I have not seen this noted elsewhere yet, but Robert Hicks passed away on April 13th.
Mr. Hicks was one of the last surviving members of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, and founded the Bogalusa, Louisana chapter of the organization.
The Deacons, who grew to have chapters in more than two dozen Southern communities, veered sharply from the nonviolence preached by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They carried guns, with the mission to protect against white aggression, citing the Second Amendment.
And they used them. A Bogalusa Deacon pulled a pistol in broad daylight during a protest march in 1965 and put two bullets into a white man who had attacked him with his fists. The man survived. A month earlier, the first black deputy sheriff in the county had been assassinated by whites.
When James Farmer, national director of the human rights group the Congress of Racial Equality, joined protests in Bogalusa, one of the most virulent Klan redoubts, armed Deacons provided security.
This is a surprising obituary to see in the NYT, as it comes close to acknowledging the racial aspects of gun control laws, and the role played by legally armed individuals in fighting the Klan during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. If you’re interested in the subject, David Kopel did an excellent two-part article for Reason on the racial roots of gun control; the second part goes into more detail on the civil rights era struggles. Part one is here; part two is here.