Woodville Deacons and the civil rights showdown that reached the Supreme Court

Column published in The Natchez Democrat (Friday, February 27, 2026, page 4A) 

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Woodville Deacons and the civil rights showdown that reached the Supreme Court

  

By Roscoe Barnes III

  

Although little has been said about the Woodville chapter of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in recent decades, the group made headlines across the South in the 1960s and left its mark on Wilkinson County.
 
Like other parts of Mississippi, Woodville at the time seethed with racial tension.
It was a place where the Deacons clashed with white supremacists and law enforcement. Confrontations between the Deacons and local police occurred on several occasions, one of which involved a shooting that resulted in the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Mississippi.
 
The Deacons provided armed protection for civil rights workers and the Black community against the Ku Klux Klan. The organization originated in Jonesboro, Louisiana. The Deacons helped with rallies and marches, and they helped to enforce the boycott of white-owned businesses.
 
In 1965, James Stokes, spokesperson for the Natchez Deacons, helped to establish a branch of the Deacons in Woodville. Some of the original members included President William “Bilbo” Ferguson, Vice President Herman Burkes, and Spokesperson Edward Caine. The other Deacons included Henry Jones, Leon Chambers, Gable McDonald, Samuel Harden, Benjamin Groom, Elmo McKenzie, William Davis, and Earnest Tollivar.
 
For the first two years, the Woodville branch assisted the Natchez Deacons, according to Dr. Lance Hill, author of "The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement" (University of North Carolina Press, 2004). They also worked with the Wilkinson County NAACP.
 
In August 1967, a Democratic primary was held in Wilkinson County in which no Black candidates won any county posts, enraging the community. In September 1967, the Woodville Deacons supported the NAACP with its boycotts, demanding a new election and Black appointments to the Wilkinson County Election Commission.
 
One defeated leader was Anselm Joseph Finch (Anne Moody’s "Mr. C.H. Willis," founding principal of Willis High School). Finch reportedly lost because a number of Black teachers voted for the white candidate. Wilkinson County NAACP President James Joliff called for a boycott of white-owned businesses with the goal of holding a new election. He later led 200 Blacks and armed Deacons in a march, demanding school officials fire the Black teachers who did not support the Black candidates.
 
Hill reports that later that day, Joliff and the Deacons traveled to Centreville and staged a second march of 200 Black protesters. This time a white man emerged from a gas station along the march route while brandishing a rifle to harass protesters. The moment he appeared, about 25 Deacons pulled up with firearms and surrounded him. The man scrambled back into the gas station.
 
On June 14, 1969, an incident in Woodville made history. It involved Woodville Deacon Leon Chambers, who was convicted of murdering Deputy Sheriff Aaron "Sonny" Liberty and sentenced to life in prison. Although Gable McDonald, another Deacon, confessed to the crime multiple times before recanting, he was never prosecuted. Chambers spent several years in prison. He was released in 1973, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 on February 21 that he had been denied a fair trial under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
 
Decades later, James Stokes made a startling comment about the case in an interview with Richard Grant, author of “The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi" (Simon & Schuster, 2020). He told Grant that Aaron Liberty “was a Tom who would take news back to the whites, and he was harassing James Williams, a loyal man. One of my loyal Deacons killed him.” Stokes said Gable McDonald was the one who killed Liberty.

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ROSCOE BARNES III, Ph.D., is the cultural heritage tourism manager a Visit Natchez.