How you can resist funding the government →
other forms our opposition can take →
nonviolent action; “People Power” →
in the U.S. civil rights movement
I think it’s worthwhile to compare the Resolution that launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott to that vague anti-war “Appeal” I wrote about on .
It shows the difference between a call-to-action and a call-to-inaction, between a campaign for change and a same-old-complaint, between making something happen and having an opinion.
King introduced the resolution, in part, by saying:
The resolution formally spelled out the segregation policy of the city of Montgomery and specifically the Montgomery City Lines, Incorporated bus company, and then made very specific demands — not of them, but of every citizen in Montgomery, first and foremost those citizens who were assembled to listen to and vote on the resolution (here somewhat edited for clarity from the version in the transcript of the meeting recording):
That every citizen in Montgomery, regardless of race, color or creed, refrain from riding buses owned and operated in the city of Montgomery by Montgomery Lines, Incorporated, until some arrangement has been worked out between said citizens and the Montgomery City Lines, Incorporated.
That every person owning or who has access to an automobile will use their automobiles in assisting other persons to get to work without charge.
That the employers of persons whose employees live a great distance from them, as much as possible, afford transportation for your own employees.
That the Negro citizens of Montgomery are ready and willing to send a delegation of citizens to the Montgomery City Lines, Incorporated, to discuss their grievances and to work out a solution for the same.
Be it further resolved, that we have not, we are not, and we have no intentions of using any unlawful means or any intimidation to persuade persons not to ride the Montgomery City Lines buses.
However, we call upon your conscience, both moral and spiritual, to give your whole-hearted support to this worthy undertaking.
We believe we have a just complaint and we are willing to discuss this matter with the proper authorities.
This resolution was put to a vote at “the first mass meeting of the Montgomery Improvement Association” and the vote was overwhelmingly in favor.
King then addressed the assembly:
You have voted.
And you have done it with a great deal of enthusiasm, and I want to express my appreciation to you, on behalf of everybody here.
Now let us go out to stick together and stay with this thing until the end.
Now it means sacrificing, yes, it means sacrificing at points.
But there are some things that we’ve got to learn to sacrifice for.
And we’ve got to come to the point that we are determined not to accept a lot of things that we have been accepting in the past.
So I’m urging you now.
We have the facilities for you to get to your jobs.
And we are putting, we have the cabs there at your service, automobiles will be at your service.
And don’t be afraid to use up any of the gas.
If you have it, if you are fortunate enough to have a little money, use it for a good cause.
Now my automobile is gonna be in it, it has been in it.
And I’m not concerned about how much gas I’m gonna use.
I want to see this thing work.
And we will not be content until oppression is wiped out of Montgomery, and really out of America.
We won’t be content until that is done.
We are merely insisting on the dignity and worth of every human personality.
And I don’t stand here, I’m not arguing for any selfish person.
I’ve never been on a bus in Montgomery.
But I would be less than a Christian if I stood back and said, because I don’t ride the bus, I don’t have to ride a bus, that it doesn’t concern me.
The city told the taxi drivers it was illegal to give discounted fares to the boycotters.
The cops started giving out nuisance traffic tickets to cars that volunteers used to shuttle people outside of the bus system.
The city pressured insurance companies to rescind car insurance for cars involved in these volunteer shuttles.
Boycotters were physically attacked and brought up on conspiracy charges.
King’s house was firebombed.
Through it all, the boycott continued and was eventually victorious.
It took all that to get bus drivers to stop telling black people to stand up and move to the back so a white person could rest his bum, something any sensible person would know without being reminded was beneath the dignity of everyone concerned.
How much more effort do you think it will take to stop the war in Iraq or the mass incarceration in America?
How long do you think it would take the followers of a toothless Appeal like the one I discussed on , or the same old timid tactics of today’s peace movement to do the trick?
Matthew Yglesias is one of the better bloggers on the more-or-less conventionally liberal side.
Although he is stooping to a lot of Democratic Party talking points these days, I still keep an eye on what he’s got to say, because he occasionally comes out with a zinger like this:
There was lots of Martin Luther King, Jr. talk yesterday and like every time there’s been lots of MLK talk over the past few years I’m struck that almost no attention is given to the fact that he was a very serious pacifist.
Of course, it’s a cliché at this point to note that King’s actual views were really a good deal more radical than those of the cuddly Iconic MLK that’s been created as part of the post-sixties American settlement.
But I think my pet overlooked element is more noteworthy than everyone else.
After all, it’s precisely because of his advocacy of non-violence that it’s possible for King to have been transformed into a non-threatening icon.
King wasn’t a radical, wasn’t someone who talked about doing things “by any means necessary,” and wasn’t an advocate of rioting.
But consider how radical that stance was — and is.
By what passes for mainstream opinion about the political use of violence in contemporary America, after all, the appropriate thing for African-American residents of the segregated south would have been to try to get their way through the widespread use of high explosives throughout Dixie aimed at destroying the command and control centers of the security forces (i.e., police stations) along with vital infrastructure (roads, bridges, rail lines, power plants).
That kind of widespread destruction would, of course, have caused a certain amount of loss of innocent life, but unlike the bad guys in the conflict who deliberately targeted civilians by siccing dogs on children and so forth, the good guys make every effort to avoid civilian loss of life.
Some people might condemn that kind of violent campaign as obviously counterproductive, and destined to result only in northern whites completely abandoning support for civil rights and instead backing southern whites in a campaign of brutal repression.
But those people would fail to exhibit the appropriate moral clarity.
They would be, in effect, apologists for the system of American apartheid.
What’s more, if the previous hundred years of American history had taught us anything it was appeasement wasn’t going to work to resolve this issue — white supremacists had no interest in compromising.
Obviously, King and the Civil Rights movement didn’t go down that road.
And when, after King’s death, fringe elements in the black community did take steps down they road they wound up accomplishing nothing.
But things very plausibly could have taken a violent turn — it would hardly be unusual for an ethnic conflict to turn persistently violent.
And of course a turn to violence would have been an absolute disaster for the country, and resulted in a much much worse situation than the one we now enjoy.
The legacy of racial conflict still scars America, of course, but it scars it much less than it might not only because the sins of segregation were undone but because they were undone specifically through non-violent means that allowed for relatively rapid reconciliation once the core political conflict had played out.
In retrospect, this seems obvious to everyone.
The moral force of non-violent protest won friends and allies to the cause, exposed the crass immorality of Civil Rights’ opponents, and was forceful enough to bring about major change while also being low-key enough to take “yes” for an answer rather than turning into an endless cycle of recriminations.
And yet these ideas about conflict and its resolution seem almost entirely absent from our present-day discourse about to think about violence and its utility.
This even though King’s non-violence stemmed not from some esoteric element of his life, but from Christianity — a faith that’s pervasively present in American politics, but whose practical political upshot these days is support for large-scale and casual deployment of violence.
Last night my sweetie & I watched the movie Chicago 10, about what’s more commonly called the Chicago Seven Trial.
There’s a point in the movie when Abbie Hoffman is talking about the assassination of King, and how in the riot-filled aftermath, President Johnson addressed the nation and urged “in the spirit of Dr. King” that everyone behave nonviolently.
“Far out!
Johnson’s a pacifist!”
Hoffman yelled, and everyone laughed.
