Document #3: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theory of Nonviolence/Freedom Summer

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theory of Nonviolence“The nonviolent resisters can summarize their message in the following simple terms: we will take direct action against injustice despite the failure of governmental and other official agencies to act first. We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully because our aim is to persuade… We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. The way of nonviolence means a willingness to suffer and sacrifice. It may mean going to jail. It may even mean physical death. American Negroes must come to the point where they can say to their white brothers, paraphrasing the words of Gandhi: ‘We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children; send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities and drag us out on some wayward road, beating us and leaving us half dead, and we will still love you. But we will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer...”

(1) How does a non-violent movement test human nature?(2) Can a non-violent movement be effective? Explain.

Freedom SummerIn 1964, less than 7% of Mississippi’s African Americans were registered to vote, compared to between 50 and 70% in other southern states. For years, local civil rights workers had tried unsuccessfully to increase voter registration amongst African Americans. Those who wished to vote had to face the local registrar, an all-powerful white functionary who would often publish their names in the paper and pass the word on to their employers and bankers.

In 1964, a new plan was hatched by Bob Moses, a local secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. For ten weeks, white students from the North would join activists on the ground for a massive effort that would do what had been impossible so far: force the media and the country to take notice of the shocking violence and massive injustice taking place in Mississippi.

In 1964, 3 Freedom Summer recruits train in Oxford, Ohio, and left for Mississippi on June 20th, 1964. The three civil rights workers set out to aid in peaceful protest. On the 21st, the three organizers, all under age 25, disappeared while investigating a church burning. The bodies of James Chaney, a black Mississippian, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two white Northerners, were found buried together on August 4th.

“My husband, Michael Schwerner, did not die in vain. If he and Andrew Goodman had been negroes, the world would have taken little notice of their deaths. After all, the slaying of a negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my husband and Andrew Goodman were white that the national alarm had been sounded.” - Rita Schwerner

(3) Why was the media a necessary component to the non-violent Civil Right Movement?

Document #1: Sit-Ins

“Negro College Students Sit at Woolworth Lunch Counter” by Marvin Sykes, Record Staff Writer(Greensboro Record, Tues. February 2, 1960)A group of 20 Negro student form A&T College occupied lunch counter seats, without being served, at the downtown F.W. Woolworth Co. Store. Employees of Woolworth did not serve the group and they sat from 10:30a.m. until noon. White customers continued to sit and get service. Today’s 20-man action at 4:30 p.m. followed that of yesterday - four freshmen from Scott Hall at A&T who sat down and stayed, without service, until the store closed at 5:30p.m. Student spokesmen said they are seeking luncheon counter service, and will increase their numbers daily until they get it. There was no disturbance and there appeared to be no conversation...Some students pulled out books and appeared to be studying. The group today wrote to the president of Woolworth asking ‘a firm stand to eliminate this discrimination,’ and signed the letter as members of the Student Executive Committee for Justice.

The move is not school connected, but they hope to encourage more students to participate and hope that Bennett College students will join. One boy, McLain, said no economic boycott is planned. ‘We like to spend our money here, but we want to spend it at the lunch counter as well as the counter next to it.’

“New Protests are Followed by Arrests,” Greensboro Daily News (February 24, 1960)Negro students resumed nonviolent demonstrations against segregated lunch counters in North Carolina today. Police in two cities arrested demonstrators. The students voted to continue their protest by sit-down demonstrations, boycott and picket line until they reach their goal of desegregated lunch counters. Negro spectators cheered as police led each of the demonstrators to patrol cars for transportation to…booking on charges of trespass…A strategy meeting at Durham Sunday decided to continue withstanding the threats of arrests, imprisonment or other harassment or punishment.

Nashville, Tennessee Students from American Baptist Theological Seminary, Fisk University, Meharry Medical College, and Tennessee A&I in Nashville quickly began their sit-in movement. On February 13, around five hundred students participated in the first sit-in. They organized into groups and went downtown to Woolworth, Kresge’s, McCellan’s , and other stores. Rather than serve people of color, this Walgreen’s lunch-counter closed “in the interests of public safety.” On the first day and the following days thereafter, they did not encounter any violence. However, on February 27, white teenagers attacked the student protestors. When the police arrived they let the white teens go and arrested the sit-in protesters for disorderly conduct…students and community members marched to the City Hall. Fisk University student Diane Nash took the opportunity to ask the Mayor whether he thought it was right for lunch counters to discriminate based on race. The Mayor said no, it was wrong…a few weeks later on May 10, six lunch counters in Nashville began serving black patrons.

– Jessica McElrathThe Creation of SNCC The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was born from the sit-in movement and coordinated the movement after its beginning. In April 1960, on the Shaw University campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, students of the sit-in movements established SNCC. SNCC sought to coordinate youth-led nonviolent, direct-action campaigns against segregation and other forms of racism.

End of the Sit-InsDespite progress, the sit-ins did not stop. In Greensboro, the sit-ins continued for five months until Woolworth and Kress integrated. In some southern cities, they continued until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Over the course of the sit-in movement, more than 78 cities participated, there were over fifty thousand black and white protestors, and two thousand participants had been arrested.

(1) How did sit-ins mobilize Americans to join the Civil Rights Movement?

Document #2 Freedom Riders

Freedom RidesAs a way of drawing attention to the continued segregation in public facilities, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides on May 4, 1961. This Freedom Ride was an integrated group planned to take public busses from Washington, DC to New Orleans with the goal of desegregating public facilities throughout the South. In 1961 Freedom Riders rode busses into the South planning for black riders to enter “whites” only sections while white riders would enter the “colored” waiting rooms. In Anniston, Alabama, a mob attacked the buses, destroying one and beating the riders. They were attacked again in Birmingham and Montgomery, leading the federal government to send federal marshals to protect the riders. In the following statement, James Peck describes his experience as a Freedom Rider:

“The most nightmarish day of our Freedom Ride was Sunday, May 14th, Mother’s Day. I identify the date with Mother’s Day because when Police Chief Connor was asked why there was not a single policeman at the Birmingham Trailways terminal to avert (stop) mob violence, he explained that since it was Mother’s Day, most of the police were off duty visiting their mothers. That there was going to be a mob to meet us had been well known around Birmingham for several days. When the Greyhound bus pulled into Anniston, it was immediately surrounded by an angry mob armed with iron bars. They set upon the vehicle, denting the sides, breaking the windows, and slashing the tires. Finally, police arrived and the bus managed to depart. But the mob pursued it in cars. One car got ahead of the bus and prevented it from gathering speed. Within minutes of stopping, the pursuing mob was again hitting the bus with iron bars. The rear window was broken and a bomb was thrown inside. Suddenly the vehicle was filled with thick smoke. All the passengers managed to escape before the bus burned into flames and was totally destroyed.”

I.F. Stone’s Weekly (6/4/62)“Jim Zwerg was a white fellow from Madison, Wisconsin. He had a lot of nerve. I think that is what saved me because Jim Zwerg walked off the bus in front of us. The crowd was possessed. They couldn’t believe that there was a white man who would help us. They grabbed him and pulled him into the mob. Their attention was on him. It was as if they didn’t see us.” – Frederick Leonard

“Segregation must be stopped. It must be broken down. Those of us on the Freedom Ride will continue. No matter what happens we are dedicated to this. We will take the beatings. We are willing to accept death. We are going to keep going until we can ride anywhere in the South.” – James Zwerg

“I was certain I was going to die. What kind of death would it be? Would they mutilate me first? What does it feel like to die? Well, damn it, if I had to die, at least let the organization wring some use out of my death. I hoped the newspapers were out there. Plenty of them. With plenty of cameras.” – James Farmer

James Farmer, interviewed by C. David Haymann, A Candid Biography of Robert F. Kennedy (1998) “The Kennedys meant well, but they did not feel it. They didn’t know any blacks growing up – there were no blacks in their communities or going to their schools. But their inclinations were good. I had the impression in those years that Bobby was doing what had to be done for political reasons. HE was very conscious of the fact that they had won a narrow election and he was afraid that if they antagonized the South, the Dixiecrats would cost them the next elections. And he was found to be very, very cautious and very careful not to do that. But we changed the equation down there, so it became dangerous for him not to do anything.”

(1) How did the Freedom Riders make an important, long lasting contribution to the Civil Rights Movement?

Document #4 Mississippi and Selma - Voting Rights

In Mississippi, blacks had been denied access to vote. The state's political leadership, controlled by the segregationist Citizens Council had been preventing blacks from registering to vote. The state had passed new voting laws to make registration even harder, and local officials had the power to choose to register whites and reject blacks if they wanted to.

In Selma, Alabama…(A) First March - “Bloody Sunday”On March 7, 1965, 525 to 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. highway 80. Discrimination had prevented Selma’s black population, roughly half of the city, from registering and voting. In their first march, they only made it to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, six blocks away. State troopers and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department awaited them. In the presence of the news media, the lawmen attacked the peaceful demonstrators with tear gas, and bull whips, driving them into Selma. Brutal televised images of the attack, which presented people with horrifying images of people left bloodied and severely injured, motivated others to support the US Civil Rights Movement. Amelia Boynton Robinson was beaten and gassed nearly to death – her photo appeared on the front page of papers and news magazines around the world. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized, leading to the naming of the day “Bloody Sunday.”

Within forty-eight hours, demonstrations in support of the marchers were held in eighty cities and thousands of religious leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, flew to Selma.

(B) Second March On March 9, Dr. King led a group again to the Pettus Bridge where they knelt and prayed. That night a Northern minister, who was in Selma to march, was killed by white vigilantes. Outraged citizens continued to overwhelm the White House and Congress with letters and phone calls.

On March 9th, for example, Jackie Robinson, the baseball hero, sent a telegram to the President: “Important you take immediate action in Alabama one more day of savage treatment by legalized hatchet men could lead to open warfare by aroused negroes America cannot afford this in 1965.”

(C) Third March On March 15th, President Johnson addressed the Congress in a televised address: “Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of injustice. And we shall overcome.”

The following day Selma demonstrators submitted a detailed march plan to federal Judge Frank Johnson, who approved the demonstration and ordered local law enforcement from harassing or threatening marchers. The judge allowed CBS footage of “Bloody Sunday” as evidence in court. “The law is clear that the right to petition one’s government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups…and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways.”

Under protection of the National Guard, voting rights advocates left Selma on March 21st with 3,200 demonstrators, protected by hundreds of federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents. They marched from Selma to Montgomery – about 50 miles away, covering 7-17 miles a day. It took two weeks. By the time they reached the capitol the numbers had swollen to 25,000 strong. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the speech “How Long, Not Long” from the capitol steps. During the final rally, King proclaimed: “The end we seek is a society at peace with itself. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. It will be the day of man as man.”

Within 5 months, the U.S. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing every American twenty-one and over the right to register to vote. During the next four years the number of U.S. blacks eligible to vote went from 24 to 61%.

(1) What reasoning could you provide as to why Selma was a pivotal (crucial) moment in the Civil Rights Movement?