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

Sellers noted that while King was forced by "political circumstances" to distance himself
and SCLC from Black Power, the Meredith March confirmed King as a "staunch ally" of
SNCC and a "true brother."~ Notably, Sims did not condone Black Power and the
multivalent ideas for which it stood . "The slogan Black Power didn't do a damn thing
but hurt the movement," argued Sims . "I don't wanna live under 81ack Power. I don't
wanna live under white power. I want equal power, and that's what I push ." He saw not
only the mentality of black supremacy but also the phrase "Black Power" itself as
divisive. "How can you work with a son of a bitch that every time you look up he's
thowin' up his fist talkin' `bout Black Power? . . . Put too much power in any one son of a
bitch's hands, it's too much ." To Sims, Stokely Carmichael's brand of Black Power was
only rhetoric ;~ "Black Power" grew from vigilant self-protection
As quickly as they soared to notoriety, the Deacons faded from fame . After the
Meredith March, they all but disappeared from the national media.67 The Deacons made
one last major news splash in September 1%7 before they slipped into obscurity. The
Sellers, The River of No Return, 169 .
For a full treatment of Black Power ideology, see Stokely Carmichael and Charles
V . Hamilton, Black Power. The Politics of Liberation in America (New York; Vintage,
1%7) . The concept of Black Power as expressed by Stokely Carmichael and Willie
Kicks truly angered Charles Sims. For Sims, Black Power had a different meaning.
"[TJhe cats that was hollerin'Black Power, I was protectin' and guardin' they damn ass . I
don't see nothin' they was doin' to even be talkin' 'bout no Black Power. The Black
Power, we had it . In them thirty rounds of ammunition on a man's shoulder, we had the
Black Power." Sim, quoted in Raines, My Soul is Rested, 423 .
6~Robert Roster, the city attorney of Bogalusa, called for a grand jury investigation of
both the Deacons and the BCVL to determine "whether they have possible violated any
state laws pertaining to possession of firearms ." See "Hogalusa Official Asks
Investigation," New York Times (September 17, 1966) : 26.
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