"Deacons for Defense" - Remembering Black History

Remembering Black history.....

   Deacons for Defense is an American television drama movie directed by Bill Duke and starring Forest Whitaker, that was aired in 2003 about the 1965 events in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an armed African-American self-defense group founded in November 1964, during the civil rights era in the United States, in the mill town of Jonesboro, Louisiana. On February 21, 1965—the day of Malcolm X's assassination—the first affiliated chapter was founded in Bogalusa, Louisiana, followed by a total of 20 other chapters in this state, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. It was intended to protect civil rights activists and their families, threatened both by white vigilantes and discriminatory treatment by police under Jim Crow laws. The Bogalusa chapter gained national attention during the summer of 1965 in its violent struggles with the Ku Klux Klan.
   Based on the true story of a black militant vigilante group, the Deacons of Defense and Justice, chose a different approach to the civil rights movement in 1964 Louisiana to protect Blacks against the Ku Klux Klan: they armed themselves with heavy artillery and organized their neighbors to fight back.