King Martin Luther King's Strategy

King Martin Luther King's Strategy against Segregation and Alinsky's Rules for Radicals One of Saul Alinsky's fundamental Rules for Radicals is that one must make the opposition honor the commitments it has voiced towards certain principles. In other words, if the opposition states that every letter complaining about an unsafe product must get a reply, send thousands to General Motors, if one wishes to protest the conglomerates over production of SUVs with a high rollover rate.

If one doubts the value of this technique, there could be no better endorsement of this principle of forcing the opposition to make good on its promises than the techniques used to brilliant effect by Martin Luther King in his civil rights demonstrations.

King acknowledged that America was a nation of freedom -- thus, he said, then let freedom ring to the Southern states where African-Americans were being denied the right to vote! How could a nation be free if all its Black people could not freely move where they wished to go, vote with other Americans (including side by side with White Americans) and go to school at the schools in their local districts, rather than at Black-only schools.

Kind underlined the fact that America had always professed it was a nation of equality -- then he highlighted the inequality of African-Americans being forced to sit at the back of the bus, even while they paid the same fare as their White brethren.

America was a nation where everyone was accepted for who he or she was, King stated -- then why were not Black and White dimes equally acceptable at lunch counters across the South? The sit-ins and boycotts advocated by King, and the anger they provoked in a profoundly inequitable climate of the American South highlighted the need for federal intervention in the area to protect Black rights.

King forced the American nation to make good on its principles and promises of freedom, equality, justice, and full enfranchisement that had been denied to blacks. These principles were first denied when the Founding Fathers allowed freedom to 'wait' for Blacks by allowing slavery, then after the end of Reconstruction after the civil war.

Always, African-Americans were told not yet, said King, but they could be told not yet no longer, America had to live up to the ideals it espoused in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Emancipation Proclamation. The socialist leader and organizer Saul Alinsky also stressed that radical activists ought to remain within the comfort zone of one's power base. This principle is highlighted in King's use of the Southern Christian Black church as the organizational base and core of his organization the Southern Christian Leadership Council.

The Southern church was a powerful social as well as political institution in the Southern Black community. This gave King's organization an extra social organizing edge and moral leadership authority, in contrast to the more purely legal routes advocated by Black attorneys and the NAACP. Led by a minister and by the words of the Bible, long-oppressed Southern Black Americans were emboldened to risk their lives and not to feel fear in the face of White community hatred and possible social repercussions, even the loss of their jobs.

King's specific targeting of lunch counters and buses in areas where Blacks were important to businesses showed an added, economic knowledge of his power base. Without Black workers taking the bus or eating in local establishments, White businessmen were hurt in their pockets, on their all important bottom line. If they did not respond to the Black community's call for justice, there was a threat of an indefinite boycott and loss of business.

The use of Black churches also enabled King's followers to follow the Alinsky radical precept that radical organizers must work to go outside of the frame of reference of the pro-segregation White enemy, to further upset and confuse the enemy. Southern White had no conception of what life was like in Black churches, for religion was segregated in the South, just as segregated as all other aspects of social life. Thus White leaders were thrown off balance by the calm and peaceful spirituals sung by King's marchers.

The use of nonviolent marching and demonstrations in general was also powerfully upsetting to the idea that somehow Blacks were violent. The White enemy was prepared for rioting, not for peace along the equally pacific lines of the Indian activist Gandhi, King's professed inspiration along with Jesus' advice to turn the other cheek when struck by one's enemy in conflict. Faced with nonviolent Black Christian American marchers, King's enemy was forced to live up to its own American Christian ideals, and failed miserably in doing so.

This was because the Southern police could not suppress nonviolent civil disobedience and integration except with violence, and the subsequent incarcerations of Black nonviolent protesters highlighted the injustice of the system. Seeing people put in jail for peacefully sitting next to someone of a different race for eating a sandwich highlighted the absurdity of segregation, and the absurdity of fears of mixing the races in the Southern United States. The use of faith made the marches, if not enjoyable in Alinsky's words, at least, profoundly moving for King's adherents.

King's marches and negotiations were also quite pointed in their attacks. Nor did negotiations ever dragged on too long -- for although King was criticized for his swiftness and refusal to wait for concessions, this enabled him to mobilize the spirit of his people with great resolve, and to keep up the pressure on the local authorities, as well as to keep the outside media stationed in the South to see and hear the often violent events that transpired.

Another reason King refused to negotiate and make concessions, was that he believed African-Americans had.