Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick

Biography

Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick (1933–1986) was an African-American musician, civil rights activist, and minister from Haynesville, Louisiana. In late 1964 he was a co-founder of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, an armed black self-defense group, in the small industrial mill town of Jonesboro, Louisiana, to protect the black community against white violence. Together with Earnest "Chilly Willy" Thomas, Kirkpatrick also founded Deacons chapters in other cities of Louisiana, and in Mississippi and Alabama. An associate of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Kirkpatrick was a singer/songwriter, serving as director of folk culture. Beginning in 1968, he recorded three albums with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. One was a recording of the 1978 Louisiana Folk Fest, an annual event which Kirkpatrick had conceived and regularly hosted, to preserve and celebrate musical culture. He used music to teach African-American history, including the Civil Rights Movement, to schoolchildren.

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