From
The Fire Is Upon Us:
Soon after the four hundred civil rights protesters began their short march to the jail, their leaders sensed they were in for trouble. After making it only half a block, the marchers were confronted by a blockade of law enforcement officers who ordered them “to disperse or to return to the church” As planned, Dobynes knelt to lead the group in prayer before returning to the church, but as he lowered his head, a state trooper bludgeoned him with a club. The Alabama law enforcement officers on the scene had the foresight to keep the news media on the other side of the square and unofficially “deputized” some local segregationist ruffians to keep the reporters at bay in the event Violence broke out. Soon after the state troopers attacked Dobynes, the reporters began to make their move across the square, only to be met by the segregationist mob, which proceeded to assault them and destroy their cameras. In the midst of the assault, the correspondent from the New York Times reported that
“Negroes could be heard screaming and loud whacks rang through the square.” Jimmie Lee Jackson—a twenty-six—year-old church deacon—sought refuge from this horror, along with his mother and his injured eighty-two-
year—old grandfather, in Mack’s Café. State troopers followed the family into the café, and began beating Jackson, his mother, and his grandfather with clubs. At some point in the melee, a state trooper shot Jackson twice
in the stomach. A few days later, Jackson would die from his wounds.
I hadn’t thought deputizing was practiced in modern times. Then, I learned that the police had informally deputized the White man who murdered Ahmaud Arbery. And the police standing by as White supremacists beat and shot at people at Charlottesville now seems like something loosely akin to that. I think it’s feasible that some of those cops were thinking “These people are doing our work.”