3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

Deacon chapters resulted from parallel buildups in Klan strength and activity in those
areas~° The organization mobilized later that month in Mississippi locales : Natchez,
Grcenville, Columbia, and Jackson, where Charles Sims led a ten-man delegation invited
to discuss the possibility of organizing there . Sims told a crowd of throe hundred black
men at the Negro Masonic Hall on Lynch Street : "It is time for you men in Jackson to
wake up and be men ." Sims claimed he had been "shot five times and shot at about ten,"
and he was not afraid to come to Jackson 4~
Sexist language often shaped the burgeoning debate over the place of guns in the
movement, as well as the ongoing argument concerning self-defense, and Sims' rhetoric
reflected this trend. The original chapter in Jonesboro included women in its ranks,2 ;
however, subsequent chapters of Deacons excluded women from their male-only clubs .
The Deacons became, in many ways, an expression of manhood .4 ~ "Everything we
l4, 1965) : 13 . Auxiliary groups, such as the Austin group and, later, the "Friends of the
Deacons" in New York City, cropped up outside the South . See "Deacons Organiu
Chicago Chapter," New York Times (April 6, 1966) : 29 .
4°Limmerman, "Race and Violence," The Wall Street Journal (July 12, 1965): 1 .
4~Sims, quoted in Roy Reed, "Deacons, in Mississippi Visits, implore Negroes 'to
Wake Up,"' New York Times (August 30, 1965) : ? .
42Akinyele Umoja has rcseaahed the role of women in the Deacons. See Umoja,
"Eye for an Eye : The Role of Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement"
(Plt. D . diss ., Emory University, 1996), 188 .
`3Some form of chauvinism often characterized discussion of self-defense within the
movement . Self-defense became a function of manhood. For example, Bishop Charles
Eubank Tucker blessed marchers in 1966 and re-assured, "Any Negro or white has the
right to defend himself with arms . Any man who didn't ought to take off his pants and
wear skirts." See "Marchers Upset by Apathy," New York Times (June 14, 1966) : 19 .
The Deacons, too, used similar language . "It's time for black men," Ernest Thomas
12 8