Freedom Facts and Firsts. Jessie Carney Smith
resistance in the black American struggle for freedom in the1940s.
During the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1950s through the 1960s, leaders such as the Reverends Martin Luther King Jr. and James M. Lawson also adopted this strategy in the crusade to combat racial discrimination. Perhaps the most noted adherents of non-violent resistance were Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. In 1906 at a protest meeting held in Johannesburg, South Africa, Gandhi adopted his methodology of satyagraha (devotion to truth), or non-violent protest, when he called upon his fellow Indians to defy a newly enacted law that compelled registration of the colony’s Indian population by suffering the punishment rather than resisting by violent means. The adopted plan led to a seven-year struggle in which thousands of Indians were jailed, flogged, or shot for striking, refusing to register, burning their registration cards, or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance. Notwithstanding his actions in South Africa, the story of non-violent resistance in colonial India is indistinguishable from the chronicle of Gandhi and the Non-Cooperation Movement. In addition to bringing Indian independence, he also assisted in improving the status of the Untouchables in Indian religion and society during the 1930s.
A civil rights activist in Brooklyn demonstrates the non-violent method of protest in 1964 (Library of Congress).
King captured America’s attention with his philosophy of non-violent resistance. He believed that the only way to create a just society was to eradicate evil within that society. Putting this belief into action during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King proved that non-violent resistance was an effective technique in fighting the unjust restrictions perpetrated upon American blacks. King understood that the oppressor did not render freedom willingly; freedom must be demanded by the oppressed in a non-violent fashion to overcome injustice with justice.
During the movement years, there were two different types of non-violent resistance practiced by leaders and participants: philosophical nonviolence and tactical nonviolence. Those who practiced philosophical nonviolence, like King, Lawson, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, and Diane Nash, were deeply grounded in the Gandhian credo and believed in taking action to counter injustice and converting the antagonist through redemptive suffering. For them, philosophical nonviolence was a lifestyle. Tactical nonviolence was a political strategy used in demonstrations to achieve specific goals. Adherents of tactical nonviolence believed that nonviolence was the best way to accomplish the goals of movement through political means. By 1963 many civil rights activist in the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and even the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were tactically non-violent rather than philosophically non-violent. Ultimately, in the late 1960s, those of the Black Power Movement overpowered the tactic of non-violent resistance.
Linda T. Wynn
King captured America’s attention with his philosophy of non-violent resistance.
Northern Student Movement (1962)
Student sit-ins and other civil rights activism in the South generated interest and galvanized support from college campuses in northern states, leading to the formal organization of the Northern Student Movement (NSM) in 1962. Consisting primarily of young liberal whites who were sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movement, these students joined demonstrations and voter registration projects in southern states as well as assisted in community organizing efforts in northern urban cities. Along with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the NSM was labeled part of the “New Left,” but NSM executive director William Strickland stated that the organization was not a continuation of socialist or communist philosophy. They wanted to create new ideas and institutions, preferring to be called “New Democrats” or “New Realists.” The NSM backed up its rhetoric with action, moving from campus fund raising for the southern Civil Rights Movement and tutorial programs for African American children in the North to involvement in direct action. The organization facilitated rent strikes in Harlem, Philadelphia, Boston, and Detroit. NSM activists from Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr colleges joined black students from Maryland State, Morgan State, Howard, and Lincoln University, the Civic Interest Group, and the Cambridge Non-Violent Action Committee (CNAC) in the Maryland Eastern-shore Project to address civil and voting rights issues during the summer of 1962. These successful efforts became the forerunner of more famous summer projects in succeeding years, such as the Mississippi “Freedom Summer” of 1964.
Fletcher F. Moon
Orangeburg, South Carolina, Massacre (1968)
This tragedy took place on February 8, 1968, less than two months before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, but did not receive the same level of media coverage. The event involved a deadly confrontation between African Americans and law enforcement authorities on the campus of South Carolina State College (now University). State highway patrolmen fired into a crowd of African American students who had been protesting racial discrimination policies in Orangeburg, with three young black men losing their lives in the violence. Orangeburg’s only bowling alley still refused to admit blacks, in defiance of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, while other local businesses and facilities had changed their policies. Students from South Carolina State, Claflin College, and Allen University, all Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) located in Orangeburg, began direct protests at the site on the evening of February 5. They were led by John Stroman, a senior at South Carolina State and avid bowler who was tired of driving 40 miles to Columbia to another bowling alley that was open to African Americans. The owner, Harry Floyd, called local police who forcibly removed the students from the property. He previously changed the “For White Only” sign to “Privately Owned,” and city authorities supported his contention that he had the right to choose customers for a “private establishment.”
The students returned on February 6, but were met by local and state police. Some were arrested and then released into the custody of South Carolina State’s Dean of Students Oscar Butler. Violence broke out while other students were returning to the campus, with a number of students and several officers injured or hospitalized. White-owned businesses in downtown Orangeburg were also vandalized. Activist Cleveland Sellers, a South Carolina native involved with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and organizer of the local Black Awareness Coordinating Committee (BACC), was accused of being an instigator of the outbreak. M. Maceo Nance, acting president of South Carolina State, visited students at hospitals and made the statement during a public meeting with city officials the next day that no property damage occurred until after “the young ladies were hit” by police officers. On the following Friday morning he issued a statement encouraging students to stay on the campus and in dormitories when not in class. South Carolina Governor Robert McNair appeared on television, stating that “outside agitators” (mentioning Cleveland Sellers in particular) had caused the problems in Orangeburg, and sent additional highway patrolmen and National Guard units to the city. Students became more angry and frustrated by the actions of the governor and other white officials; they gathered near the edge of the campus that evening. Shortly after 10:30 P.M., police officer David Shealy was injured, escalating the situation. Shots were fired, Samuel Hammond, Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith were killed, and 27 other male and female students were seriously wounded. The historical marker at the site notes that this tragedy was “the first of its kind on any American college campus.”
Fletcher F. Moon
The historical marker at the site notes that this tragedy was “the first of its kind on any American college campus.”
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