22DEACONS4 Series Logo & Map credit line: Alyssa Berry/LSU Manship School News Service
A homecoming parade for Ferriday’s black Sevier High moves down the main road through town in 1962. At far left (behind the tuba) on opposite side of the street is Frank Morris’ shoe shop two years before it was torched. (Photo from Ferriday Pictorial History)
David Whatley was just a teenager when this photo was snapped a half century ago. By 1965, he was a member of the Deacons for Defense and Justice junior group and in 1966 he became the first black to attend the all-white Ferriday High School. (Photo courtesy of the Concordia Sentinel)
Anthony “Lucky” McCraney (white coat, rubber boots), a member of the Ferriday Deacons chapter, surveys his service station after it was firebombed by the Klan in 1965. (Photo courtesy of the Concordia Sentinel)
At the Mercy Seat Baptist Church in Ferriday, the Deacons for Defense and Justice informed the community about the group and its work, according to former Deacon David Whatley. (Photo by Karli Carpenter)
Antonne Duncan, a member of the Deacons for Defense in Ferriday, led a team of Deacons through a Klan roadblock in Vidalia in 1965 while transporting Robert L. “Buck” Lewis Jr. to his Ferriday home. (Olivia McClure/LSU Manship School News Service)
Two nuns stand outside the charred outer wall of the home of Rev. Anthony White in Ferriday in 1965 following the Klan’s unsuccessful attempt to destroy the home with a bomb. White was a member of the Ferriday Deacons for Defense and Justice. (Photo courtesy of Concordia Sentinel)
In Ferriday, an ‘outlaw town,’ the Deacons took a stand
By Karli Carpenter
LSU Manship School News Service
