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

Events picked up across the border in Mississippi in June 1966 . Civil rights
leaders flocked to the Menniith March Against Fear after James Meredith was shot from
ambush on the highway . The march from Memphis to Jackson--a lone crusade begun by
Meredith on June S as a display of defiance against white oppc+ession--gained momentum
as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Floyd
McKissick and James Farmer of CORE, Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee and others picked up where Meredith was gunned down (near
Como) and spearheaded the demonstration as it pressed deeper into Mississippi . The
Deacons were thet+e, too, but only after much debate, and much tumult. It was there in
Mississippi, during the Meredith March Against Fear, that the Deacons exploded onto the
national scene
Charles Sims and his Deacons played a pivotal role in the Meredith March
Against Fear (also known as the Gr+eenwood March), which stands as a watershed of the
national civil rights movement, and the flashpoint for the ongoing debate concerning the
place of violence within the movement. Because of the Deacons'controversialimcege and
Christian teachings . Thomas Merton, a Christian theologian, argued in 1%8 that denying
force in all instances is immoral, and that sometimes the only way to protect human life
and rights effectively is by "forcible t+esistance"against unjust encroachment . Merton
questioned placing the onus of responsibility for utilizing nonviolence on oppt+essed
minorities struggling for equality. "Instead of preaching the Cross for others and advising
them to suffer patiently the violence which we swatly impose on them, with the aid of
armies and police, we might conceivably raognize the right of the less fortunate to use
force, and study move seriously the practice of nonviolence and humane methods on our
own part . . .:' Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence : Christian Teaching and Christian
(South Bend : University of Notre Dame Pc+ess, 1%8), 3-10 .
Gene Roberta, "Mississippi March Gains Momenttun," New York Times (June 10,
1966): 1, 35 .
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