Nonviolent Protest, Pro and Con

Nonviolent Protest, Pro and Con
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1. Martin Luther King. Until the bright day of justice emerges, there is something I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold, which leads them to the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream Speech," March on Washington, 1963. / Main Ideas:
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To our most bitter opponents we say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory. Martin Luther King, 1957.
Said Mohandas Gandhi, Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears which are otherwise shut to the voice of reason. Martin Luther King, 1957.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemiesor else? The chain reaction of evilhate begetting hate, wars producing more warsmust be broken. Martin Luther King, 1957.
The Negro was willing to risk martyrdom in order to move and stir the social conscience of his community and the nation. He would force his oppressor to commit his brutality openly, with the rest of the world looking on. Nonviolent resistance paralyzed and confused the power structures against which it was directed. Martin Luther King, Why We Can’t Wait, 1964.
2. Moral High Ground. On January 30, [1956] After putting the baby to bed, Coretta and Mrs. Williams went to the living room to look at television. About nine-thirty they heard a noise in front that sounded as though someone had thrown a brick. In a matter of seconds an explosion rocked the house. A bomb had gone off on the porch . . .
As I walked toward the front the porch I realized that many people were armed. Nonviolent resistance was on the verge of being transformed into violence. In this atmosphere I walked out to the porch and asked the crowd come to order. In less than a moment there was complete silence. Quietly I told them that I was all right and that my wife and baby were all right. "Now let's not become panicky," I continued. "If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence. Remember the words of Jesus: 'He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.'" I then urged them to leave peacefully. "We must love our white brothers," I said, "no matter they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: 'Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you.' This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. Remember," I ended, "if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance." Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom, Clayborne Carson, African-American Professor of History at Stanford University David J. Garrow, Professor of Political Science at City College of New York Gerald Gill, Professor of History at Tufts University Vincent Harding, African-American Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at the Iliff School of Theology and Darlene Clark Hine, African-Professor of American History at Michigan State University, eds., The Eyes On The Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, And Firsthand Accounts From The Black Freedom Struggle, 1954-1990 (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 56-7. / Main Ideas:
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More important than the immediate victories of the Montgomery boycott was its success in establishing a new form of racial protest and in elevating to prominence a new figure in the movement for civil rights. The man chosen to head the boycott movement after its launching was a local Baptist pastor, Martin Luther King, Jr., the son of a prominent Atlanta minister, a powerful orator, and a gifted leader. King's approach to black protest was based on the doctrine of non-violence-that is, of passive resistance even in the face of direct attack. He drew from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader; from Henry David Thoreau and his doctrine of civil disobedience; and from Christian doctrine. And he produced an approach to racial struggle that captured the moral high ground for his supporters. He urged African Americans to engage in peaceful demonstrations; to allow them to be arrested, even beaten, if necessary; and to respond to hate with love. Alan Brinkley, American History: a Survey Volume II: Since 1865 (New York: McGraw Hill, Inc., 1995), 806-7.
Martin Luther King objected to violence and hatred on moral grounds: "It thrives on hated rather than love . . . destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Martin Luther King, 1961.
3. Public Opinion. Advocacy of violence as a tool of advancement, organized as in warfare, deliberately and consciously. To this tendency many Negroes are being tempted today. There are incalculable perils in this approach. It is not the danger or sacrifice of physical being which is primary, though it cannot be contemplated without a sense of deep concern for human life. The greatest danger is that it will fail to attract Negroes to a real collective struggle, and will confuse the large uncommitted middle group, which as yet has not supported either side. Further, it will mislead Negroes into the belief that this is the only path and place them as a minority in a position where they confront a far larger adversary than it is possible to defeat in this form of combat. When the Negro uses force in self-defense he does not forfeit support—he may even win it, by the courage and self-respect it reflects. When he seeks to initiate violence he provokes questions about the necessity for it, and inevitably is blamed for its consequences. It is unfortunately true that however the Negro acts, his struggle will not be free of violence initiated by his enemies, and he will need ample courage and willingness to sacrifice to defeat this manifestation of violence. But if he seeks it and organizes it, he cannot win. Martin Luther King, Jr., Liberation magazine (October 1959), President of the Southern Christian Le Conference, Clayborne Carson, 113. / Main Ideas:
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There, on Wednesday evening, February 17, 1965 a small civil rights march was attacked by lawmen and one participant, Jimmy Lee Jackson, was shot by an Alabama state trooper. Several days later Jackson died, and Marion activists, in conjunction with the SCLC staff, decided that a fitting movement response to his death would be a mass pilgrimage from Selma to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery. The march was scheduled for Sunday, March 7. The SCLC leaders, King and Ralph Abernathy, were in Atlanta preaching at their respective churches, and the six-hundred-person column was led by the SCLC's Hosea Williams and SNCC chairman John Lewis. After crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River on the eastern edge of downtown Selma, the marchers' path was blocked by scores of Alabama state troopers and Clark's local lawmen. The troopers' commander instructed the marchers turn around and walk back into Selma; when the column did move, the gas-masked lawmen walked forward, pushing marchers to the ground and striking others with billy clubs as tear canisters were fired at the peaceful parade. Within seconds scene was a bloody rout with mounted possemen chasing marchers back across the bridge into Selma. More than fifty participants were treated at local hospitals.
Television footage of the eerie and gruesome attack produced immediate national outrage. King issued a public call for civil rights supporters across the nation to come to Selma to show their support and join a second attempted march; congressmen of parties called upon President Lyndon B. Johnson to intervene in Alabama and to speedily put voting rights legislation before Congress. Johnson's Justice Department aides already had hard at work preparing a comprehensive voting rights bill, the "bloody Sunday" attack and the national reaction to it spurred the White House to press for a faster completion of the drafting process. Clayborne Carson, 206.
Last Sunday, more than eight thousand of us started on a mighty walk from Selma, Alabama . . . Selma, Alabama, became a shining moment in the conscience of man. There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes. Clayborne Carson, 224-5.
4. Economic Persuasion. One of King's most famous orations, perhaps second only to his August 28, 1963, "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington, is his April 3, 1968, "mountaintop" speech delivered at the Mason Temple in Memphis the night before his death.
We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children' right. And we've come by here ask you that to make the first item on your agenda—fair treatment where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you." Clayborne Carson, 414. / Main Ideas:
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'The Negro people can organize socially to initiate many forms of struggle which can drive their enemies back without resort to futile and harmful violence. In the history of the movement, . . . many creative forms have been developed—the mass boycott, sitdown protests and strikes, sit-ins—refusal to pay fines and bail for unjust arrests—mass marches—mass meetings—prayer pilgrimages, etc. There is more power in socially organized masses on the march than there is in guns in the hands of a few desperate men. Our enemies would prefer to deal with a small armed group rather than with a huge, unarmed but resolute mass of people. However, it is necessary that the mass-action method be persistent and unyielding. Gandhi said the Indian people must "never let them rest," referring to the British. He urged them to keep protesting daily and weekly, in a variety of ways. This method inspired and organized the Indian masses and disorganized and demobilized the British. It educates its myriad participants, socially and morally. All history teaches us that like a turbulent ocean beating great cliffs into fragments of rock, the determined movement of people incessantly demanding their rights always disintegrates the all order. Martin Luther King, Jr., Liberation magazine (October 1959), President of the Southern Christian Le Conference, Clayborne Carson, 113-4.
Our method will be that of persuasion, not coercion. Our actions must be guided by the deepest principles of our Christian faith. Love must be our regulating ideal. Once again we must hear the words of Jesus echoing across the centuries: Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you. In spite of the mistreatment that we have confronted we must not become bitter, and end up by hating our white brothers. As Booker T. Washington said, "Let no man pull you so low as to make you hate him." Martin Luther King, 1955, his organizing speech beginning the Montgomery Bus boycott. Peter B. Levy, ed., Documentary History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), 59.
Letter from Albany Merchant Leonard Gilberg to Albany Police Chief Laurie Pritchett, July 23, 1962
One of the Albany Movement's tactics was to mount a boycott against many downtown white businesses in the hope that pressure on the pocketbook would achieve what appeals to whites' consciences had not produced. Leonard Gilberg's letter to Chief Pritchett was written during a period of mass protests that took place during July and August 1962.
Dear Chief Pritchett:
In order to inform you as to the situation business-wise for myself and other merchants with whom I have spoken, I am sure you will find the following to be true.
At least 90 to 95% of all the negro business I have enjoyed in past years has been lacking for the last 7 months due to an obvious boycott on the part of the negroes and threats and coercion toward other negroes not in sympathy with the movement to keep them from shopping downtown in Albany.
Now to top all this off, their constant harassment, sit-ins, demonstrations, marching, etc. are keeping all people both white and negro from Albany. Many customers have told me direct that they would not come to Albany from out of town due to fear of demonstrations in Albany and local people have said that they ask their wives and children to stay out of town for the same reason.