1964 (June-Dec)

1966

1965

Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery (Jan-Mar)
     Jimmy Lee Jackson Murdered
     Bloody Sunday, Selma
     Student March, Montgomery
     Rev. James Reeb Murdered
     Selma-Montgomery March
     Murder of Viola Luizzo
Confronting the Klan in Bogalusa With Nonviolence & Self-Defense (1965)
Mississippi Freedom Labor Union Founded (Jan)
Malcolm X Murdered in NY (Feb)
Lowndes County Freedom Organization Founded (Mar)
Oneal Moore Murdered (June)
SCOPE Summer Project (June-Aug)
Southern Courier Founded (July)
Freedom Information Service Founded (July)
Americus GA Protests (July)
Voting Rights Act (Aug)
Assasination of Jonathan Daniels (Aug)
Attempted Assasination of George Metcalfe (Aug)
Assembly of Un-Represented People DC (Aug)
Crawfordville, GA, School Bus Struggle (Oct)
Natchez, MS, Movement (Oct)
Poor-People's Corporation Founded

 

Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery (Jan-Mar)

Selma Photos
March to Montgomery Photos
See The Selma Injunction for background and previous events.
See also Selma & the March to Montgomery for a discussion of the Selma events by Freedom Movement veterans.

19 Days in March — Chronology (links are to Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement's "Selma & March to Montgomery" discussion)

(Description to be written.)

For more information:
Books: Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery
Web links:
     Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery
     Martyrs of the Movement
Personal stories from the Selma Voting Rights Campaign:
     Charles Bonner & Betty Fikes
     Bruce Hartford
     Eric Lerner
     Gwen Patton Insurgent Memories
     Wazir Peacock
     Ruby Sales
     Jean Wiley

 

Confronting the Klan in Bogalusa With Nonviolence & Self-Defense (1965)

See Deacons for Defense & Justice Founded for preceding events.

Contents
     Bogalusa, Louisiana — "Klantown USA"
     CORE Comes to Bogalusa
     Deacons for Defense and Justice — Bogalusa Chapter
     CORE and the Deacons Confront the Klan
     Negotiations
     The Klan Strikes Back
     Murder of Deputy O'Neal Moore
     Bloody Bogalusa
     Bogalusa — Some Important Points

Bogalusa, Louisiana — "Klantown USA"

According to the 1960 Census, Blacks make up more than a third of the 44,000 people who live in Washington Parish Louisiana. Culturally and economically, the parish (county) is similar to adjacent Pike County Mississippi (McComb), and the Pearl River region on both sides of the state border is known as "Klan nation."

Wood pulp, paper and chemicals are the economic mainstays. Back in 1906, the Great Southern Lumber Company bought 600,000 acres of virgin pine forest, built the world's largest sawmill, and founded the town of Bogalusa to serve it. During those mill years, Bogalusa was a classic company-town, Great Southern owned everything — houses, stores, electric utility, schools, even the segregated parks.

They also ran the government. The mill's general manager was the mayor and the police department took their orders from the company. In addition to the cops, Great Southern maintained a private army to enforce "labor discipline." When white and Black workers tried to form a biracial union in 1919 after World War I (with segregated locals as required by Louisiana law) the company organized racist whites into the Self-Preservation and Loyalty League (SPLL). The company gunmen and SPLL assaulted union members, evicted them from company housing, burned private homes, kidnapped, and tortured organizers. Finally, to suppress the union and end interracial cooperation, they formed an armed posse of more than 150 men, attacked the union hall, and shot to death four union leaders.

In the late '30s, the last stands of virgin timber fell to the saws and the huge mill was torn down, it's scrap metal sold to Japan for use in their war of conquest against China. But Bogalusa survived because the logged-over acres had been replanted with fast-growing, yellow pine which sustained paper-products and chemical plants built on the old mill site. In 1939, the new plants were unionized under the protection of the New Deal's Wagner Act (today, the National Labor Relations Act) into separate white and "Colored" locals, with whites holding the majority of the jobs — and all the better-paying positions.

By the 1960s, Bogalusa has evolved into a new kind of company town. The three big factories in the heart of town are owned by Crown-Zellerbach (CZ), at this time one of the 100 largest corporations in the nation (today they are part of the Georgia-Pacific conglomerate). The company's $19,000,000 annual payroll dominates the economy, 40% of Bogalusa's entire workforce is employed by CZ, and the pervasive stench of its noxious fumes fouls the air. But unlike the old Great Southern days, the company no longer foots the bill for schools, hospitals, and other public services — taxpayers get to do that. While City Hall is nominally independent, politicians and public bureaucrats clearly understand that CZ still calls the tune — 70% of city taxes come from CZ, two of the City Council's five members work for CZ, and other employees serve on the school board and other civic bodies.

Some 35-40% of Bogalusa's 23,000 inhabitants in the 1960s are Black. The town is thoroughly segregated — neighborhoods, schools, parks, restrooms, lunch counters, and, of course, jobs. There are no Black cops, firemen, or public officials. In the CZ plants there are "white" jobs and "Colored" jobs. Blacks cannot be hired or promoted into "white" jobs, and whites will not demean themselves by doing "Colored" work. The facilities in CZ plants are segregated, toilets, time clocks, lockers, even the pay-windows. Blacks are served food in the cafeteria, but only after whites, and then they have to eat the food in a separate wooden shack. While CZ will only contract with whites to cut the timber that forms the raw material for their plants, the actual cutting and hauling labor is done by Black subcontractors who pay a commission on each load to the white man who holds the prime contract with CZ.

Back in the 1950s, the NAACP managed to register a number of Black voters in Washington Parish. When a state injunction drove the NAACP underground in 1956, activists formed the Bogalusa Voters & Civic League (BVCL). In 1959, the White Citizens Council orchestrated a purge that removed 85% of Black voters from the Washington Parish rolls, but a court ruled that the purge was unconstitutional in both purpose and effect. By 1964, most parish whites are registered, as are roughly 20% of Blacks. This means that Blacks comprise almost 10% of the total electorate — not enough to elect any Blacks to office, but enough to swing a tight election and give the BVCL at least a little negotiating power with the mayor and city council.

The rising tide of Freedom Movement activity in the early 1960s inspires Black workers to begin challenging job discrimination and segregation in the CZ plants. Reed Hunt, Chairman of Crown-Zellerbach, responds that the company has no inclination to "alter the accepted pattern of race relations in the community." But under pressure, CZ is forced to make a few cosmetic steps towards equality. In 1963 they end segregation in the company cafeteria, allowing Blacks to actually eat in the same room with whites. White workers are furious. They boycott the facility and force it to close. When the shower-room is integrated, whites refuse to take showers.

During this period in the early '60s, CZ carries out a mechanization program in its Bogalusa plants. Hundreds of white and Black workers are laid off. A joint seven-month strike by both the white and Black union locals is unable to halt the lay-offs. By 1964, some 500 jobs have been eliminated and the workforce cut to 2900 (2500 white, 400 Black). Ku Klux Klan membership increases, as does their influence with the white population. When news reports announce that President Kennedy has been assassinated in Dallas, white patrons in the local bank burst into spontaneous applause.

In January, 1964, the KKK stages multiple cross burnings around the parish. On May 30, some 800 Klansmen, half in white hoods and robes, stage a Klan rally in Bogalusa. The wearing of hoods to conceal identity violates both Bogalusa's anti-masking ordinance and Louisiana's anti-Klan laws, but city officials make no effort to enforce those laws or halt the "Klonklave." Uniformed police (some of whom are Klansmen themselves) work with the Klan marshals to facilitate the event. In an article for The Nation magazine, author Paul Good later refers to Bogalusa as "Klantown USA."

CORE Comes to Bogalusa

Crown-Zellerbach and moderate civic leaders know they are sitting on a racial power-keg. In an attempt to head off a social explosion, Bogalusa mayor Jesse Cutrer forms a 21 member biracial committee that includes the old-guard Black leaders from the BVCL.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) has been active in nearby East and West Feliciana parishes since 1963. In the Spring of 1964 they send a small team of organizers to meet with Black leaders in Bogalusa about expanding CORE activities into Washington Parish. The BVCL leaders ask them to hold off and give the biracial committee a chance. They believe they can use the threat of CORE protests to extract concessions from the white power structure. CORE organizer Mimi Feingold reports to CORE headquarters: "White people here are really afraid of CORE and demonstrations. They'll do almost anything to keep CORE out." [1]

CORE honors the local leaders request. They agree to delay activity in Bogalusa until the end of 1964. But the BVCL strategy fails. Moderate civic leaders and Crown-Zellerbach are more afraid of the Ku Klux Klan than they are of CORE. The Klan rally in May reveals a membership of at least 800. By some estimates more than 100 CZ employees are in the Klan, as are many business owners, police officers and firemen. Robert Rester, the City Attorney, is the Exalted Cyclops of the local Klavern which also includes a number of other city and parish officials. Klan harassment and threats drive a white family suspected of socializing with Blacks from town, a white Tulane student who participated in New Orleans sit-ins is brutally assaulted, a white CZ worker is kidnapped and whipped with leather belts for the "crime" of playing folk music with Blacks in his private home. When the Bogalusa Daily News editorializes against the Klan, crosses are burned in front of the editor's home and office. The editor, Lou Major, begins carrying a pistol because of death threats. Terrified of KKK violence and economic boycotts, business owners are unwilling to end segregation as required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At the end of 1964, Bogalusa is still as segregated as it was in the 1950s.

As the year ends, a small committee of racial moderates seek assistance from the Federal Community Relations Service (CRS) which was established by the Civil Rights Act to help communities ease racial tensions. They invite former Arkansas Congressman Brooks Hays, now a CRS official, to address an invitation-only, interracial dinner at a prominent white church. The Klan mobilizes to stop this "race-mixing." Racist hate leaflets are distributed threatening the handful of white moderates who the Klan claims "... [want] your children to sit by filthy, runny-nosed, ragged, ugly little niggers in your public schools." Crosses are burned in front of committee member's homes, their businesses are boycotted, and they are threatened with death. Warned it will be bombed, the church withdraws use of its facility. The meeting is canceled.

CORE's moratorium on Bogalusa activity expires at the end 1964. In late January of 1965, two experienced field-secretaries, Bill Yates and Steve Miller arrive and begin organizing Black youth to test compliance with the Civil Rights Act. Some businesses obey the law and serve them, but many others refuse. Frustrated at the lack of progress and the failure of the "threaten-them-with-CORE" strategy, BVCL members oust the old-guard leadership at a tumultuous meeting in the union hall. A.Z. Young, the leader of the Black union local and a WWII vet, is elected president. Crown-Zellerbach worker Robert Hicks is chosen vice-president and Gayle Jenkins, a hospital food-service worker, becomes Secretary.

The Ku Klux Klan knows that Yates and Miller are staying at the home of Robert Hicks. On the night of February 1st, they form a lynch gang to get the two white activists. Police Chief Claxton Knight refuses to provide protection: "We have better things to do than protect people who aren't wanted here," he tells them. He warns the two CORE workers to get out of town for their own safety and offers an escort if they agree to permanently leave Bogalusa. Recalling the police role in the Lynching of Chaney, Schwerner, & Goodman they refuse. "We just knew that if Yates and Miller left our house at that moment, we would never see them alive again," Robert Hicks later recalled. He summons help from neighbors, and fifteen armed men arrive to defend against the KKK. The CORE organizers work the phones, activating the national CORE network. Phone calls and telegrams pour in to news bureaus, FBI, Department of Justice, Governor McKeithen and Crown Zellerbach headquarters in San Francisco. The Klan raid is called off.

A day and a half later, on February 3rd, Klansmen in cars chase Yates and Miller as they leave the union hall. Miller manages to reach Andrey's, a Black-owned cafe, but the gang surround Yates. They beat and kick him until a group of Black men force them back long enough for Yates to reach the cafe. More and more Klansmen gather outside the cafe, chatting amicably with the cops. When darkness falls, the police withdraw and all the phones in the neighborhood suddenly go dead. Armed Blacks manage to move the two CORE workers to a home that can more easily be defended. Eventually, FBI agents and State Troopers break the siege.

Meanwhile, demonstrators led by CORE — mostly teenagers — test compliance with the Civil Rights Act and protest segregated facilities. They are heckled and abused by whites, and often physically assaulted by Klansmen who the cops treat as allies. To a degree, the presence of news media and Justice Department observers inhibits the intensity of the violence, but each protest and sit-in is an ordeal of raw courage for the young girls and boys who defy the Klan day after day in the downtown business district, and their bravery inspires the Black community.

On February 15, the Ku Klux Klan renames itself the "Anti-Communist Christian Association" and obtains a state charter as a nonprofit organization. Behind the protection of this patriotic cover, they sharply escalate their violence. Death threats and White Citizens Council economic warfare drive the few white moderates out of the county or into deep hiding. Club-carrying Klansmen force Blacks out of cafes. They hurl bricks and bottles from speeding cars at Black pedestrians regardless of whether or not they are active with the Movement. Cars driven by Blacks are stopped on the street and the occupants beaten. Blacks are assaulted when they stop for gas or groceries. High-speed chases of CORE organizers in the rural areas of Washington Parish are frequent. The violence becomes so intense in "Klantown USA" that the desegregation testing and protests have to be temporarily halted. Neither the police nor the town's political leadership do anything to halt the escalating violence. CRS head LeRoy Collins reports to Washington: "The Mayor and the police seem to feel that the way to avoid violence and maintain law and order is for the Negro citizens not to seek to exercise their constitutional rights."

Deacons for Defense and Justice — Bogalusa Chapter

CORE organizer Bill Yates asks the Jonesboro Deacons for Defense & Justice for assistance. On February 21, Deacon leaders Ernest Thomas and F.D. Kirkpatrick along with CORE field-secretary Charles Fenton arrive in Bogalusa. They present a strategy of self-defense in cooperation with nonviolent direct action. "It takes violent Blacks to combat these violent whites," Thomas tells them. "It takes nonviolent whites and nonviolent Negroes to sit down and bargain whenever the thing is over — and iron it out."

With the help of the experienced Jonesboro Deacons, a well-organized Deacons chapter comes together in Bogalusa. Led by Charles Sims, they provide armed guards for the mass meetings at the union hall, escorts for CORE cars on rural roads, riflemen to protect activists and the CORE office at night, and roving security patrols to protect the Black neighborhoods after dark. Though heavily outnumbered and outgunned by both Klan and cops, the Deacons are determined that if blood flows in the street some of it will be the blood of white racists. For all their bravado, Klansmen show little enthusiasm for a stand-up fight with Blacks armed and ready to return fire. Governor McKeithan orders the State Troopers to disarm the Deacons — but not if it means putting their lives at risk, which it will.

In Bogalusa, the national mass media suddenly discover the Deacons as a BIG story. The Deacons become a Rorschach test upon whom the media project white fears and fantasies. Press and TV reports distort and sensationalize Deacon goals and activities, equating them with "kill-whitey" scare-stories about the Nation of Islam and violent urban uprisings in the North such as the Harlem Rebellion, and the Watts uprising later that summer. They invent nonexistent controversies between the (bad) "violent tactics" of the Deacons and the (good) nonviolence of CORE, and they enormously exaggerate disagreements between the Deacons and other Freedom Movement organizations and leaders. For security reasons, the Deacons sensibly keep their membership numbers and chapter organizations confidential. But that encourages the press to let their imaginations run wild. By June of 1965, the Los Angeles Times is claiming that there are 15,000 Deacons in 50 chapters across the South, other publications see in the Deacons ominous portents of Black terrorism and guerrilla armies. Completely ignoring the fact that the Deacons risk their lives to protect white activists with groups like CORE, MCHR, and ACLU, some reporters portray them as a "Black racists," or a "Black Ku Klux Klan."

Local, state, and Federal police agencies question and harass Deacon members. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover considers them a "national threat" and they are targeted for "intensified attention" along with CORE, SCLC, SNCC, and the Nation of Islam. FBI field reports on the Deacons total more than 1,500 pages.

On February 21st, CORE resumes testing. Not a single establishment is willing to serve Blacks, not even those that had previously complied with the Civil Rights Act during the tests in January. They are terrified of the KKK. Any business that dares to serve Blacks becomes a target of a Klan "wrecking crew." CORE staff report: "Each time a Negro enters an establishment, the manager says that he can neither serve nor protect them. Then he makes a phone call and within five minutes a mob comes in and forces them to leave."

Faced with this violence, the Deacons have to maintain a delicate strategic and tactical balance. To paraphrase McMahon, the "Deacons in being" deter the Klan from lethal violence. But for that deterrence to work, the Deacons have to continue to exist and operate as an organized force. The cops, of course, are eager to bust Deacons on the slightest excuse, and Deacons in jail or tied up in lengthy felony trials can't defend against Klan assassins or lynch mobs. If a Deacon responds with defensive-violence when Klansmen punch and kick a nonviolent protester, it is the Deacon who will be arrested, not the KKK. To remain ready to protect protesters against lethal attack with knives, ax-handles, firebombs, and guns, the Deacons have to hold themselves in check when demonstrators — mostly women and teenagers — are assaulted with less-than-deadly force. Day after day and minute by minute, the Deacons make constant tactical decisions over if, when, and how to intervene. With the possible exception of clueless reporters, everyone on the street — Deacons, demonstrators, cops, Klan — all understand this fluid, intricate social dance of violence and maneuver, provocation and reaction.

CORE and the Deacons Confront the Klan

During late February and early March, 1965, while most media attention is focused on the historic Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery, testing and protests continue day after day in Bogalusa. As do attacks by Klansmen. But CORE and the young activists are not cowed; they demand that Black salesclerks be hired in the downtown stores and they escalate the struggle by boycotting the white merchants and picketing on Columbia Street.

Led by Wilfred Ussery, San Francisco CORE steps up pressure on Crown-Zellerbach to intervene in Bogalusa where their economic and political clout could be decisive. CZ headquarters are picketed, letters, phone calls, and telegrams flood in demanding that CZ publicly oppose the Klan and support de-segregation. But Chairman Reed Hunt refuses to "promote social reform." Nor will he remove active Klansmen employed by CZ on grounds that "An employee's private life is his own." Even though CZ has dominated local politics for decades, Hunt claims that the company has no responsibility or authority to be involved in "local affairs." CORE field-secretary Bill Yates counters that, "The worst segregated conditions in Bogalusa are inside the plant, and here they have full and complete jurisdiction."

On April 4, student volunteers on spring break from Kansas State University (KSU) arrive in Bogalusa for a voter registration drive in Washington Parish. A couple of days later a gang of more than 50 Klansmen menace the union hall where a registration class is being held. They leave two coffins, one with CORE organizer Bill Yates' name on it. Later, Klan nightriders shoot into Robert Hicks home. He and the Deacon guards return fire, driving them off. The next morning, KSU students canvassing for voters are chased by four carloads of KKK.

In flagrant violation of the Constitution's First Amendment rights of free speech, the city passes an ordinance on April 7 that limits pickets to no more than two people at a time and defines almost every other Freedom Movement activity involving three or more people as "Disturbing the Peace." On April 8, national CORE leader James Farmer arrives to lead a mass march to City Hall on the following day. Tension is high. The CZ plants close for the day (freeing up Klansmen who might otherwise be working). The downtown area is sealed off by police barricades. Fearing violence, most of the stores and cafes are closed. Some 400 high-school students try to march, but they are forced back by the cops.

Personally committed to Gandhian philosophical nonviolence, Farmer is uncomfortable with the armed guards provided by both the Louisiana State Troopers and the Bogalusa Deacons for Defense. But he accepts and respects the right of local Blacks to determine for themselves how they respond to Klan attack and fight for justice. "CORE is nonviolent," he tells the press, "but we have no right to tell Negroes in Bogalusa or anywhere else that they do not have the right to defend their homes. It is a constitutional right." [3]

On April 9, Farmer leads 500 protesters, mostly Black, a few white, out of the union hall for the two-mile march. More than 100 police try to keep order, but they are unable (or unwilling) to prevent Klansmen from darting in to attack the marchers. Nor do they stop the Klan from assaulting reporters and smashing their cameras. Under heavy attack, the march retreats back to the union hall. Six hours later, after more State Troopers are brought in, the protesters march again. This time they reach City Hall and are able to hold a rally.

All of Bogalusa's doctors, nurses, and dentists are white. Some are willing to treat Blacks (after first treating whites, of course), others are not. None are willing to treat civil rights activists or anyone injured on a protest. The Federally financed Community Medical Center will only see Blacks on Thursdays except in serious emergencies. The Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR), which supplied emergency-medics for Selma and the March to Montgomery, sends health workers to Bogalusa. They accompany protesters under Klan attack and set up a medical aid station in the Black community.

Led by Berkeley CORE, a group of University of California students arrive in Bogalusa over their spring break. When they return to the Bay Area, they are interviewed by radio host Ira Blue who asks them if the police provided protection:

"Protected us? They terrorize us!" They explain to him that the police yell insults and use as much obscene language at picketers as the hecklers; they feel free to swing their billy clubs at youthful picketers; and it pleases them to stand by and laugh while rocks, lighted cigarettes, insecticides, and snakes are thrown into the picket lines and marches. An effort was made to get badge numbers of these police officers; however, the effort was frustrated when both State Troopers and City Police began covering their badges with metallic tape to hide the numbers. [4]

Negotiations

With Selma now quiescent, the march led by Farmer and the ongoing Klan violence receive renewed attention from the national media and the Federal government stirs into modest action. Vice President Humphrey meets with Governor McKeithan in Baton Rouge, Community Relations Service officials urge negotiations, and the Justice Department threatens to prosecute the owners of segregated establishments under the Civil Rights Act (which they have been violating for nine months since its enactment). With the support of the Governor and Crown-Zellerbach, Mayor Cutrer refuses to negotiate with Young, Hicks, and Jenkins of the BVCL. Instead, he maneuvers to satisfy the feds by negotiating with a hand-picked group of "Black leaders" of his own choosing.

The protests and Klan violence continue during weeks of maneuvers over who the city will negotiate with — the BVCL or "responsible Negro leaders" selected by the power structure. In one of many attempts to avoid sitting down with the BVCL, Mayor Cutrer claims that "CORE and the voters league are a small group of self-styled leaders who do not represent the Negro community." He devises a survey to determine the "real leaders" of the Black community. In a single day the BVCL collects some 2,000 signatures of Black supporters to decisively block that ploy.

To keep the pressure on, James Farmer leads another mass march to City Hall. Eventually, the Department of Justice (DOJ) gets around to finally filing suit against half a dozen segregated establishments for violation of the Civil Rights Act (the first such enforcement lawsuit in Louisiana). Governor McKeithen appoints a three-member committee of "racial moderates" to help mediate. Anticipating a violent Klan reaction, he dispatches an additional 300 State Troopers to Bogalusa. More than 3,000 whites attend a fiery Klan rally that denounces all attempts to end segregation or negotiate with the BVCL.

In mid-May, after weeks of stalling, Cutrer and the city council finally agree to meet the BVCL in face-to-face negotiations. CORE suspends protests pending the outcome. As the talks get underway, trucks loaded with furious Klansmen slowly circle City Hall. The city agrees to repeal its city segregation ordinances (which are illegal and unenforceable under the Civil Rights Act) and desegregate government buildings and facilities such as parks (which is also required by the Act). They promise to improve city services such as lighting, sewage, and paving in Black neighborhoods and enforce housing health and safety codes. They also promise to hire some Black police officers and "consider" employing Blacks in other city jobs. They refuse to repeal the emergency ordinance that limits the right to picket, but they do say they'll "consider" modifying some other portions of the unconstitutional law. Maybe. Someday.

The Klan Strikes Back

Mayor Cutrer announces the agreement on May 18. The Klan is enraged. They distribute "Who Bought Jess Cutrer" flyers calling for him and other city officials to be tarred and feathered. But Chief of Police Claxton Knight and Arnold Spiers, the Commissioner of Public Safety, are not included in the Klan's list of race-traitors. The next day, May 19, BVCL leaders Robert Hicks and Sam Barnes notify the FBI and police that they plan to lead a group of Blacks to Cassidy Park, previously "white-only," but now supposedly desegregated under the agreement. When they arrive at the park, a gang of whites are loitering nearby, hanging out with a group of cops. As the Black children approach the playground the white men attack with clubs and leather belts. Police, deputies, and troopers order the Blacks to leave the park. A police dog is set on 15-year old Gregory Hicks, son of BVCL leader Robert Hicks, biting him in the leg. Sam Barnes is arrested for carrying a pistol. When he is taken to the parish jail, three Black convicts are ordered to beat him.

The next day, May 20, a mob of 500 whites wait for Blacks at Cassidy Park. When none appear, they attack reporters. The police do nothing. The city closes all parks, rendering the agreement to integrate them meaningless. CORE resumes direct-action protests and the Klan continues to attack them. On Saturday, May 29, CORE sends out waves of pickets to enforce the merchant boycott. They are opposed and attacked by hundreds of whites who rove the downtown area assaulting Blacks. The next day, Sunday, is quiet with stores closed for the sabbath. On Monday the confrontation between CORE demonstrators and the Klan mob is renewed. 125 State Troopers and more than 30 police are unable (or unwilling) to maintain order. A reporter notes: "Crowds of whites remained on the streets ... until the stores closed." On June 1, Mayor Cutrer bans all marches.

As described by author Adam Fairclough in Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972:

Klansmen had a remarkable facility for blending in the with the milling white onlookers, darting out to strike demonstrators and then darting back to the crowded sidewalks. On July 11, for example, an FBI agent saw forty to fifty young white men moving towards a BVCL march; when a contingent of state troopers approached they "seemed to melt into the crowd and the clubs, sticks, and ballbats ... seemed to disappear." On occasions, troopers were lured away from the marches by false reports of nearby altercations; "when they ran off to investigate, members of the Klan ... coming from the opposite direction would throw punches or flail away with clubs at the unprotected marchers." [1]

Murder of Deputy O'Neal Moore

On June 2nd, Sheriffs deputies O'Neal Moore and David "Creed" Rogers, the first two Black deputies ever hired in Washington Parish, are patrolling a rural area a few miles north of Bogalusa. A pickup truck speeds by them. Two white gunmen in the back open fire. Moore is killed instantly. Rogers, on the passenger side, is wounded and permanently injured when the patrol car veers off the road and smashes into a tree. An hour later a police roadblock in Mississippi stops a truck that matches the description given by Rogers. Ray McElveen, a CZ employee, is arrested. He has membership cards for the rabidly-racist National States Rights Party and the White Citizens Council. He is also assumed to be a member of the KKK. He is charged with Moore's murder, but never brought to trial. The murder remains "unsolved" to this day. FBI agents later tell reporters that they believe it was a Klan operation.

Louisiana Attorney-General Jack Gremillion rules that O'Neal's widow is not eligible for state employee survivor benefits because he had not been killed "while engaged in the direct apprehension of a person."

Bloody Bogalusa

Through June and July the struggle continues in the sweltering streets of Bogalusa. The Klansmen are confident that Bogalusa cops and Washington Parish sheriffs will not arrest them for assaulting CORE protesters. The demonstrators, however, are busted on the slightest excuse. Reports one:

"They handcuffed me with my hands behind my back and took me to the city jail in a city police car, with the Sheriff's car following. When they took me from the car at the jail they started shoving and kicking me. This continued as they brought me into the jail. While I was being booked, in front of the Desk Sargent, I was kicked and knocked down on the floor. The only time they said anything to me was when I had been knocked down. One officer said: "Boy, what you doin' down on the floor. Get up from there!"" [4]

On June 25, the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee (ACLU) files a lawsuit in Federal Court on behalf of BVCL leader Robert Hicks against Police Chief Knight to force the Bogalusa cops to protect Black protesters from the Klan and white mobs, and stop harassing, beating, and arresting demonstrators exercising their Constitutional right of free speech. Police complicity in the brutal attack at Cassidy Park on May 19 is presented as the case in point.

On July 8, there is another CORE march. Hattie Mae Hill (17) is wounded by a rock that strikes her in the head. Leneva Tiedman, a white nurse working with the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) rushes the bleeding girl to a car driven by two Deacons, Henry Austin and Milton Johnson. Since the public hospital won't treat protesters, they try to get her to the MCHR aid station in the Black community but they are attacked by angry whites. Klansman try to grab the two women in the back seat, they pull Johnson from the car, beating and kicking him. Austin tries to push them back and rescue Johnson, when that fails he fires his pistol in the air. To save Johnson he then shoots one of the white attackers, injuring but not killing him. The police then arrest both Johnson and Austin.

On July 10, Federal Judge Herbert Christenberry rules in Hicks vs Knight. He issues an injunction ordering Bogalusa police and Washington Parish sheriffs to protect Black protesters from mob attack and to halt their own "... violence, harassment, intimidation, verbal abuse, unnecessary force, and unlawful arrest." Furious at the ruling and the shooting of the Klansman, thousands of whites rally to hear J.B. Stoner — Imperial Wizard of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Chairman of the National States Rights Party — tell them "The nigger is not a human being. He is somewhere between the white man and the ape. ... What the nigger really wants is our white women."

The Klan circulates a petition to recall Mayor Cutrer and 3,000 whites sign it, but a legal technicality prevents the recall election from going forward. Cutrer and other city officials know their support among white voters has dropped to almost nothing and with it their ability to control events. They ask Governor McKeithen to send in the National Guard to maintain order. McKeithen refuses, but offers to help broker a deal. He meets twice with Young and Hicks, offering to set up more negotiations with city officials if they agree to suspend protests for a 30-day "cooling off" period. The BVCL refuses to halt direct action in return for vague promises of more talk.

The BVCL and Mayor Cutrer jointly appeal to Washington for Federal help. In mid-July, DOJ official John Doar is sent to investigate. Appalled at the ease with which the KKK roams the streets and assaults CORE demonstrators, he reports that the State Troopers are trying to enforce Judge Christenberry's injunction, but the city police and parish deputies are ignoring it. As described by Fairclough:

On July 16, for example, Doar saw whites attack pickets at the Pine Tree Plaza shopping center; the next day a barber drenched two white pickets with a hose and smeared soap on their arms and shoulders, commenting, "You pickets smell like niggers and need a bath." During the first incident, the police were conspicuously absent when the attacks took place; when the finally arrived on the scene they arrested two of the beaten pickets. During the second incident, policemen stood by laughing."

Doar convinces the Justice Department to make Bogalusa a test case for enforcing the Civil Rights Act. The DOJ intervenes in the Hicks case seeking criminal and civil contempt against Police Chief Knight and Commissioner of Public Safety Arnold Spiers. They file a lawsuit to enjoin the KKK and 35 named Klansmen from violence. Another Federal lawsuit seeks to desegregate several restaurants, and brutality charges are brought against the parish K9 squad for the beating of Sam Barnes in the parish jail. Pressured by Attorney General Katzenbach and President Johnson, Hoover sends in a swarm of over 100 FBI agents to monitor compliance with court rulings and target the Klan. On July 30, Judge Christenberry finds Knight and Spiers guilty of civil contempt. He orders them to comply with his previous order and cooperate with the DOJ or face jail and daily fines of $100.

With the cops enjoined from aiding and abetting them, and now facing some actual risk of fines or jail for violence, the white mobs evaporate from the streets of Bogalusa. Robert Hicks later tells an interviewer:

"Overnight, Washington crushed the white supremacist coup in Bogalusa and forced local authorities to uphold the law. In retrospect, what is remarkable was how little was required to destroy the Klan and force local authorities to protect citizens' rights and liberties. The Federal government did nothing more than threaten city officials with modest fines and light jail sentences." [2]

But though the white mobs and overt, public, Klan violence is largely (though not entirely) suppressed, the struggle for justice and equality in Bogalusa Louisiana is just beginning.

See Bogalusa to Baton Rouge march for continuation of the Bogalusa movement.

Bogalusa — Some Important Points