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The Breakdown of Nonviolence: The End of the Southern Freedom Movement. The Movement. The Southern Freedom Movement (referred to more commonly as the African-American Civil Rights Movement) was a battle….
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The Breakdown of Nonviolence: The End of the Southern Freedom Movement
The Movement The Southern Freedom Movement (referred to more commonly as the African-American Civil Rights Movement) was a battle…
…fought between black people in the southern United States who had been treated as lower human beings for too long (since 1619, when the first African slaves arrived in the early colonies)…
…and their white oppressors who deemed tradition more important than human lives.
From 1955 to 1968, a fight 300 years in the making took place.
On one side, the violent bureaucracy of segregation and hate, enforcing unspoken rules with an iron fist –
Organizations like the White Citizens Council acted as the voice, while all over the South, the Ku Klux Klan acted as a terrorizing fist
Southern white oppressors did not hesitate to use violence to keep things how they wanted them.
On the other side were organizations big and small, young and old, bent on liberation…
…the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)
The groups planned actions meticulously (often working together), spoke up loudly, and stood up to physical and psychological attack for the cause of freedom…
…but the most important factor, gaining recognition and sympathy for the movement, was the practice of nonviolence as a means of political resistance.
Demonstrations of nonviolent political resistance like the Montgomery Bus Boycott…
I believe the breakdown of nonviolent ideologies and communication led to the end of the Southern Freedom Movement and ushered in an era of violence, rioting, racism, and pain.
StokelyCharmichael “saw nonviolence as a tactic as opposed to a principle.” (Wiki 1) He would argue that nonviolence has its place and violence has its place. He would say that violence could be used as a tactic, just as nonviolence can be used as a tactic. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z2ndUnKDvkU/TbhRjc99BeI/AAAAAAAAC2s/y15aNERnaK8/s1600/Black%2BViolence.jpg http://www.terroraddict.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/BLACK-PANTHERS1_jpg.jpg
http://ih1.redbubble.net/work.864594.2.flat,550x550,075,f.martin-luther-king-jr-nonviolence.jpghttp://ih1.redbubble.net/work.864594.2.flat,550x550,075,f.martin-luther-king-jr-nonviolence.jpg I would recite him of the passage from W Russ Payne’s “King on Nonviolence”: “The rejection of harm towards others is not merely a demand for restraint. The practitioner of non-violence goes farther in rejecting resentment and hatred of her oppressors. Even as a person’s support for unjust laws or institutions is opposed, their humanity is to be held in the highest regard.”(Payne 1) King on Nonviolence
StokelyCharmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, in writing Black Power, divided the struggle of black people with Middle-class white America, stating “This class is the backbone of institutional racism in this country” (Charmichael, Hamilton 2). Black Power http://www.orbitrecords.com/product/Black%20Power389.jpg
I would argue that this violent separation helped to end the Southern Freedom movement. Standing against those who oppress rather than seeing them as brothers, as stated in Satyagraha, clashes with the tenets of nonviolence. http://www.soulforce.org/images/sflogo.jpg
The general population may say that the fight is over and there is no need for a continuing movement. http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/GOP-elephant.jpg A public opinion
To the general population, I would respond by paraphrasing Michelle Alexander’s argument that the war on drugs is the new slavery, since primarily black men are sentenced in drug related cases, and these men are forced to work and make profits for the privately owned prisons that hold them. http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/sites/default/files/Jim%20Crow%20book%20cover.jpg Why the system is racist
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New, 2010. Print. Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles V. Hamilton. "Black Power (1967)." Web. 15 Aug. 2011. <http://wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/ilrn_legacy/waah2c01c/content/amh2/readings/ah2blackpower.html>. Payne, W. Russ. "King on Nonviolence." King on Nonviolence. Web. 15 Aug. 2011. <http://personal.bellevuecollege.edu/wpayne/king%20on%20non-violence.htm>. "Stokely Carmichael." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 15 Aug. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokely_Carmichael>.
My case: when the nonviolent aspect breaks down in a movement, the integrity of the movement breaks down as well.
A violent stance, to onlookers, advocates a violent response.
To illustrate this, I will assess speeches from leaders throughout the rise and fall of the movement on their commitment to nonviolence to convince readers (and watchers) that, without a nonviolent presence, a movement does not move, and is not a movement at all.
Nonviolence, as it was used in the Southern Freedom Movement, mirrored Ghandi’sSatyagraha, or “soul force”, meaning using truth to…
Advocates of nonviolence in it purist form included Bob Moses, field secretary for SNCC and Martin Luther King, Jr, voice for SCLC.
These men (and others) helped masses of people realize the power they held through nonviolent civil disobedience
“There are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all…” -Martin Luther King, Jr Letter from Birmingham Jail
The idea of breaking unjust laws, laws that broke down the spirits of men, shined throughout the movement…
…and people were protected by the idea of a shared humanity with their oppressors…
…that the people on the other side of the conflict were just that…
In his I Have a Dream address made at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses the nation I have a dream
This address explains what MLK, Jr. wants from the movement…
By addressing what he wants, he stays true to Satyagraha, using his voice to fuel the soul-force of his people…
