A few months ago known woman Anna casparian of The Young Turks posted this X on x.com in reference to a story about a professional swimmer who opposed the participation of trans women in women’s sports she argued the civil rights movement did not use the same strategies as the trans movement they didn’t
Barricade speakers they disagreed with in a classroom for three hours they persuaded through nonviolence and showing America their Humanity the X was deleted shortly thereafter but why what exactly is wrong with this statement well maybe we can break it apart for one I personally don’t think I could confidently suggest that trans activists
Are more violent than the Civil Rights Movement is there any evidence for that I know that throughout the 60s survey data suggests that violence was only ever supported by a minority of African-Americans in both the North and the South I don’t know if more than 23% of trans Americans are in favor of
Violent action but I definitely haven’t been able to find any evidence for that although my instincts would tell me that trans people generally lean on the more passive side of things and I feel confident saying that because that’s what Clarice said in Silence of the ls there’s no correlation in the literature
Between transsexualism and violence transexuals are very passive have a go yes clever girl let’s see you argue with that one liberal but Anna did also get in trouble for this part of her tweet which people denounced as a kind of liberal whitewashing that ignored the much more violent history of the Civil
Rights Movement people argued that she should have her LEF discard revoked that she was ignoring the actual history of the Civil Rights Movement such as this story about Samuel Jackson locking two college board members in a building during a protest in 1969 now I don’t know if Anna believes
There was no violence during the Civil Rights Movement I don’t think this sentence necessarily implies that by the same token that the BLM protests were mostly peaceful if the civil rights movement did mostly owe its success to non-violence I don’t think that would get negated by the fact that one guy
Locked some people in a building one year after the last piece of major civil rights legislation had been passed that would be a bad argument especially if what Anna said here turns out to be true and that’s what we’ll be exploring throughout this video we’re going to talk about the Civil Rights Movement
About why some people would argue this and why others might argue the opposite but hey first do you know who definitely does support your rights to privacy well while you’re mulling over that question I would like to thank Atlas VPN for sponsoring this video Atlas VPN offers a service that encrypts
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It part one Martin Luther King and nonviolence when we talk about the Civil Rights Movement it’s almost impossible I not to bring up MLK today he is universally credited for his campaigns of nonviolence and Civil Disobedience most notably from the Birmingham bus boycotts of 1955 all the way to the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 you could quite easily say that more was achieved in this span of 10 years than had been in the entire first half of the 20th century but we’re going to begin this story a little earlier than that civil rights campaigning had
Been going on in the United States long before the 1950s but this action was mostly confined to the work of legal groups and lobbying organizations the most famous of these the NAACP had been working since 1909 to challenge segregation laws in the South despite most of their work taking place from
Offices in New York they managed to push for several Supreme Court decisions against segregation most of which were bypassed with a bit of help from the old states rights Doctrine but these victories were crucial in laying the groundwork for the rights activists that followed one of whom was a 15-year-old member of the
NAACP youth Council for Montgomery Alabama named claudet culvin on March 2nd 1955 culvin was riding the bus home from school where she was arrested after she refused to give up her seat to a white woman claudet had been sitting in what was labeled the colored section but
The rule was if the bus became too crowded black passengers were expected to get up and make room for white people who didn’t have seats as the bus filled up the driver told culvin and three other black women to give up their seats and move to the back the other three did
What they were told but culvin refused to move as the bus driver threatened to get the police then as two officers stood over her she still refused to move until she was eventually manhandled out of her seat and arrested as she was being driven to the police station she
Was sexually harassed by the officers who took turns trying to guess her brass size and then tried in juvenile court for disturbing the peace violation of segregation laws and assault so you might be wondering why this story didn’t get quite the same publicity as the Rosa Parks incident which would happen 9
Months later and in the same town but the reason for that is mostly to do with class civil rights leaders of the time were very concerned with public perception as people of the 21st century might say they were Optics frogs they wanted to make sure that media attention
Was focused on who they considered to be the good icons and for various reasons culvin didn’t make the cut as well as just being a teenager she didn’t have good hair she wasn’t fair skinned as in she was too black colorism and a few months after her arrest she found out
She was pregnant as Rosa Parks who was incidentally Calvin’s Mentor at the time said if the white press got a hold of that information they would have had a field day they’d call her a bad girl and her case wouldn’t have a chance by contrast Parks was an adult she was well
Educated and she was married and as culvin herself said her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class 9 months later Rosa Parks was arrested for committing exactly the same crime culvin had on her way home from work that same day a group of local
Activists launched a boycott of the Montgomery Bus Services under the leadership of Martin Luther King and in a city where black people made up around 2/3 of the bus riders King and other activists organized a system of car pools to keep people from spending money on the buses black taxi drivers joined
In by lowering their fairs to match the bus rides and the churches even raised money to collect shoes for people who had worn out their own as a result of walking everywhere 6 months into the boycott clet culvin and four other plaintiffs won a federal court case which declared Alabama’s laws around bus
Segregation unconstitutional at the end of 1956 the decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court and the public buses of Montgomery and Alabama were ordered to desegregate the boycott officially ended after 382 days and MLK was thrown into the national Spotlight for the Civil Rights Movement drawing a lot of his
Inspiration from the work of Mahatma Gandhi MLK adopted the method of nonviolent direct action which he would commit to from here until the end of his life his goal was to disrupt the segregationist order through marches demonstrations Sittin Civil Disobedience and in this case boycotts and there is
This tendency for people in the online space to associate nonviolence with a kind of tepidness but I think that’s very unfair boycotts on paper might sound inoffensive but on the ground even this kind of action was far from Easy what MLK did was peaceful but it was also illegal after the Montgomery
Boycott he and over 80 other activists were indicted because their actions had violated a statute which outlawed organized boycotts against businesses this would only be one of many run-ins king would have with the law throughout his career and then of course despite their nonviolent efforts there was the
Very real violence that King and other activists regularly faced at the hands of white supremacists peaceful boycotters were fre quently attacked in the streets King himself had become used to receiving around 40 threats a day over the phone and in his letter box near the end of the Montgomery boycott
The porch of his house was firebombed while his wife and newborn daughter were inside on the same day a crowd of his supporters showed up to the house many of them carrying arms looking to hit back and standing just a few feet away from the site of the explosion King
Urged his supporters to get rid of their weapons insisting we can’t solve this problem through retaliatory violence we must meet violence with nonviolence we must love our White Brothers no matter what they do to us we must make them know that we love them this is what we
Must live by we must meet hate with love you can take a guess at where a lot of this morality was coming from I feel like I should stress this part because I’ve noticed a few unnamed people on the internet who have tried to suggest otherwise but for MLK nonviolence was
More than just a tactical means to achieve results it was the heart of his entire moral philosophy in his own words nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral
Ends and if that’s not enough here he is in Birmingham Jail saying that he earnestly opposes violent tension here he is condemning looting despite the cherry-picking efforts of this jackban writer trying to suggest otherwise King Jacobin what what are they like and here he is saying it with his own human face
I will never change uh in my basic idea that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and Justice I think for the Negro to turn to violence would be both impractical and immoral sorry I know I sound like a crazy person hammering in
In this part but I’ve just seen so many people trying to argue against it so I thought I’d give you a few examples the fact is MLK was not the single face of the Civil Rights Movement but he definitely was the most popular and as a result people from all kinds of
Ideological Persuasions have stopped at nothing to try and claim him as one of their own conservatives will try to promote this highly sanitized version of him as if he wasn’t seen as a massive nuisance by the authority and by right- wiers and even by a lot of
Moderates at the time they tend to ignore the fact that he constantly broke laws that he deliberately got himself arrested to attract media attention and that he lived under constant surveillance from the FBI at his Peak only about 4 in 10 Americans had a favorable view of him and that approval
Quickly collapsed in the last couple of years of his life but often that’s the conservative way you fight change until it happens and then when it does happen you act as if you were on that side all along I mean that’s just facts and then on the other end you’ll have people
Trying to push this idea that he was some kind of died in the wool communist revolutionary and I guess with the right collection of quotes you could make that assumption he definitely wasn’t the biggest fan of capitalism but you know just don’t ever read his sermon on how a
Christian should view communism whoa communism is based on ethical relativism and accepts no stable moral absolutes right and wrong are relative to the most expedient methods for dealing with class war communism exploits the Dreadful philosophy that the ends justify the means it enunciates movingly the theory of a classless society but alas its
Methods for achieving this Noble end are all too often ignoble lying violence murder and torture are considered to be justifiable means to achieve the millennial end is this an Fair indictment listen to the words of Lenin the real tactician of communist Theory we must be ready to employ trickery deceit lawbreaking withholding and
Concealing of Truth modern history has known many torturous nights and horror filled days because his followers have taken this statement seriously whoa hey what does an K even stand for a bootlicker liberal cuck yeah that works um if you’re a bit sluggish with the details which uh apparently this Lenin dude also
Was King may not have been a fan of capitalism but a full-on revolutionary he was not instead he believed that through social reform American capitalism was doing much to reduce such Tendencies of poverty although there was much yet to be accomplished so here it looks like MLK
Is suffering from what the Communists of his time would have called delusions of reformism a symptom of slugg schizophrenia which was a diagnosis given to political dissenters in the Soviet Union after World War II yeah that’s a that was a real thing king would focus a good bit more on
Economic and anti-war issues after the Civil Rights Act but this sentiment towards communism stayed with him until the end of his life basically if you care MLK’s economic philosophy would have most likely converged with someone like Bernie Sanders or the squad you know left by mainstream American Standards
But in the grand scheme of things not terribly radical that’s about it not too radical that doesn’t sound radical all but to get a better impression of his views on the Civil Rights Movement I think we should have a look at some of his writing part two the letter from
Birmingham Jail Birmingham Alabama was probably the most notorious place in the country for segregation and it was already a very active venue for civil rights protests in 1962 a group of black students students led a two-month boycott of downtown stores forcing some of them to desegregate their bathrooms water fountains and dressing rooms
Though they were peaceful the protesters still face threats from birmingham’s Infamous Public Safety commissioner a brutish white supremacist Dixie crat named Theophilus Eugene Bull Connor what an incredible name the success of the boycott inspired King to lead his own protest in Birmingham one year later the campaign known as project C the C
Standing for confrontation involved coordinated sittings marches and a boycott of downtown retailers their goal was the desegregation of all of the city’s shops restaurants and schools barely a week into the campaign bull Conor obtained an injunction which banned further protests and the bail bond for anyone arrested was increased
Sevenfold King defied the injunction and led a group of volunteers to March without a permit with the goal of getting themselves arrested this would be the 13th time King had been held in a jail cell and now the national press started paying attention the news of the protest started spreading and as more
Birmingham residents joined in the boycotts the downtown businesses started to feel the losses the conditions in Birmingham Jail were harsh even for the standards of the time King was left alone in a dark room with no mattress he wasn’t given a phone call and he wasn’t allowed to speak to his lawyers without
The guards listening in it was only with the help of another prisoner where he was able to get a hold of a newspaper which contained an open letter entitled a call for Unity the statement was written by eight Alabama clergymen who were opposed to segregation but had also
Decided to speak out against King and his methods the alternative they posed was that activists should negotiate with local authorities and challenge segregation through the courts this was the letter which urged King to write his response which was entitled why we can wait it would later become known as the
Letter from Birmingham Jail and I should just say this whole text is incredible probably one of the best political pieces you’ll ever read 10 out of 10 uh yeah his rebuttal to the concerns of his fellow clergymen is razor sharp his defense of nonviolence and civil disobedience is logically grounded but
Also very emotionally compelling you can tell by the amount of references he makes to religious figures European history and even to Old American icons like Thomas Jefferson that he is genuinely trying to persuade his critics by meeting them where they are the famous passage about the notorious white
Moderate is scathing and it shows that whilst being empathetic he isn’t willing to treat his opponents with kid gloves I’m not going to be the four millionth YouTuber to quote this part so if you’re not familiar with it you can just pause it and read it here and if you’ve been
Involved in online politics for more than 8 seconds you’ve probably seen this part reference an arguments between leftists and liberals or just within the left itself you know because we all love a bit of Lefty in fighting but I think when you remember that the actions King is defending here against the white
Moderates are peacefully breaking segregation laws and protesting in violation of an injunction that was put in place in the name of segregation so again definitely not conservative friendly Behavior but also not terribly radical not terribly radical and without that context you can maybe see how this
Quote is often misused I mean people use it to justify pretty much anything like oh you don’t agree with my plan to abolish the police abolish prisons and to expropriate all the white South African Farmers sounds like something up white moderate would say well that would
Probably be a misuse of the term in fact one very interesting part of this letter is where King talks about how he himself is caught in a moderating position within the Civil Rights Movement I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the
Negro Community one is a force of complacency the other force is one of bitterness and hatred and it comes perilously close to advocating violence it is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up Across the Nation the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement nourished by the negro’s
Frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America who have absolutely repudiated Christianity and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible devil I have tried to stand between these two forces saying that we
Need emulate neither the do nothingism of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist for there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest if this philosophy had not emerged by now many streets of the South would I am convinced be flowing with blood and just
For reference that Muslim black nationalist movement he’s talking about there is the Nation of Islam and at the time King was writing this letter one of the most prominent leaders of that movement was Malcolm X but we’ll get to him later what he also gives us in this
Letter is a very thorough breakdown of his tactics so King’s approach to political campaigning is broken down into four stages the first involves the collection of facts to determine whether injustices exist so before anything else they need to present a strong case for why they targeted a specific area in
This case it seems like they found the perfect venue Birmingham was widely considered to be the most segregated city in the United States according to King there have been more unsolved bombings of negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation that you never thought you’d see
A data point like that but despite the city being the deepest circle of white supremacist hell the recent success of the student boycotts indicated that it was definitely worth the effort to push for more concessions the second stage would then be called negotiation meaning that before any protests or acts of
Disobedience they would try to act within the system and convince the local political leaders even in a town like Birmingham these talks did actually achieve some minor concessions but when I say minor I mean very minor dialogue with the Birmingham economic Community had resulted in some promises for
Example the removal of racial signs from stores in fact even for something as small as this the civil rights leaders were willing to hold back on demonstrations in the end only a few signs were removed and only for a short period the decision to prepare for direct action was only taken after these
Promises were broken but before direct action there was still one more stage which he called self-purification now what the [ __ ] does that mean well in his words after the negotiations failed we had no alternative except to prepare for direct action whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of
Laying our case before the conscience of the local and National Community mindful of the difficulties involved we decided to undertake a process of self-purification we began a series of workshops on nonviolence and we repeatedly asked ourselves are you able to accept blows without retaliating are you able to endure the ordeal of jail
And although the term may be a bit too Christian a bit too out of date self- purification in one form or another is still a fairly common practice amongst direct action groups for civil rights protesters in the South it was crucial that they remained peaceful even as they
Were being attacked by police officers and clansmen they would routinely search protesters for weapons before demonstrations in places like Burmingham where they were very likely to face police brutality they would have a Vanguard of seasoned protesters leading the front of the March where they could absorb most of the attacks and then
Finally after preparing the protesters they would begin with direct action so you can tell that at every stage here this approach is incredibly nuanced and always mindful of the outcomes not only does he earnestly oppose violent tension he’s also going so far as to withhold non-violent tension until every other
Option has been exhausted in Birmingham they actually postponed the demonstration so that it wouldn’t clash with the mayal election even when the preferred candidate was the ultimate lesser of two evils the person running against against bll Connor was a segregationist just in King’s words a more gentle one but I should mention
Here that MLK firmly rejected the idea of equating this approach with pacifism these demonstrators were peaceful but that doesn’t mean they weren’t disruptive the boycotts drove a lot of businesses to the edge of bankruptcy the ctin angered segregationist so much that everyday civilians would often respond
Just as violently as the police for MLK this ballot between disruption and nonviolence was necessary for the movement to succeed but not everyone agreed with him part three Malcolm X throughout the 50s and 60s nonviolence was the preferred method of protests for the majority of African-Americans and the champion of
Nonviolence MLK was by far their most popular leader but the Challenge from those who felt dissatisfied by King’s tactics was far from negligible and it would only become more prominent as time went on leading that charge was MLK’s most popular critic Malcolm X born in Omaha Nebraska in 1925 Malcolm X
Experienced the worst of American racism almost right away when he was just 4 years old his house was burnt down by a white hate group called The Black legionnaires just two years later his father was killed quite possibly by the same group although the official story
Did rule it as a street car incident where MLK got through the Great ression relatively comfortably thanks to his father’s success as a minister Malcolm’s family fell into a downward spiral they became dependent on charity and a horribly inefficient welfare state and in the late 30s his mother was
Institutionalized and he had to spend the rest of his youth moving between various boarding schools and Foster homes so not the most inspiring childhood and by the end of his teens he had become involved in drug dealing racketeering stealing and even pimping in World War II he avoided the draft by
Pretending to be mentally ill and rambling about stealing guns so that he could kill crackers in the South um I’m not going to read this bit you can uh yeah then at the end of the war he was arrested for a series of burglaries and sent to jail as MLK would
Later say he was a victim of the despair inevitably deriving from the conditions of Oppression poverty and Injustice which engulfed the masses of our race he was too young for the Garvey movie M and too poor to be a communist sorry had to put that quote in
Somewhere anyway when he was in prison Malcolm discovered a father figure in the black nationalist leader Elijah Muhammad and joined the Nation of Islam he would then rise up the ranks to become the nation’s most influential speaker a position which he held all the way until
1963 just 2 years before he died now if you’re not familiar with the Nation of Islam well it’s it’s hard to describe them without [ __ ] on them but here are some of their key beliefs they believe that the white race was created over 6,000 years ago as a result of
Selective breeding experiments by a black scientist named yakub the story of yakub according to Elijah Muhammad presents whites as a genetically inferior race prone to violence and dishonesty to this day the nation’s current leader Lou farakhan Who was incidentally mentored by Malcolm X still believes this story which he claims is
High science I love that high science the best science as king alludes to in the Birmingham Jail letter Muhammad and Malcolm X would refer to white people as the devil in a 1963 interview with Playboy yeah that’s a thing that happened Malcolm X stood firm by this belief claiming that thoughtful white
People know they are inferior to black people anyone who is studied the genetic phase of biology knows that white is considered recessive and black is considered dominant High science ultimate science okay next they were separatists meaning they rejected racial integration and instead wanted to create a sovereign African-American Nation out of the
Southern states they were extremely patriarchical Advocates of strict gender rules they were and still are to this day anti-homosexual and they oppose sex outside of marriage they were viciously anti-semitic uh some examples in a 1959 lecture Malcolm X described the Jew as one of the worst Devils who does more to
Take advantage of black people than any other for at least some of his life he believed the protocols of the Elders of Zion was an authentic document which revealed the secret plans of a Jewish cabal aiming to rule the world through control of media the economy and by stirring up religious conflict
And lastly this one might be surprising they adopted a policy of non-engagement which meant Nation members were not allowed to participate in politics and protests this last point would obviously be the source of a growing Rift between Malcolm X and his allies and it is hard
To say how much of this he still believed toward the end of his life he definitely abandoned the idea of separatism his anti-Semitism seems to have been toned down after leaving the nation although it doesn’t look like it ever disappeared completely all the same for the vast majority of the Civil
Rights Movement this was his crowd and despite the red lines drawn by Muhammad Malcolm X did still make an effort to build Bridges with other civil rights leaders although he was basically always snubbed from as early as 1957 he would send Nation of Islam articles to MLK and occasionally invited him to meetings
Throughout the 60s King declined all of them in fact he wouldn’t even personally respond and instead left Communications with Malcolm to his secretary Malcolm would get similar responses from other civil rights leaders and despite his popularity he was for the most part an outsider in 1963 a survey of
African-Americans found that 88% of them had positive opinions of MLK whilst only 15% felt positive about Elijah Muhammad Malcolm X wasn’t even seen as influential enough to be listed on the Sur Sur that said he still had a big enough audience to make his criticisms heard from a distance and unlike MLK
Malcolm X deplored nonviolence for him the United States was founded on centuries of white violence and it was a glaring hypocrisy that black Americans weren’t allowed to achieve their freedoms in the same way he believed fundamentally in an eye for an eye and that black Americans had every right to
Violently defend themselves against white supremacy now MLK didn’t completely disagree with self-defense he very famously kept a loaded gun in his house but this was only self-defense at a personal level for Malcolm X this principle extended to protesters using violence against the police to Marchers using violence against segregationists
And judging by his rhetoric it doesn’t look like it had to be reciprocal he constantly asserted the principle of any means necessary that a black man has the right to do whatever is necessary to get his freedom that other beings have done to get their freedom King fundamentally
Believed the African-Americans were in a position where this approach wouldn’t solve their problem in Birmingham shortly after being released from jail he went to a meeting with a rare appearance from a nation representative and said we don’t love what brother X Advocates black Supremacy we love our white brother and we love integration
Now if you feel like my description of Malcolm X’s political strategy was a bit vague at least compared to m Cas that’s because frankly they were King himself definitely noticed that in a 1965 interview he argued that for all his rhetorical skills and his ability to express the frustration of black
Americans he felt that Malcolm X never really offered a positive or creative approach furthermore he found the critiques of nonviolence to be somewhat hypocritical given that non-violent activists were the ones physically confronting racists in the South whereas Malcolm contribution was all verbal as far as we know there’s no evidence that
Malcolm X ever actually engaged in political violence himself was Malcolm X all talk are Advocates of violence obligated to act violently themselves discuss in the comment section so we know about MLK’s approach and how it was critiqued by Malcolm X now let’s have a look at how King’s approach played out
In practice where it succeeded where it failed and also a few places where it stopped being nonviolent part four nonviolence in action so after the bus boycotts in Montgomery MLK was catapulted into the national Limelight and nonviolent direct action became the dominant approach for civil rights protesters in 1958 the NAACP started to
Sponsor Lunch Counter C starting with the dockham drugstore branch in witcha Kansas the protesters would spend the whole day sitting at the lunch counter which would only serve white customers often whilst absorbing verbal attacks from other patrons after 3 weeks of protest the manager gave up and started serving Black customers shortly after
This all the dockham stores in Kansas were desegregated later that year the same protest was replicated by a group of students at the cats drug store in Oklahoma City the success of this protest led to a sit in movement throughout the entire city which lasted
All the way up until the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 in 1960 a group of four black college students started a sit in at a lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina the next day they were joined by over 20 more students the day
After that there were over 60 of them and the day after that over 300 the next week there were stins happening all over the state and within a couple of months they were taking place in 13 states throughout these Sittin the protesters were met with varying levels of verbal and physical
Abuse some had food and drinks thrown at them others were assaulted by police officers and civilians alike and courtesy of the clan the leaders were also frequently subjected to bomb threats and in light of these attacks the actions of the protesters were fairly consistent they would dress up
They would sit down quietly often with their University books and they would often leave spaces open as a way of inviting white sympathizers to join them as photos started to emerge in the Press of peaceful demonstrators being attacked by violent mobs it also became clear that an increasing number of whites had
Come out in support of the protesters cause it became a trend for local news outlets to talk about how the conduct of the protesters was incredibly disarming to people who had gone their whole lives accepting white supremacy as the default one article from the Richmond Virginia News Leader read many of Virginia must
Have felt a tinge of Ry regret at the state of things as they are and reading of Saturday sitd Downs by Negroes in Richmond stores here were the colored students in coats white shirts ties and one of them was reading gota and one was taking notes from a biology text and
Here on the sidewalk outside was a gang of white boys come to Heckle a rag tail rabble slack jod black jod grinning fit to kill and some God Save The Mark were waving the proud and honored flag of the southern states in the last war fought by
Gentlemen what okay it gives one pause apparently there was also no shortage of Impressions like this one from an elderly segregationist lady in Raleigh who said they have no business refusing such nice polite young people even those with lifelong held racist beliefs were struggling to hold on to them as they
Stood so sharply in contrast to what they saw at the stins but without getting too mushy the overall public reaction to the protesters themselves wasn’t like this in 1961 for example a group of black and white activists rode together on Interstate buses through the segregated states in the south Interstate travel
Had already been ruled unconstitutional but without any enforcement from the federal government southern states were able to ignore the rulings as the activists known as the Freedom Writers passed through the southern states they were frequently attacked and arrested did when they arrived in Birmingham bull Connor’s police joined forces with a mob
Of clansmen and attacked the riders with baseball bats iron pipes and bike chains the attacks were condemned by the majority of Americans but strangely enough so were the protesters a Gallup survey from that year found that only 22% of Americans approved of the Freedom Writers actions another found that an
Overwhelming majority believed the Sittin and the freedom buses were hurting the cause of desegregation rather than helping basically the idea here that Civil Disobedience achieved popular support for the protesters is a little misleading what it did do was dramatically increase support for the protesters cause by the mid 1960s
Support for desegregation had almost doubled compared to what it was 20 years prior even for most of the 50s less than 5% of Americans listed civil rights issues as the nation’s most important problem but by the mid-60s it was the most important issue for more than half the
Country so when people refer to Civil Disobedience as the martyrdom tactic it really is just that the protesters were not there to make the public like them they were there to expose the brutality of segregation and to throw it on full display for the rest of the country the
Public may not have approved of their tactics but they approved far less of the Jim Crow laws that the protesters were fighting against in fact some people have even argued that the violence of white supremacist in the South had played its own special role in this in what is sometimes referred to as
The Paradox of violence there is a case to be made that segregationist attacks actually help to propel civil rights into the national conversation and I think we can make that case by looking an example of where Martin Luther King’s tactics failed at the end of 1961 MLK
Along with a coalition of civil rights groups started a campaign aiming to desegregate the entire Southwest of Georgia with most of the protests taking place in the city of Albany whilst previous civil rights campaigns revolved around particular public spaces or even just individual venues this was the
First movement of its kind because it aimed to desegregate the entire Community but after an 8-month campaign the protesters had achieved next to nothing and MLK withdrew from the movement branding it a failure so why did this happen it is undeniable that the white population in Albany was firmly in favor of
Segregation even after the boycotts had driven the bus service into bankruptcy and as other local businesses were suffering none of them were interested in making concessions but what was also notable about this area was that the community’s commitment to Jim Crow was relatively passive the states rights
Council of Georgia which was the main white supremacist organization had very low membership and most of the clan factions were concentrated around Atlanta in fact in and around Albany an FBI investigation couldn’t find a single Clan chapter in the entire County and on top of this was the very unique response
From the Albany Police Chief lorri pritet Pritchett was a segregationist through and through but unlike his more hot-headed contemporaries in the Deep South he had studied King’s tactics from previous campaigns and decided to respond by adopting his own unique form of nonviolence throughout the campaign pritchet made made it a priority to keep
Unruly white counter protesters in check when clan members were trying to come in from other parts of the state he made it clear that they were not welcome and for the whole campaign the only Clan rally that took place was outside of the city limits when civil rights protesters were
Arrested pritchet instructed his officers to use as little Force as possible and he was extra careful in this regard when it came to King himself and the result of this strategy was that the Civil Rights movement in Albany was at least from a journalist perspective just kind of boring there
Were no Sensational outbursts to report in the Press no iconic photographs and nothing to really spark the public interest outside of the area and the one local newspaper in Albany was run by a segregationist who supported pret’s actions and having been unable to bring about the violent tension which he felt
Was necessary for growth King left the town accepting it as a valuable lesson that he would apply to his future campaign in Birmingham so here we are back to where we left off at the Birmingham Jail sorry I don’t know why I decided to structure this like a
Tarantino film um actually yeah I do it’s because I’m a it’s cuz I’m an artistic genius uh yeah the fact that the failed campaign in Albany was followed by a place like Birmingham a city notorious for its police brutality was not an accident the arrest of MLK
And the harsh conditions he endured in jail at the hands of Bull Connor definitely sparked the media’s attention then after their release king and the other civil rights leaders decided to escalate even further for the first time in American history they adopted a strategy made famous by Mahatma Gandhi
Known as Phil the jails basically you intentionally get a lot of people arrested with the goal of overwhelming the system and stirring up the media although in this case what they did was especially controversial because the people they sent out to get arrested were children and when I say children I
Mean some of them were 6 years old and even King himself definitely had reservations about this he openly voiced those concerns in talks and apparently his co-leader Fred Shuttlesworth just responded with we got to use what we got so in other words King got destroyed um
Btfo shagged they went ahead head with a move which would eventually be described as the Children’s Crusade and the number of arrests increased tfold and more crucially this was also the moment when Bull Connor finally cracked the arrests would soon become international news as images came out of Birmingham police
Officers using High Press fire hoses and attack dogs on Peaceful young protesters until this point JFK had been keeping a safe distance from civil rights issues in the South but after this event it was impossible to ignore from the White House’s perspective it was an international embarrassment the arrests
Made up around a quarter of the news broadcasts in the Soviet Union whose leaders made sure to spread the story in African countries where they were competing with the United States Fidel Castro would refer to the photographs in his speeches and used the opportunity to advertise the Cuban Revolution as a
Model for Black America and in 1960s America you you definitely can’t have that now we’ve spoken mostly about nonviolence so far at least nonviolence in the side of the protesters but this was probably the first point where violent escalation became a serious concern it was during the Children’s Crusade when despite the
Best efforts of the civil rights leaders independent black protesters started throwing bricks and balls at the police and from a distance Malcolm X gave his advice to the black community in Birmingham saying we believe that if a four-legged or two-legged dog attacks a negro he should be killed if you wish to
Further discuss the ethics of killing police dogs please refer to the comment section in the following days the jails became so full that Connor had to start holding prisoners in makeshift spaces in the State Fairgrounds less than a week after the first children were arrested the community’s white Business Leaders
Agreed to most of the protesters demands the city of Birmingham agreed to deseg at public facilities and to start hiring black people in downtown stores it was clear that the public backlash to Connor’s brutality had played its part later that year when the Civil Rights Act was being introduced to Congress JFK
Joked to Shuttlesworth saying I don’t think you should be totally harsh on Bull Connor after all he has done more for civil rights than almost anybody else which is kind of edgy but it was hard to deny that there was at least a shred of Truth it as much as the public
Might have disapproved of civil rights protesters the segregationists rarely failed to anger them even more and after the success in Birmingham the resentment from White supremacists only became worse only 3 days after the settlement a group of clan members bombed the motel where King had been staying it was a
Failed assassination attempt which he only barely escaped and it was here when nonviolence finally showed its limits when the police were inspecting the bomb site they were attacked by protesters who threw rocks at them and one officer was stabbed in the ribs the clashes quickly escalated into a full-blown
Urban Riot the first one of the 1960s and JFK after being very reluctant to do so responded by deploying federal troops around the city to restore order and I’m bringing this part up because there is some contention as to whether or not this was the big event that forced JFK
To really push for the Civil Rights act what we do know is Kennedy had definitely entertained the idea of outlawing Jim Crow before the riots the first time he brought it up was during the Children’s Crusade but it’s also very clear that riots were very much in
His mind as time went on a month after the Birmingham campaign he proposed the Civil Rights Act and a television address to the nation in his speech he noted that the fires of frustration and Discord are burning in every city north and south where Le legal remedies are
Not at hand redress is sought in the streets in demonstrations parades and protests which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives as for the protesters they hailed their nonviolent efforts as a success and contined to pursue them across the South where the civil rights leaders learned from their failures at Albany the
Segregationists absolutely didn’t seem to have learned anything from Birmingham when nonviolent protesters marched through the old slave market of St Augustine Florida they were met with violent attacks from segregationists almost always without retaliating outside of the protest a group of clan members drove through a black neighborhood shooting into people’s
Homes and King received his usual flurry of death threats when the sheriff tried to ban night marches it only looked worse when the police aggressively arrested protesters who decided to March anyway in just a matter of weeks a federal court order was given out to desegregate the the town’s hotels motels
And restaurants the next big event following Birmingham would be the March on Washington where a quarter of a million protesters took part in one of the largest political rallies in American history this was where King gave his famous I Have a Dream speech and to a lot of people it showed that
Nonviolence could also work as a mass movement that said what’s less known about this March was the amount of tension that was bubbling beneath it the idea of having that many protesters in one place was terrifying for JFK who had initially tried to dissuade the civil rights leaders from doing it with the
Civil Rights Act introduced to Congress it was very clear that segregationists were planning to filibuster it some of the activists were expecting the March on Washington to bring the government to a standstill some were expecting to surround the White House as well as Congress and the Senate others wanted to
Go to the airport and lay down on runways to stop planes from landing and a good few of them ALS also wanted to get violent the fact that it only ended up being a daytime March was the leader’s way of compromising with the president on top of that the White House
Also got to review the speeches in advance and demanded the removal of lines that they considered too inflammat uh here are a couple as an example pause if you want to read them as the March was taking place five military bases outside of Washington were put on standby and the Pentagon had
Set up a war room with an open line to the White House what must have been even more worrying for them was that Malcolm X wanted to get involved too a month before the March he invited MLK and other civil rights leaders to speak at a
Nation rally in New York urging them to moderate their differences and seek a common solution to a common enemy all of them declined MLK didn’t even respond Malcolm X had in fact been left on red and like many young men who have been left unread he resorted to edgy comments
And racial slurs he completely condemned the March calling it a circus led by white clowns and black clowns and dubbing it the farce on Washington he called MLK a fool a modern-day Uncle Tom and a house negro arguing that he had been subsidized by the white man in
Order to teach black Americans to be defensless just as Uncle Tom back during slavery used to keep the Negroes from resisting The Blood Hound or resisting the Klux CL by teaching them to to love their enemy or pray for those who use them despitefully today uh Martin Luther
King is just the 20th century or modern Uncle Tom or a religious Uncle Tom who is doing the same thing today to keep Negroes defenseless in the face of attack that Uncle Tom did on the plantation to keep those Negroes defenseless in the in the face of the
Attacks of the clan in that day A year later as the Civil Rights Act was being held up by the filibuster he gave his own impression of what his March on Washington would look like he said there’s more going down in 64 and this time they’re not going like they went
Last year they’re not going singing We Shall Overcome they’re not going with white friends they’re not going with placards already painted for them they’re not going with round trip tickets they’re going with one-way tickets and if they don’t want that non nonviolent Army going down there tell
Them to bring the filibuster to a halt would the March on Washington have been better in Malcolm X’s discuss it further in the comment section now despite all their efforts to capitulate to the White House’s demands the public impression of the march in Washington was actually not good a
Gallup poll from 2 weeks before the March found that most people had an unfavorable view of the rally 7% predicted it would turn violent and they did turn out to be wrong but in keeping with the great Paradox of American thinking you know the whole I don’t like
These guys but I support what they’re doing um at this point support for the Civil Rights cause was higher than ever and whatever you think of him at this point Malcolm X’s disdain for the March was at the very least just verbal but unfortunately this wasn’t the case for
Everyone barely a month after the March a Baptist church building in Birmingham was bombed by the KKK in the middle of a Sunday school session four black children were killed this crime was so horrific that it pushed several civil rights ERS even some religious ones to question the wisdom of nonviolence one
Suggested that unless the federal government started delivering soon violence would inevitably be the next step at the end of 63 as the Civil Rights Act was being slowly pushed through Congress JFK was assassinated his successor Lyndon Johnson then went on to win a landslide Victory against the Republican states rights Advocate Barry
Goldwater and by Landslide I mean this in the summer of 64 after 82 days of filibustering the Civil Rights Act was passed Malcolm X chilled the out and racism was over I’m just joking so on paper the Civil Rights Act outlawed racial segregation employment discrimination and prohibited the unequal requirements
That disenfranchised black people in the South unfortunately the powers needed to enforce the ACT were very weak especially when it came to voting as ever the loopholes were eagerly exploited by segregationists in the old Confederacy and one of the worst offenders was Dallas County Alabama where the registration office only
Opened twice a month and less than 2% of eligible blacks were registered to vote now this wasn’t the worst number in the South or even the state but what Dallas County did have was a mad Clan loving [ __ ] sheriff called James Clark in 1965 King launched a new campaign by holding
Rallies outside the registration office in the city of Selma to challenge the process after 6 weeks of protesting over 4,000 people had been arrested the majority of them turned the other cheek to Clark and his men but there were some exceptions one day the sheriff himself attacked a 54-year-old woman who swung
Back at him so hard that he fell to his knees if her word is anything to go by he had to call Four of his deputies to get her off of him and as they had done in Birmingham King and Ralph abery got themselves arrested to attract media
Attention and this was also when the civil rights protest in the South had a rare intervention from Malcolm X up to this point he had only really commented on the southern protests from afar but here a few things had changed after becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Nation of Islam he had abandoned the
Movement a year earlier and outed Elijah Muhammad as a bit of a wrong when he spoke in Selma he didn’t explicitly challenge the nonviolence of the protesters but he did make it clear that his own opinions on violence hadn’t changed addressing a crowd of young activists he said the white people
Should thank God that Dr King is telling these people to be loving and nonviolent that he is holding these people in check he warned the people in power that they would do well to listen to Dr Martin Luther King and give him what he’s asking for and give it to him fast
Before some other factions come along and try to do it another way what he’s asking for is right that’s the ballot and if he can’t get it the way he’s trying to get it then it’s going to be gotten one way or the other after his speech he visited MLK’s wife insisting
That he wasn’t trying to make things difficult that if the white people realize what the alternative was they’d be more willing to hear Dr King in essence he was repeating the the sentiment of his ballot or the Bullet speech from one year earlier now there is no evidence that MLK welcomed this
Intervention actually it seems to be the case that he opposed it maybe a very optimistic person could look at this as the beginning of a convergence between the two leaders but history would not have it so later that month Malcolm X was assassinated by three Nation members in
New York City for all their exchanges the two men only met once in Washington DC and their meeting only lasted a minute the city mayor would later say that the Civil Rights protesters picked Selma just like a movie producer would pick a set Malcolm X’s intervention was
Definitely a part of this but ultimately his rhetoric was much softer than what people were used to hearing from him he stopped short of calling for violence and compared to the authorities any role he had in escalating the tensions will have been negligible as the campaign went went on Sheriff Clark would have
His men charging at protesters with clubs whips and cattle prods in one confrontation a 26-year-old activist Jimmy Lee Jackson was shot in the stomach and killed after his release from prison MLK doing everything he could to keep nonviolent protesters at the center of the media planned a 5-day
March from Selma to Montgomery and if there’s one way to really freak out Americans it’s walking for a long period of time as the Marchers tried to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge they were attacked by Clark and his men some of whom were on Horseback at least a 100 Marchers
Were seriously injured and the event now known as Bloody Sunday was all over the national press that same week lynon Johnson proposed the Voting Rights bill to Congress his speech was highly supportive of the Civil Rights protesters but he had also hoped that this announcement would bring the
Protest to an end he was wrong a week later king led another March from Selma to Montgomery this time with federal troops escorting the protesters the police and the clan were completely defined and the March was a success where the Civil Rights Act took over a year to get
Passed by Congress the Voting Rights Act went through in half the time these two pieces of legislation are almost unanimously seen as the biggest achievements of the Civil Rights Movement some people will even date the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 up until this point now this definitely was the
Period where most of the achievements were made and where almost all of the iconic images came from but it definitely wasn’t where civil rights campaigning ended in fact the years from 1965 up until MLK’s assassination in ‘ 68 marked some very significant changes in the movement part five post
1965 after reaching its peak in terms of success and popularity it’s easy to see why the Civil Rights movement started to face new challenges after 65 until that point almost everything they’ had been advocating for had already been established either in the Constitution at the federal level or by the Supreme
Court this meant that even when people like MLK were breaking the law they were doing so by appealing to standards that were already well recognized in the north on the one hand the protesters in the South were engaging in Civil Disobedience but on the other they were
Doing so in order to bring their states in line with with a higher law of the land after the Voting Rights Act things were not so simple when Southern leaders took their movement up north they were no longer fighting against the obvious on the books racism that existed under
Jim Crow instead they were up against a much more complex network of practices which were discriminatory but were still more or less acceptable by the American Constitution in 1966 MLK and other Southern leaders joined a civil rights movement in Chicago where they found that real estate offices were favoring
White couples over black couples even when they had equal incomes backgrounds and the same numbers of children this was a pattern that seemed to be apparent all over the country and for the next two years the Civil Rights Movement became centered around the demand for a fair housing act and because housing
Discrimination wasn’t quite so obvious as there literally being signs on buildings saying whites only the fair housing bill was by far the most legally contentious of the Civil Rights era even with lbj’s majority it became the most filibustered legislation in US history for the activists this led to a lot of
Frustration more attention was now being drawn to the difficulties faced by black Americans in the cities the racist practices of employers that limited job opportunities and the lack of recourse provided by trade unions on top of that many civil rights leaders started to reach the end of their patience for
Racist violence especially when they were given so little protection by the authorities in Chicago they were met with so many attacks that they were forced to cancel marches in many cities it was fairly normal in white neighborhoods for violent mobs to enforce housing segregation by attacking
Their new black neighbors for a lot of activists nonviolence was something they could only hold on to for so long notably in 1966 the two groups core and the SNCC had been recruiting so rapidly that they no longer had time to train everyone in nonv vient Philosophy for them King’s process of self-purification
Was no longer worth the effort both groups abandoned their non-violent stances and embraced a new ethos of armed self-defense from now on they would have armed people at their sides ready to use any means necessary to keep their marches from being disrupted 1966 was also the year of the founding of the
Black Panther Party originally called the Black Panther Party for self-defense this small group of Marx leninists primarily functioned as cop Watchers starting in Oakland California they would have armed open carry patrols aimed at countering police brutality against black citizens with the inspiration of Malcolm X and the black
Power movement the Panthers argued that nonviolence had failed to address racial inequalities in the North and the west and beyond that they believed these inequalities could only be fully resolved with a complete overhaul of the American capitalist system in 1967 when the part a only consisted of a 100
Members they published their 10-point program outlining their political goals and if you’re considering becoming a black panther uh you can pause the video and read this or you can find a link in the description now me personally I would argue that the Panthers didn’t really have their moment until after the
Civil Rights period in 1969 they expanded their direct action by creating social programs this included them running free breakfast programs for children before they went to school as well as education and Community Health projects more than just an act of Charity these programs were also a scathing condemnation of the American
Welfare state and its negligence towards black communities what did MLK think about all this well for the activists who started to adopt more violent philosophies he felt like many of them were immature and unsophisticated he believed that black power was essentially an emotional concept that meant different things to
Different people and because of its con of violence and separatism he ultimately opposed its use and though he doesn’t seem to have spoken about it all that often he openly challenged his critics to prove that black power was more effective than nonviolence when it came to achieving results and as the rift
Between civil rights leaders began to grow King’s commitment to nonviolence was unmovable now what I’m saying is this I would like for all of us to believe in nonviolence but I’m here to say tonight that if every negro in the United States turns against nonviolence
I’m going to stand up as a lone voice and say this is the wrong way but nonviolent leaders could not control an entire country as we know now rioting was obviously a big feature of the 1960s in America but in the early years they were generally quite sparse this would
Dramatically change in the summer of 1967 when riots broke out in over a 100 cities across the United States it was here where a Miami police chief infamously coined the phrase when the Looting starts the shooting starts entire neighborhoods had been set on fire over 11,000 people were arrested
And at least 85 were killed a White House Commission set up by LBJ concluded that the riots were the result of a lack of Economic Opportunity for Black and Latino Americans as well as failed housing education and Social Services it concluded with a call for job creation
New housing and for an end to the deao segregation that was forcing black communities to live in ghettos most of the recommendations were rejected but the report did succeed in ending the filibuster on the fair housing bill in fact before the commission was even released the governor of Michigan
Immediately responded to the Riot by holding a special session for fair housing laws he had tried to pass the same thing a few years earlier but failed to get it past the position this time the laws passed both houses what’s interesting here is that the Michigan Fair Housing Act was stronger than the
Federal one and this was in the state that saw more racial disorder in the 1960s than just about any other at least one historian has argued that this was not a coincidence did rioting achieve positive results for the state of Michigan we’ll come back to it for MLK
This period of the Civil Rights Movement was definitely rough despite the fact that the majority of black Americans still agreed with nonviolence this definitely wasn’t the case for a growing number of leaders and for all his unwillingness to follow them the media would try to hold him accountable for
Violence all the same during the 67 riots a cartoonist for the Birmingham News depicted MLK standing in front of a burning building telling a journalist that he plans to lead another nonviolent March the next day and these kinds of bad faith attacks were not limited to just the Press he had been under
Surveillance by the FBI since the March on Washington and this would only intensify as the years went on at one point they even sent him this incredible skitso post of a letter trying to persuade him to video game himself the last protest he would plan was the Poor People’s campaign in Washington a
Nonviolent protest camp in the Washington Mall against the government’s failed war on poverty the protest consisted of 3,000 people and lasted 6 weeks but King never made it in 1968 barely a month after the Fair Housing Act had passed the house and the Senate King was assassinated on the balcony of
A motel in Memphis Tennessee the news of his murder sparked a wave of riots that lasted nearly 2 months over a 100 cities he was the loudest advocate for nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement but in a cruel irony the response to his death was more violent than that of any
Other part uh last conclusion so what do we make of all this are we Pro or antiviolence are we a bit of both do we each pick a side and argue about it on the internet for the rest of our days what’s your opinion loner box well in a
Minute the leftwing opinion I tend to hear on this is what I’ll call the duel strategy Theory this is the idea that violence and nonviolence Malcolm X and MLK both played equally important complimentary roles in achieving civil rights MLK used nonviolence to humanize Black Americans and expose the horrors
Of segregation to The Wider public and Malcolm X used his violent rhetoric to assure the authorities that black Americans would never back down that if the powers that be didn’t give the ballot they would get the bullet now I don’t really like this theory for a few
Reasons first I think it would be a far reach to try and put MLK and Malcolm X’s contributions on equal footing for all his rhetorical skills and his unrivaled ability to capture the frustrations of Black America I do think I agree with King when he says Malcolm X
Was kind of all talk for all but two years of the Civil Rights Movement he was effectively disengaged from political action his position in the Nation of Islam was rightly seen by other civil rights leaders as far too toxic to associate with I think his dismissal of non-violent protesters as
Tepid Uncle Tom’s as insanely insulting especially given that they were the ones actually putting their bodies on the line against segregationists whereas Malcolm X wasn’t even this iconic picture which people sometimes caption with the words any means necessary is kind of ironic given that the people
He’s looking out for here are Nation of Islam members who had been sending him death threats not white supremacists unfortunately Malcolm X true potential as a leader is something we can only really make guesses about yes there is that historian who said the riots in Michigan and the strength of the fair
Housing act were not a complete coincidence but to an argument like that you could just as easily say that the MLK riots and Richard Nixon winning an election by casting himself as a Law and Order president were also not a coincidence ultimately those changes in the South were almost exclusively forced
By nonviolent protest ERS they were the ones who dragged local authorities to the negotiating table and they were the ones who achieved desegregation and for that reason I don’t think it’s surprising that the Dual strategy argument has never really been taken seriously in Academia the one academic
Paper I found that was in support of it claimed to be the first of its kind and this was from 2016 and even here the author admits that the evidence they use is circumstantial but they do bring up a few in points they don’t make the claim that violence inspired American voters
To come around on civil rights violence definitely didn’t cause this for example well unless you count the violence of white supremacists of course instead the author tries to make a case for how politicians particularly JFK seem to be at least partially motivated by the threat of violence he argues that
Especially around the Birmingham riots the president and people close to him were free frequently raising warnings about the threat of increasing disorder when JFK introduced the Civil Rights Act to Congress he warned them that the fires of frustration and Discord were burning in every city where legal
Remedies are not at hand the line about frustration and Discord seemed eily similar to King’s message from Birmingham Jail where he warns that if they our White Brothers refuse to support our non-violent efforts millions of negroes will out of frustration and despair seek Solace and Security in Black nationalist ideologies you could
Even say that this kind of it’s me or them sentiment isn’t all that different from Malcolm X saying that the choice is between The Ballot or The Bullet but maybe that’s a bit of a reach in any case none of this makes the argument for using violence as a
Strategy or that it would necessarily lead to anything good in fact even the author of this paper ends it by making sure it doesn’t get used as a free pass to GRU this violence now me here’s how I would put it coming back to MLK’s outline for nonviolent action we have
These four stages collection of facts negotiation self- purification and direct action now none of these things can really happen without the one before it being checked off if you can’t prove that there’s an issue that needs fixing there’s no need for negotiation there’s no need for self-purification and direct action if the negotiation
Succeed well let’s assume that we reach this point and then we get stuck let’s say an issue goes unresolved for years decades let’s say it gains popular support but the authorities don’t listen maybe they decide to respond instead by cracking down on protesters and clamping down on civil liberties as this goes on
More and more people will reach a point where they need to try something else eventually they’re going to run out of options until violence is the only one left when exactly that line is crossed well that’s the big contention these guys definitely thought it was but I imagine most of the people
Watching would disagree with them but maybe we can look at a better example if we’re talking about violent or non-violent Heroes of the past my favorite example would be Nelson Mandela because along with thec Mandela was someone who initially advocated for nonviolence until the conditions in South Africa made it impossible to keep
This up whatever challenges were faced by the civil rights movement in America the apartheid regime was a completely different monster instead of bull Connor’s dogs and hoses the South African police responded to protesters with bullets and massacres on top of segregation the apartheid government also oversaw the forced relocation of 3
And A5 million black South Africans in just under 25 years the goal being to control the demographics of cities and to restrict the black population to a disperate group of territories known as the B to stands in 1960 as the relocations were underway thec was banned and forced underground and it was
Here where Mandela moved away from nonviolent resistance towards violent sabotage here is what he said when he was on trial I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that violence in this country was inevitable this conclusion was not easily arrived at it was only when all else had failed when all channels of
Peaceful protest had been barred to us that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle four forms of violence were possible there is sabotage there is Guerilla Warfare there is Terrorism and there is open Revolution we chose to adopt the first method sabotage did not involve loss of
Life and it offered the best hope for future race relations bitterness would be kept to a minimum and if the policy bore fruit democratic government could become a reality so if you’ve ever seen those viral clips of economic freedom fighters singing songs about killing boar Farmers or their policies about
Expropriating all the white Farmers you might have noticed the rhetoric from Mandela is a little different actually it isn’t uncommon for people who support these guys to accuse Mandela of being a sellout but here we can see a much more nuanced and careful approach to political violence essentially Mandela’s
Strategy here was to use sabotage to make the country impossible to govern this coupled with trade sanctions from the International Community would ultimately Force the government to negotiate voting rights and the end of a partide with that end in mind you can see Mandela already considering how the anc’s actions would impact race
Relations in a multicultural democracy the significance of targeting state property as opposed to people was that it played into what would later become known as the rainbow Nation the idea that the future for black and white South Africans would be one of peace and Reconciliation not Revenge now this
Definitely wasn’t the philosophy of everyone in thec there were also some very extreme factions within the movement who took up violence against people just I guess because they wanted to usually these people were kicked out of the movement and their actions condemned but this wasn’t always so easy
Especially when one of the most notorious actors in thec was none other than Nelson Mandela’s wife when uh tldr in the 1980s Winnie was an advocate of necklacing which is when you take a tire there were a lot of tires in South Africa for some reason you soak it
In gasoline squeeze it around someone’s chest and shoulders and then set it on fire um most of the people they did this to were not white people it was a practice usually for black people who were accused of collaborating with the government they would tend to find them
Guilty or not based on show trials nonetheless these actions were broadly condemned by thec and it seemed like Nelson Mandela’s diplomatic efforts were successful in 1990 the government started a series of bilateral negotiations with thec to bring about the end of Apartheid 2 years later a referendum was held and white South
African voters were asked whether or not they supported the reforms and over 2third of them voted yes I think the lesson from these stories is that violence as a strategy is something that never seems to be taken lightly unplanned outbursts may be inevitable but whether or not they should happen
And definitely whether or not they should be advocated for is a completely different story Mandela and MLK are quite well known for being two of the most successful political Advocates of the 20th century and I think it’s pretty clear why although they both had very different challenges and ended up taking
Different approaches to violence they were both incredibly shrewd in their decision- making both of them at least shared the principle of exhausting every legal and peaceful means before escalating when Mandela first joined thec one of the first things he got involved in was not violent action it
Was a bus boycott to protest against fair Rises isn’t that crazy absolutely insane unheard of maybe there’s something to be said about starting small um I don’t know okay this has taken way too long uh I hope you liked it personally I’ve decided that MLK is
Now my new favorite person uh like I knew he was good but I didn’t expect I would agree with him on basically everything so uh I’m probably going to become a Baptist now maybe that’ll be a whole thing um like the video subscribe support me on patreon so I can feel
Better about how long I spent on this one um bye I also just wanted to give a special thanks to marutti for helping me edit this script and also to Al for being the first person to buy the full box tier on patreon um I honestly didn’t
Think anyone would go for that so uh wow thank you uh lost for words hey okay actually bye this time
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