Hicks v. Knight
On this date in 1965, Hicks v. Knight was filed. The suit, aimed against Bogalusa Chief of Police Claxton Knight, argued that police "must protect black demonstrators instead of harassing them, beating them, arresting them, and leaving them at the mercy of white mobs." The racial episode at Cassidy Park, especially the canine attack on Robert Hicks' teenage son Gregory was presented as key evidence.
C.O.R.E. attorneys filed the suit, and on July 10, Judge Herbert Christenberry issued an injunction ordering law enforcement to protect protesters from "physical assaults and beatings" and to cease "preventing or discouraging the exercise of their rights to picket, assemble peaceably, and advocate equal civil rights for Negroes."
