rights workers. Led by Charles Sims, they provided armed guards for
the mass meetings at the union hall, escorts for CORE cars on rural
roads, riflemen to protect Black and white activists at night, and
roving security patrols to protect the Afro-American neighborhoods.

Louisiana Governor McKiethan tried to use state troopers to disarm the
Deacons — he failed. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover considered the
Deacons to be a "national threat." While the Klan and corrupt cops
were running wild in Bogalusa, Bureau agents were busy compiling 1500
pages of reports on the Deacons. He also failed to suppress them.

Strategy and carefully thought-out tactics governed the Deacon's
actions — not bombast, posturing, or limelight-seeking. Knowing that
they could never prevail against a militarized police-state, they
avoided armed battle with the cops and troopers. When nonviolent
demonstrators — mostly women and teenagers — were assaulted by
Klansmen with fists and boots while the local cops smiled in approval,
the Deacons held themselves in check, but when the Klan resorted to
knives, ax-handles, firebombs, and guns, the Deacons responded with
just enough force to prevent mayhem.

The federal government in DC was controlled by Democrats who
prioritized retaining the support of white voters over protecting
Black lives, defending civil liberties, and upholding the
Constitution. They wrung their hands and made pious statements about
civil rights issues but took little effective action — except when
forced to do so by public pressure mobilized by the Freedom Movement.
Freedom Riders, for example, had to brave savage mob violence and
endure the brutality of Parchman Prison to push Kennedy into enforcing
existing federal laws regarding inter-state travel. Similarly,
Washington did little to punish those who murdered or assaulted Black
civil rights workers — except in high profile cases backed by mass
outcry such as the lynching of the three Freedom Summer activists (two
of whom were white).

The police-KKK reign of terror in Bogalusa continued for six months.
Finally, at long last, John Doar of the Department of Justice (DoJ)
managed to somehow convince LBJ that it was time to crack down on Klan
terrorism and police repression — and to stop cowering in
political fear of the "white-backlash." President Johnson ordered
Hoover to swarm the little town with over 100 agents, this time
targeting both badge-wearing and hood-wearing racists. The DoJ moved
against Klansmen and criminal cops with arrests on minor charges and
the threat of fines. As soon as they realized that they might face
sanctions on their behavior they folded like the cowards that at heart
they really were.

Bogalusa Movement leader Robert Hicks later wrote:

_Overnight, Washington crushed the white supremacist coup in Bogalusa
and forced local authorities to uphold the law. In retrospect, what is
remarkable was how little was required to destroy the Klan and force
local authorities to protect citizens' rights and liberties. The
federal government did nothing more than threaten city officials with
modest fines and light jail sentences_ — Robert Hicks.

The federal show of force was both welcome and effective, but for many
in the Freedom Movement it was flavored with bitterness over all the
past jailings, beatings, bombings, and lynchings across the South that
might have been prevented had politicians in Washington cared as much
about Black lives and the Constitution as they did for white votes.
For all those years, it wasn't federal _inability_ to stop terrorism
and police repression, it was lack of political will.

So what were the "Bogalusa Lessons?"

First, that when white-supremacists resort to terrorist violence,
disciplined and strategic self-defense is not only
justified — it's required.

Second, that the federal government has both the means and the
resources to uphold the Constitution, protect people from
white-supremacist terrorism, and sanction police abuse — when they
have the political will to do so. But the source of that political
will is mass public pressure and constant vigilance.

Copyright © Bruce Hartford

_See_ Confronting the Klan in Bogalusa With Nonviolence & Self-Defense
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information on the Bogalusa Movement.

 
_From 1963-1967, Bruce Hartford was a Civil Rights Worker with CORE in
California and then in Alabama and Mississippi on the staff of Dr.
King's organization the SCLC. Later he was a student activist at San
Francisco State College, then a freelance journalist covering the
Vietnam War, and then an ILWU chief shop steward in the 1970s. He was
a founding member and long-time officer of the National Writers Union
in the '80s and '90s. Today he is webmaster of the Civil Rights
Movement Archive (crmvet.org [[link removed]]), on the board of the
SNCC Legacy Project, and a local leader of an Indivisible chapter. He
is author of, "The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" (2012),
"The Selma Voting Rights Struggle & the March to Montgomery" (2014),
"Voting Rights in America -- Two Centuries of Struggle" (2018), and
"'Troublemaker' Memories of the Freedom Movement" (2019)._
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_Copyright © Bruce Hartford, 2020_
_ _
_Thanks to the author for submitting this article to xxxxxx._

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