With Richard “Dip” Lee Lewis’ crossing over, his legacy as a local modern civil rights organization worker of 1964-1966 and beyond must be recalled.

He was truly a “local” hero of the modern civil rights movement in Natchez and Mississippi. For he and other members of his local peer group traveled to Bogalusa, La. in October 1965 to meet with that community’s Deacons for Defense and Justice leaders in order to obtain help to form the Natchez Deacons for Defense and Justice.

The Natchez Deacons for Defense and Justice organization was one of the three pillars of armed self defense, economic boycott and enforcement of that boycott within the black community which became as reporters of the day said “the most successful civil rights movement to gain civil rights concessions in the history of the movement in Mississippi.” Those three methods used in the Natchez success were later applied across the state of Mississippi to also successfully gain modern civil rights concessions.

October marks the 51st anniversary of the successful Natchez Mississippi civil rights movement that regained civil rights in Natchez and across Mississippi. It is the 51st anniversary of the most successful regaining civil rights movement in Mississippi since the civil war gained civil rights 151 years ago (1865-1870).

After NAACP President George Metcalf’s near assassination by a Ku Klux Klan type car bombing on Aug. 27, 1965, “Negroes turned out by the hundreds for rallies, drew up a list of desegregation demands on the city, then took to the streets in almost daily marches for weeks to back up their demands. They imposed the tightest blockade (boycott) on white merchants that some newsmen covering the south for years have ever seen,” wrote the Associated Press.

“Whereas virtually every other local campaign had ended in failure during the civil rights movement in Mississippi, the Natchez project had mobilized an entire community and exacted sweeping concessions from the white establishment—without federal intervention … the Natchez campaign was the single greatest community victory for the civil rights movement in Mississippi, Lance Hill said in his book  “The Deacons for Defense.”

On Oct. 2, 3 and 4 in 1965, hundreds of civil rights marchers were arrested in Natchez by the Natchez Police and Adams County Sheriff for “parading without a permit.” The City of Natchez had obtained a court injunction against civil rights marchers marching within the city in response to the Metcalf assassination attempt. Mass arrests were made and several hundred marchers were bussed to Mississippi’s notorious Parchman state prison where they were tortured in an effort to stop the demonstrations and marching. Civil Rights organizers obtained a federal court order that the City of Natchez court order injunction was illegal, and thousands of civil rights protestors hit the streets and were protected from police oppression and KKK terrorism by the newly formed and armed civil rights organization called The Natchez Deacons for Defense and Justice.
Ser Seshsh Ab Heter-CM Boxley is a leader of current equal human commemorations campaign to “desegregate” history/culture in Mississippi and Central Louisiana pertaining to chattel slavery, black Civil War freedom fighters, 19th- and 20th-centuries civil rights and diversity.