27-year-old Vietnam War veteran and organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Georgia, Willie B. Phillips self-immolated in Atlanta on October 7th, 1972. The Black Panther (October 14, 1972, p.3) reported that "after suffering the long train of abuses that all Black people suffer," Phillips "felt he could no longer endure the hardships of struggling to live. He chose to die." Civil rights leader Hosea Williams described Phillips as a martyr and organized a Mule Train funeral in his honour. 

Phillips' death by self-immolation challenges notions that the civil rights movement had moved beyond direct action protest when the 60s came to a close and therefore distorts "the master narrative" of the movement depicting its end in 1968.