Non-Violence to Violence: Shifts in Resistance during the Civil Rights Movement

Non-Violence to Violence: Shifts in Resistance during the Civil Rights Movement

Introduction

Civil Rights are defined as the basic rights that every country guarantees to its citizens. These include rights of owning private property, the right to vote in a democracy, and personal freedom, which implies that no citizen is subjected to arbitrary imprisonment, arrest, or forced coercion. Civil rights promise and uphold the concept of “equal opportunities”. African Americans as a socially stratified group based on social class, race and ethnicity, faced the worse form of discrimination, segregation, and racial violence in the United States. The Civil Rights Movement was a global phenomenon - occurring simultaneously in various parts of the world. A more specific name for the Civil Rights Movement pertinent to our study in the course of this essay is the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955- 1968). The purpose of the movement was to eliminate discrimination against Blacks in the United States and restore voting rights to the Black community. The African American Civil Rights Movement witnessed a promising start, with Martin Luther King Jr.'s inspiring and skillful oratory skills, non-violence resistance movements, and the legendary hallmark in U.S. Civil Rights history: The March to Washington. However, a split between the liberal and radical blacks quickly descended into a disparaging revolutionary violence. Malcolm X, another historic figure of the movement, called for segregation of the Blacks when Martin Luther King Jr. called for integration. The African American Civil Rights Movement began to witness a shift in resistance approaches, moving radically towards violence, straying away from Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous non-violent approach.

Discussion

Martin Luther King Jr. & the Beginning of his Boycott Leadership

In 1955, Rosa Parks refused the bus driver's command of giving her seat up in the colored (segregated) section of the bus to a white passenger. She was arrested for civil disobedience and became one of the most important symbols of the Civil Rights Movement. The Montgomery Bus Boycott marked the beginning of the African American Civil Rights Movement. This was also the point in the movement's history which saw the rise of Martin Luther King Jr. as a leader of the movement. His boycott leadership culminated in the beginning of Luther Jr.'s non-violence resistance movement. The year-long boycott of the Montgomery Bus Service sparked a revolution - with Martin Luther King as its chief spokesman. King believed that non-violence was not passive, rather a courageous and active resistance to discrimination and injustice. King advocated non-violent direct action and rational, non-destructive social change. His opposite in ideology, Malcolm X, had his own group of followers who were moving the resistance efforts towards violence and segregation.

Malcolm X and the Resistance Movement

In his famous “Ballot or the Bullet” speech Malcolm X urged African-Americans to choose between two approaches to gain the civil rights they were deprived of. This was only achievable either through the somewhat non-promising American democracy of the ballot or a much more aggressive stance the ...