Word: bogalusa
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...this makes the Deacons sound like a gang of mute hoodlums, and Charles Sims like the czar of the underworld, it shouldn't. Bogalusa is a strange town, a mean town; the niceties of non-violence seem inappropriate in a place where half the cars fly rebel flags and the radio station announces Klan rallies as though they were church picnics...
...Bogalusa ignores the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Until a year ago, the mail wasn't even delivered to Negro homes. White moderates -- there are a few -- apologize in whispers for their neighbors: "These people don't know any better; they're ethnic Mississippians...
...Bogalusa provides a rationale for a Negro self-defense organization, and from what I saw during the week I was there, that's all the Deacons...
...Bogalusa Deacons are never heard and seldom seen. They guard the homes of civil rights leaders at night. They provide armed escorts for rights workers traveling into, out of, or across town. During every march, six or seven of them sit quietly in cars, parked at strategic points along the parade route. They don't make daring sorties into the white neighborhoods or exact any sort of revenge. They seem much more like a volunteer suburban security patrol than dashing vigilantes...
...bellicose attitude that he projects in public. His Deacons are merely a deterrent force to scare off racists who are hunting for trouble. Sim's aim is simply to keep the Klan out of Negro neighborhoods, and in this he succeeds. He has created a Cold War atmosphere in Bogalusa. No gunfights, no midnight raids, only sitting and waiting...