The Power Of Nonviolent Protest
The history of a movement explored
ate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love… Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.” These words from Dr Martin Luther King Jr eloquently summed up the intentions of the majority of civil rights campaigners in America; namely, that their goal of equality was to be met through non-violent and peaceful protest, a stark contrast to the violence and hate levelled against black communities over the previous few centuries. One of the crowning achievements of the movement was its effectiveness in promoting these ideals and affecting real change in the country while hardly ever raising a hand in anger.
“Love thy neighbour” was a biblical verse that King took to heart. He, and other activists, believed that love was the force that would win equality and end the racist and segregated laws that infested the USA. Love in their mind didn’t have to be a literal, emotional bond, but a powerful force that could be used for good.
The 20th century had revealed just how effective mankind had become in waging war, with his violent tendencies playing out through a multitude of wars, genocides and civil inequality, backed up by brutal repression. In contrast, there was also a rise in peaceful, nonviolent protest that sought to enforce positive
change without the need for bloodshed. The genesis of non-violent protest in the American Civil Rights Movement lay in King’s teachings and actions.
One of the biggest influences on King’s philosophy came not from what was happening in America, but rather from actions that occurred on the other side of the world. Mahatma Gandhi, the driving force behind India’s independence from the British Empire, had championed non-violent protest as a way to fight oppression and win his people’s freedom. In King’s own words, Gandhi was the person who had the most influence on the actions he took during the struggle to gain civil rights for black people in America. Having heard of Gandhi’s work from his training as a minister, King became deeply influenced by the Indian activist’s teachings after hearing an old university professor talk about his experiences shortly after visiting the country. King did not expect that his interest in Gandhi’s work would ever have practical application in his life, never mind forming the core of his ideals and actions during the Civil Rights Movement.
The major practitioners of non-violent resistance were beginning to communicate directly and share their philosophy. Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy were in correspondence and once the American movement got off the ground, King began to add his own thoughts to the mix. In 1959, King travelled to India in order to learn more of how the independence movement had operated. After the visit, he was “more convinced than ever before that the method of non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.”
The Civil Rights Movement had already made successful use of non-violent protest in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which had proved the effectiveness of this ‘passive’ form of protest. King and the other leaders of the movement met hate with love in their efforts to dismantle the institutionalised racism, inequality and discrimination that came with segregation. Many years of Jim Crow laws had shown that those who supported segregation would go to any lengths to maintain the status quo and keep control over the black population.
The goal of the resistance was an end to segregation, and one of the ways to achieve that was to ensure that the long history of violence used against the black community in the South was shown to the world. Two organisations that were created following the success of the bus boycott were the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Both of these groups were made up primarily of students who had been inspired by a conference in April 1960 sponsored by King. They hoped to use the momentum gained by the actions in Montgomery to drive the cause nationwide. The students were looking for a way to have their actions directly impact people’s lives without being detrimental to their cause. The sit-in movement, first making national headlines on 2 February 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina, was started by four college students. During the lunchtime rush, the four students sat in the white-only designated seating at the lunch counter and were refused service. Instead of leaving, they quietly waited to be served. The store was chosen specifically as the Woolworth chain was known throughout the country and the demonstrators wanted a location that clearly separated people based on colour alone. The men wanted to highlight the hypocrisy of a store that would accept their money while buying school supplies but wouldn’t have them
Many Jim Crow laws were finally repealed in 1964 with the signing of the Civil Rights Act
With their main voter base in the South, the Democrats were initially unwilling to speak out against segregation
“For the simple act of riding on a bus, they had almost been killed by mobs of locals”
The Nation of Islam, an organisation that Malcolm X was once part of, called for a separate black US nation
sitting at the lunch counter. The Greensboro Four, as they became known, vowed that they would continue this protest and in greater numbers. With more and more volunteers joining them, they worked in shifts to stay at the counter all day, simply waiting for service. These actions often made these men and women the targets of abuse, and they were shouted at, pelted with food or drink, threatened, beaten or forcibly removed. Never responding in anger, the protesters were usually arrested and as they were escorted out, a new group would be ready to take their place.
Sit-ins had been used since the 1940s, and were now an integral part of the nonviolent protest in the Civil Rights Movement. When the media got wind of the protests, they quickly spread across the South, taking 54 cities’ lunch counters by storm. Six months after the initial protest, the store finally pulled its segregated counters, allowing people of any colour to eat free from molestation. These protests aimed to highlight the inequality and hit a store’s finances; if their seats were filled with protesters not being served, this would drastically reduce the income from the lunch rush. This simple form of protest was extremely effective and brought the ugly face of American segregation into the national consciousness.
Following the sit-ins, Freedom Riders were an example of a hopeful, and some think naive, form of non-violent protest that gained traction in the early 1960s. Its participants were made up of both black and white activists who were organised by CORE. Their objective was simple – to travel from Washington, DC, to the Deep South in small groups via bus to periodically break the strict segregation laws on the way. Their objective was to raise awareness of these laws and discover and showcase which towns and cities actively supported the Jim Crow laws. The timetable planned for a two-week trip through the Southern states to arrive in New Orleans on 17 May 1961, the anniversary of the historic Brown v Board of Education ruling. This plan was a controversial one, with even members of the Civil Rights Movement thinking it was too confrontational. Segregation was a fact of life in the South and the entire post-civil War culture was built on its foundations. White segregationists would and did view it as an attack on their very way of life. There was a very real possibility that the Freedom Riders would be arrested, attacked or even killed as they made their way to New Orleans.
The Riders had their trail laid for them by a woman named Irene Morgan. In the 1940s, she successfully fought against segregation on interstate buses, much like Rosa Parks had fought against segregated city buses in Montgomery a decade later. Unfortunately, the Southern states overruled this federal law by enforcing the segregation that existed in the Southern state laws. The Riders were not sent in without instruction, however, and received training in Washington, DC, on how to deal with confrontation and the inevitable violence they would encounter. The riders were even warned by King in Atlanta that the KKK were planning a welcoming committee for the buses in Alabama and encouraged the Riders to turn back. The buses were heckled, stopped, attacked and one set on fire as they entered Alabama. Local police forces, along with the FBI, were also turning a blind eye to planned KKK attacks on the Riders. The Klan was given 15 minutes without any police intervention and the sickening pictures taken of the mass brawl that ensued were widely circulated around the world. In this way, the Freedom Riders had achieved their objective: for the simple act of riding on a bus, they had almost been killed by mobs of locals and had embarrassed the USA – a country that prided itself on civil liberties – on the world stage. Even so, the Riders became stranded in
Both King and Malcolm X were assassinated, King by a white supremacist and the latter by Nation of Islam members
Birmingham when the bus drivers refused to drive them any further. After a tense standoff in the airport, the government had to intervene to fly the battered and bruised Riders down to New Orleans. The next chapter of the Freedom Ride is one of the best examples of what the non-violent protest stood for. A second wave of Freedom Riders was on its way from Nashville to Birmingham, and the feeling was that if the ride stopped now, it would prove that segregation could be upheld by brutal violence. This second wave of riders knew the danger they were putting themselves in, and went so far as to write up their wills the night before they departed. By 17 May, pressure from the Kennedy administration, who had been scrambling to defuse the situation since the worldwide backlash, granted the Freedom Riders full police protection. This came none too soon as tensions in Birmingham between the Riders and the KKK had reached breaking point. This police presence disappeared as soon as the bus hit the Montgomery city limits, and the Riders and accompanying journalists were again subjected to horrific beatings. King again intervened for the Riders, this time asking an armed mob of black taxi drivers, who had formed up to protect them, to stand down for fear that they would escalate the situation even further. The group’s total dedication to nonviolent protest, even in the face of death, showed the commitment and bravery of all involved. The Riders’ actions were starting to see results on a national level. The governors of Mississippi and Alabama relented to give the
Riders the protection of the state police and National Guard under the guarantee that the Riders could be arrested for breaking the segregation laws once they arrived at a bus depot. The level of arrests soon led to overpopulation of the local prisons and President Kennedy called for a “cooling off” period. Ignoring his request, the Freedom Rides continued and were met with the same level of hate and violence wherever they went. By November 1961, six months after the first group departed from Washington, DC, the segregation laws, including separate toilet facilities and waiting rooms, were removed from all bus terminals in the US, while passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains. The ride, which had
originally been planned as a 14-day excursion, had been drawn out over many months and gained worldwide news coverage. The violence was condemned at every turn and the actions of the Freedom Riders helped greatly to showcase the rampant inequality in the USA and show the power of peaceful, non-violent protest.
The policy of “love thy neighbour” and pacifism shown in all circumstances was not accepted by all of the Civil Rights Movement or the black community. Some leaders thought that nonviolent protest was only adopted because of the overwhelming force of the opposition. There was no way black communities could go toe-to-toe with local police departments or hate groups like the KKK and come out on top. Community leaders like Malcolm X saw King’s passive resistance as leaving black people defenceless against white aggression. He even went so far as to call King a modern-day ‘Uncle Tom’, a derogatory and antiquated term used to describe a black person who sided with their white oppressors against other black people. Malcolm X and others who agreed with his more violent approach to combating segregation could not comprehend a non-violent approach, when black communities had so frequently been the target of statesanctioned violence and discrimination. Despite his powerful rhetoric, there is a school of thought that believes leaders like Malcolm X incited or condoned violence in order to make the peaceful protests stand out more. Segregationists would be more willing to work with a moderate like Dr King when faced with the alternative of Malcolm X and organisations like the Black Panthers.
Being targeted by the authorities and organisations like the KKK, black communities took their protection into their own hands. This need led to groups like the Deacons for Defense and Justice being formed in 1964. Mostly made up of veterans from World War II and the Korean War, the Deacons provided armed guards to protect the homes and residences of activists. It was one of the first self-defence forces to make itself known in the Civil Rights Movement, and its creation was met with scepticism by the non-violent majority, who either stayed silent over its actions or spoke out against them. Despite the resistance against them from both camps, the Deacons were effective in curbing KKK activities and violence against black communities, and providing security for the March Against Fear that occurred in Tennessee and Mississippi in 1966. Other communities also found that displays of force or the threat of violence were enough to stop attacks by the
KKK and protect their families.
The Civil Rights Movement contained a fluid spectrum of thoughts and opinions, but mostly focused on non-violent practices. These were the actions that saw the most positive change in both society and law. While it did not end the struggle for equality, it proved that love, bravery and determination could win out over hate and violence.