Power of Nonviolence Marin Luther

¶ … Power of Nonviolence

Marin Luther King wrote that nonviolence was the answer to the crucial political and moral dilemmas of the civil rights era. He understood that man needed to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to them. In retrospect, this statement is true for the plight of African-Americans throughout the civil rights movement. From the days of Homer Plessy to the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States, success has been achieved not through violence but through nonviolent acts that lifted up the character of the man. While violence did erupt in certain situations, it rarely ever solved problems and generally made circumstances worse. The most intelligent of protesters understood this notion and advocated peaceful action.

Homer Plessy is probably one of the first individuals that realized racial inequality was wrong and decided to do something about it, whether or not he suffered for it. In 1890, he deliberately broke a law in Louisiana by boarding a white only railway car. He wanted to challenge segregation on the grounds that it violated his Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. He did not win his case and it would be decades before the ruling was overturned but what we remember about this man is how he challenged the law in a nonviolent way. Plessy was one of many African-American that decided that they had rights like any other American. These people created needs that were met with the establishment of groups. Prior to the 1960s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League were the two primary associations that worked for civil rights. The NAACP "pushed doggedly to dismantle the legal underpinnings of segregation" (Bailey 911) and it was the first such group to see certain levels of success. While the high court was determining that separate but equal was unconstitutional, individuals were stating their own cause and fighting for their rights in ways that they knew best. They were simply responding to the court's ruling in their daily lives. Rosa Parks is perhaps one of the most famous nonviolent protestors, decided that she would not give up her seat in a whites only section of a city bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and "served notice throughout the South that blacks would no longer submit meekly to the absurdities and indignities of segregation" (Bailey 912). Other successful organizations that fought for the rights of African-Americans without advocating violence were the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose motto was to "resist without bitterness; to be cursed and not reply; to be beaten and not hit back" (Davidson 1167). Another significant organization to emerge during this time was the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

It should also be noted that African-Americans experienced the effects of violence and tried to steer clear of it whenever possible. Morris states that the lynching of Emmett Till is significant because a "generation of young Blacks who would lead the student wing of the modern civil rights movement was coming of age precisely at the time of Till's lynching" (522). Till's murder and the outcome of the trial "radicalized" (522) them. The most distinctive aspect of the movement was "its demonstration that the oppressed... can generate social change through the widespread use of social protest" (524) and it evolved over time. The Montgomery bus project revealed that large numbers of people could be mobilized to protest and that protests could last indefinitely. The Montgomery bus protest lasted longer than a year and it "revealed the central role that would be played by social organization and a Black culture rooted in a protest tradition, if protests were to be successful" (524). The African-American church and community were energized by the protest and successful social movement organizations were established as a result. For a decade, protests such occurred in the Southern United States and they were primarily supported. Sit-ins became popular and before long, the movement established an "important mass base' (Morris 525). The evolution of this form of protest is what led to the very organized force that would "topple Jim Crow" (525). During the mid 1960s, "highly public demonstrations" (525) increased in number and were strengthened with support from various individuals. These such protests demonstrated that African-Americans were serious more than anything else.