Jackson Parish, Louisiana: History
Jackson Parish was founded in 1845 after Indian Removal and named for President Andrew Jackson.
During the American Civil War Confederate General Richard Taylor sent five companies into Jackson and Winn parishes to arrest conscripts who failed to report for duty, and to halt jayhawker groups in the area.
Jonesboro became an industrial mill town in the 20th century, producing lumber and turpentine products from the pine forests. Industrialization stimulated its growth. By the 1950s and 1960s, numerous African Americans had become industrial workers. Many were veterans of World War II and the Korean War, and they began to press to gain civil rights in the segregated state and region. Ku Klux Klan chapters were active here, and they intimidated and attacked civil rights activists.
In November 1964 Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, ordained that year as a minister of the Church of God in Christ, and Earnest "Chilly Willy" Thomas founded the Deacons for Defense and Justice, an organized African-American, armed self-defense group to protect activists and their families.
In February 1965, these two men and other CORE workers traveled 300 miles to Bogalusa, Louisiana, another small mill town, where they founded another chapter of the Deacons. They advised local activists on strategies of self-defense. They helped found chapters of the Deacons in other cities of Louisiana, as well as in Mississippi and Alabama in these years.