Shadow Vigilantes

by Paul H. Robinson

  And much of vigilantism's bad reputation is well deserved. To many people, the paradigm case of evil vigilantism is the Ku Klux Klan. And the image of vigilantes that the Klan presents is appalling. Consider a few details.

  THE KU KLUX KLAN AT WORK

  On Christmas night, 1951, Harry Moore and his wife, Harriet, go to bed in their home in Brevard County, Florida.3 The small wooden house is soon on fire when a bomb planted by the KKK detonates under their home. Harry dies on the way to the hospital. Harriet succumbs a week later. Having founded the first branch of the NAACP in Brevard County, Harry Moore has been a prominent civil rights figure.4 Nobody is charged.5

  Reverend George W. Lee is seated in his car in Belzoni, Mississippi, in May 1955 when he is shot in the face.6 Reverend Lee, the first African American to register to vote in Humphreys County since Reconstruction, was actively urging other African Americans to register.7 Nobody is ever charged with the murder.8

  On August 13, 1955, in Brookhaven, Mississippi, Lamar Smith is shot in broad daylight at the Lincoln County Courthouse as he helps other black voters complete absentee ballots.9 While there is a crowd of witnesses, no one is willing to talk about who murdered Smith. Nobody is ever charged with the crime.10

  This is the immediate history of unchecked violence against blacks and civil rights activists when on August 24, 1955—eleven days after the murder of Lamar Smith in Brookhaven—Emmett Louis Till and a group of other teenagers go to a local general store to buy refreshments after a day of picking cotton in the fields.11 While in the store, Till talks engagingly with Carolyn Bryant, a white woman married to Roy Bryant, the white proprietor of the store.12

  Till was born near Chicago on July 25, 1941, to Mimi Till and Louis Till.13 He grew up in a middle-class black neighborhood on Chicago's South Side.14 In August 1955 Till's uncle Moses Wright takes him and his cousin to Money, Mississippi, to visit their southern relatives.15 The day before Till leaves, his mother gives him his late father's signet ring, inscribed with his father's initials.

  Four days after Till's visit to Bryant's store, Roy Bryant and his half brother J. W. Milam go to Moses Wright's house and physically take Till.16 They toss him into their truck and take him to a barn near Milam's house, where the half brothers are joined by at least five other men. The group beats the teenager and pistol-whips him.

  The men then force Till into Milam's truck, also loading a large metal cotton gin fan, and they drive to the nearby Tallahatchie River. A neighbor hears Till yelling. Because the men cannot get the truck all the way to the river's edge, they compel the beaten teenager to carry the seventy-four-pound fan to the riverbank. Then Bryant and Milam each shoot Till in the head. The pair then takes a length of barbed wire and attaches the heavy fan to the body. The corpse is a horror; Till's right eye is dislodged from its socket, his skull is visibly smashed, and several of his teeth are dislodged. They dump Till's weighted body in the river.17

  Fig. 2.1. Emmitt Till shortly before his death in 1955 and after his body was recovered. (Courtesy of Flickr.com, https://www.flickr.com/photos/11304375@N07/2534273097, CC BY 2.0)

  Till's remains are eventually found, and on September 5, 1955, Bryant and Milam are charged with kidnapping and murder. At trial, Moses Wright identifies Bryant and Milam as the men who took Till, and that evidence is never disputed by the defense. Till's mother identifies the body. The signet ring that had belonged to Till's father is found on the finger of the corpse.18

  The defense claims that the body found is not Till's.19 During closing arguments, the defense urges the jurors that “every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to set these men free.”20

  As jury deliberations begin, the members quickly vote to acquit Bryant and Milam. Sheriff-Elect Harry Dogan sends word to the jury that they should wait awhile before returning a verdict in order to “make it look good.”21 After deliberating for an hour and seven minutes, the jury formally acquits Bryant and Milam. By most accounts, the jurors did not doubt that Milam and Bryant had murdered Till, but they saw the acquittals as necessary to preserve the white supremacy that they were still clinging to in the Deep South.22

  Today, the Ku Klux Klan is viewed as the classic paradigm for vigilantism. And with the image of Emmett Till's murder in mind, it is not hard to see the disgust that many have for vigilantes. In his televised remarks to the nation on March 26, 1965, after the killing of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo in Alabama, President Lyndon B. Johnson expressed the common view:

  Mrs. Liuzzo went to Alabama to serve the struggle for justice. She was murdered by the enemies of justice who for decades have used the rope and the gun and the tar and the feathers to terrorize their neighbors. They struck by night, as they generally do, for their purpose cannot stand the light of day….

  I call on every law enforcement officer in America to insist on obedience to the law and to insist on respect for justice. No nation can long endure either in history's judgment or in its own national conscience if hoodlums or bigots can defy the law and can get away with it.23

  Almost thirty years later, President Bill Clinton was still railing against vigilantes. On March 11, 1993, speaking of the killing of Dr. David Gunn, a provider of abortions, Clinton said, “I was saddened and angered by the fatal shooting in Pensacola yesterday of Dr. David Gunn. The violence against clinics must stop. As a nation committed to rule of law, we cannot allow violent vigilantes to restrict the rights of American women. No person seeking medical care and no physician providing that care should have to endure harassment, threats, or intimidation.”24

  A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON VIGILANTES: THE DEACONS FOR DEFENSE

  From a larger perspective, however, the apparently abhorrent nature of vigilantism is not so clear. Consider again the plight of African Americans and civil rights activists in the Deep South in the 1960s. No doubt it is comforting to them that President Johnson condemns the Ku Klux Klan attacks. But there is also no doubt that even more comforting would be to have somebody stop the attacks or at the very least to punish the attackers as a tangible signal to other potential victimizers and victims that such conduct is condemned and will be seriously dealt with.

  The existing criminal justice system has proven itself sometimes ineffective in providing either protection or justice, as vividly illustrated by Emmett Till's case. In that state of affairs, might the best course for the victimized be to take the law into their own hands?

  It is 1964, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) plans to stage a desegregation campaign in the heavily segregated city of Jonesboro, Louisiana. In an effort to prevent this, the local Ku Klux Klan organizes a motorcade through the city's black neighborhood, littering the streets with pamphlets that threaten violence against anyone who takes part in the desegregation demonstrations. To reinforce the message, Klan operatives, with the help of local police, cut electrical power to the black neighborhood.25

  In response to the threats, Ernest “Chilly Willy” Thomas and Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick recruit a group of twenty African American men to serve as an armed paramilitary group to defend against the Klan. Calling themselves the Deacons for Defense and Justice, most members are veterans of World War II or the Korean War. The group is the first of a new breed of civil rights organizations that uses force when needed to defend against racial oppression.26 They meet weekly to plan upcoming actions, such as guarding activists, patrolling black neighborhoods, and protecting demonstrators not only from the Klan but also from the local police.27

  In 1965 in nearby Bogalusa, a black paper mill manager named Robert Hicks hosts two CORE activists at his home. The night they arrive, Bogalusa police chief Claxton Knight comes to the Hicks home to escort the two CORE workers out of town. Knight explains that if Hicks does not comply, the Klan will pay Hicks a visit. The Klan follows up Knight's visit with a phone call threatening to firebomb Hicks's house if he fails to turn over the CORE workers.28

  Fig. 2.2. The 1963 march in memory of church bombings organized by CORE, pro
tected by Deacons for Defense. (Courtesy of Thomas O'Halloran, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress)

  Hicks, a leader of the local NAACP, calls friends to help guard the house. The Klan decides not to show. Three weeks later, under a continuing threat, Hicks meets with the leaders of the Jonesboro Deacons, with whose help he forms the first satellite branch of the group. In similar fashion, branches of the Deacons for Defense and Justice spread across the Deep South into Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.29

  Later in Jonesboro, African American students picket Jonesboro High School to protest its continued segregation. While the student protest is peaceful, police officers nonetheless prepare to turn fire hoses on the students. The Deacons arrive and begin loading their shotguns in full view of the officers. The authorities elect to send the fire trucks away.

  Prominent African American civil rights groups denounce the Deacons’ acts as “aggressive violence,”30 but as the civil rights movement comes under increasing physical attacks, the Deacons’ proven defensive effectiveness becomes more attractive. Ultimately, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asks the group to accompany him as a security force during the March against Fear from Memphis to Jackson, Tennessee, in 1966. The Deacons go on to provide armed security for Charles Evers's desegregation campaign in Natchez, Mississippi, and for a number of other civil rights campaigns in the region.31

  At their height, the Deacons expanded to twenty-one chapters. While their willingness to use armed force prompted an FBI investigation, the authorities’ interest in the reactive organization soon evaporated when other far more aggressive organizations such as the Black Panthers began operations. Replaced by these more radical groups, the Deacons ceased operations in 1968 and faded into relative obscurity in the history of the civil rights movement.32

  The Deacons for Defense and Justice are not an aberration. Many groups have, with moral justification, taken the law into their own hands. This is the essence of vigilantism. Indeed, the origin of the term “vigilante” suggests something very different from popular use, which brings to mind a Ku Klux Klan lynching or abortion doctor shooting. The original vigilantes were the epitome of responsible democratic action fighting an inept and often corrupt government.

  SAN FRANCISCO VIGILANCE COMMITTEE, 1850S

  The nineteenth century is a politically turbulent time for the California region.33 It had been a Spanish colony but is now a state in the Mexican Republic. Seeing an opportunity to gain control of much of the North American continent, President James Polk in 1846 sends a small force to claim the West for the United States. Fearing British retaliation, Polk needs the action to seem to be the will of the locals. On June 14 his force arrives at the home of California's leading citizen, don Mariano Vallejo. Vallejo, a Mexican general currently out of favor with the Mexican government and in command of no troops, remains the nominal military authority in this frontier. The party informs the general that he is a prisoner. Vallejo, who had been asleep, “had difficulty understanding what war he [is] a prisoner of.” The group drinks local brandy, chats, and writes a formal statement of terms, and “by its third paragraph, the product of good native liquor, the California Republic [is] born.”34

  While President Polk put the takeover in motion, the region cannot be admitted into the United States without congressional action, and this is a touchy issue. California is against slavery. An additional free state in the Union would numerically put the slaveholding states at a disadvantage. The result is an awkward limbo. Congress will not vote California into the Union, but the state is thought too vital to American interests to let another country control the area.

  San Francisco became the base camp for the gold rush, which began in early 1848. More than 150,000 men pass through San Francisco on their way to the mountain mines. The dynamic, chaotic population is beyond the control of the officials in what a few years earlier was a small town of two hundred.35 San Francisco has very little in the way of law and even less capacity to enforce the laws that do exist.

  Understanding the city's vulnerable situation, a criminal gang calling themselves the Hounds begins raiding stores and restaurants, forcing them to supply the Hounds’ demands and “charge it to the Hounds.”36 One Sunday in July 1849, the Hounds are especially violent in their activities, beating everyone they rob and shooting one of their victims. Several townspeople call for a meeting to deal with the violence. Within days, a self-formed committee of citizens forcibly takes most of the Hounds into custody. A second meeting is called to decide their fate. During the meeting, a court and a grand jury are formed, and the Hounds are “indicted, and charged with a conspiracy to commit murder, robbery, etc.”37 The court, consisting of a judge, a jury, and attorneys to prosecute and defend the Hounds, ultimately convicts the men, sentences them to exile, and threatens with execution any who return.

  Fig. 2.3. San Francisco vigilante movement migrated from the gold fields, 1848. (Courtesy of “Judge Lynch” California Vigilantes, 1848, Library of Congress)

  Mass meetings and popular tribunals become the accepted means of criminal justice in San Francisco. The citizens appoint an alcalde, a local magistrate, to organize the efforts, a practice first begun by the miners in their camps. Justice is swift. In a common burglary case in 1850, the burglary occurs at four o'clock in the morning. The alcalde issues warrants for the thieves. “They are pursued, arrested, indicted by a grand jury, convicted by a petit jury, sentenced, whipped, and turned out of town within twelve hours.”38

  On October 18, 1850, California is officially admitted to the United States. In consequence, a number of political offices are created. A commonality between those voting and those seeking office is that they do not view San Francisco as anything more than a means to an end. It is not their home. For most of them, securing a political position is “solely…a means of obtaining money for a speedy return to the East.”39

  The earlier “courts of the people” were rough justice but were difficult to manipulate on a large scale because judges and attorneys were appointed by the group and changed from case to case. The new courts, however, are staffed by men with dubious histories and operate without oversight and with little motivation to serve the community. They become “notorious for their failure to convict and punish criminals, especially those who [can] pay for skillful defense…. This immunity [is] almost universally attributed to flagrant corruption within professional circles.”40

  Before statehood, a trial would have been held by interested neighbors soon after the crime had occurred. The new system transfers the responsibility for doing justice to a physically and emotionally remote authority, usually long delayed from the offense. By 1851 the crime rate has skyrocketed. In response, citizens return to what they know: they form a Vigilance Committee, and every man in the city is invited to join. The group elects officers, keeps records, and places its own police on the streets and in patrol boats in the harbor. Members also act as detectives, jailers, lawyers, judges, and jurors.

  The Vigilance Committee hears hundreds of cases. Committee members hang four men, all of whom are convicted of, at minimum, murder. Persons convicted of robbery and some lesser crimes are transported on ships to distant shores or simply banished from the city itself. The committee confronts innkeepers who are known to aid criminals and warns them to stop or they will be shut down. One man convicted of possession of stolen property is whipped.41

  Samuel Whittaker and Robert McKenzie are career criminals who have long been protected by authorities as they steal, assault, rob, and burn their way to criminal profits, which they have used to help some current officials buy their way into public office. When the Vigilance Committee finally gets them into custody on August 8, 1851, they boast of their influence with the local authorities, including the current city marshal, Malachi Fallon, whom they helped get into office.42 After a public trial, during which their boasts are read back to them, the committee concludes that “both men [are] self-confessed robbers who [do] no
t hesitate at any violence, that they [are] a menace to the community, and that it would be unsafe to hand them over to authorities.”43 The men are sentenced to hang on August 18. Before the sentence can be carried out, however, public officials spirit them away. When the Vigilance Committee regains custody, it rings a signal bell, and a crowd gathers to watch the two men hang.

  With the committee back in action, the crime rate again drops. New elections are held, and with the election of men who are more invested in the good of the community, the Vigilance Committee disbands itself.

  Groups that can lay claim to being moral vigilantes have continued to exist. More than a century after the San Francisco Vigilance Committee, the same city was still provoking moral vigilantism. Where the government fails to protect and to do justice, victimized citizens are left with little option but to do these things for themselves.

  SAN FRANCISCO LAVENDER PANTHERS, 1970S

  It is San Francisco, 1973, and young gay men leaving the Helping Hands Gay Community Service Center are confronted by a rowdy group that has assembled, as it commonly does, to harass those visiting the center.44 The rowdies scream derogatory remarks and shove the young men in hopes of provoking a pushback that will give the rowdies an excuse to start an all-out brawl.

  Reverend Ray Broshears, a Pentecostal evangelical minister who runs the center, contacts the San Francisco police. He has seen this kind of harassment regularly and is concerned that it is getting out of hand. The police come, but when they arrive they do nothing to stop the brawlers’ aggression. Instead, they inform the group that it was Broshears who called the police and that he plans to file a complaint against the group. As soon as the police leave, the group attacks Broshears and beats him severely.