shootout at miracle valley, AZ 08/23/82 Pastor Thomas, Larry Dever & Jesse Jackson

mods: if this is in the wrong forum please move. I couldn't find the heading "old news most people won't care about"

what i will say comes from a book i just finished called, appropriately, "Shootout at Miracle Valley" by William R Daniel. this book loosely compares the death of 3 people on 8/23/82 to the shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone,AZ, wherein 3 people also died.

please read the book for yourself but I will very briefly summarize it for you here. this is interesting to me since I live nearby and one of the wounded deputies is now the sheriff.

in the late 1970's members of the Christ Miracle Healing Church in Chicago began moving to Cochise County, Arizona....about 3 miles north of the US/Mexican border and in between the cities of Sierra Vista and Bisbee, AZ. The spiritual leader of the church was a black woman by the name of Pastor Frances Thomas. Now when I say that she was racist towards white people, I'm not making a racist statement myself but am rather referring to many, many documented examples of her sincere hatred towards whites. whether wrong or right, she basically ran a cult of only black folks who were not to associate with whites and encouraged the children of her community to hate them. after time, the cult declared it was "above the law" and acted accordingly- high-speed chases to avoid traffic tickets, brandishing weapons to anyone and everyone including law enforcement, patrolling the streets with weapons, and even beating on deputies with their fists. things escalated when an arrest warrant was issued for the man who had beaten on a deputy in front of 25 or more people. when this man was finally booked into the Sierra Vista substation, the followers of Pastor Thomas loaded up a van (the "War Wagon") with arms and bombs, intending to blow up all the police cars at the station and then blow a hole in the wall to release their captive friend.
things didn't go so smoothly and as they were arming one of the bombs, it exploded and sent the van off the road. very quickly, the surviving passengers grabbed all the evidence and ran.
so basically, you've got a cult that is also a terrorist group, operating by its own laws for years. The sheriff at the time- Jimmy Judd- was a modern guy who saw negotiations as the way to peace, not blood. so for years the CCSO put up with belligerence and harassment from these church members. and then, one day.....
3 arrest warrants were issued for residents of Miracle Valley and Sheriff Judd was determined that they needed to be served. this is where it gets crazy.....
2 deputies showed up and went looking for the 3 people. no one was home at any of the houses, but by the time they got to the 3rd house, masses of angry people were surrounding them. though racial tensions were always high, the mobs had always subsided. but not this time- they attacked the deputies with iron bars, rakes, rocks, and guns. you see- they had been tipped off that the sheriffs were coming by Harold Hurtt (current police chief of Houston I think) who was the liaison between the governor's office and this church. therefore they had plenty of time to get worked up and into a frenzy while waiting for the sheriff's to arrive. the governor at the time was Bruce Babbitt, by the way- the man who supposedly was trying to solidify a presidential campaign as his primary agenda. to add to this, DPS was told not to interfere with the sheriff's office, even though the night before the director had promised his support to the sheriff. very strange politics......
35 deputies facing over 250 angry, armed people and only 3 people died- 1 deputy and 2 church members....ironically the military leader of the church and his father in law.
they call this the Miracle at Miracle Valley because it could have been a total bloodbath if the deputies hadn't had the patience that they did. 25 were injured, beaten repeatedly with lumber, pipes, shot at - the current sheriff Larry Dever was hit in the face with a shotgun- many had their hands smashed to a pulp and one deputy died from his wounds a month after the incident.
i think about the Kent State killings and imagine that if the National Guard had been present, hundreds of people would have died.
oh yeah- jesse jackson showed up on a fact-finding mission after the event and met with everyone involved. he's a person friend of bruce babbitt

update: I've spoken with a man who was involved with cochise co sheriff office and according to his testimony, all those sheriffs were incredibly racist and didn't want a single black person living here. Knowing this, the blacks taunted the sheriffs mercilessly, knowing they could win money in a suit.