Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T18:43:42.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Dangerous Idea: Nonviolence as Tactic and Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2020

Nico Slate
Nico Slate*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While some American civil rights activists professed belief in the “philosophy of nonviolence,” others declared nonviolent civil disobedience to be “a tactic rather than a philosophy.” Like many dichotomies, the tactic-versus-philosophy distinction combined as much as it divided. Those who viewed nonviolence as a tactic or method were treated as akin regardless of how much they differed in their tactics or methods. Similarly, those who believed in the philosophy of nonviolence were lumped together with each other and with those who saw nonviolence as a “way of life.” The history of the tactic-versus-philosophy dichotomy provides a unique window on the role of nonviolence within the American civil rights movement.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 1130 - 1154
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Renata Adler, “Letter from Selma,” New Yorker, 10 April 1965, in Clayborne Carson, ed., Reporting Civil Rights, vol. 2, American Journalism 1963–1973 (New York, 2003), 367–94; David Horsey, “The Road to Selma: Remembering the Stories of True American Heroes,” Los Angeles Times, 3 March 2015, at www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-road-to-selma-20150302-story.html#.

2 Catsam, Derek Charles, Freedom's Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides (Lexington, 2009), 81–2Google Scholar; Hall, Prathia, “Freedom-Faith,” in Holsaert, Faith S., Noonan, Martha Prescod Norman, Richardson, Judy, Robinson, Betty Garman, Young, Jean Smith, and Zellner, Dorothy M., eds., Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC (Urbana–Champaign, 2010), 172–80Google Scholar, at 173.

3 Morris, Aldon, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (New York, 1986), 158Google Scholar.

4 Halberstam, David, The Children (New York, 1998), 158Google Scholar; Fairclough, Adam, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000 (New York, 2001), 246, 307Google Scholar. Also see Cobb, Charles E. Jr, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (Durham, NC, 2016), 115, 239, 242Google Scholar; Catsam, Freedom's Main Line, 80–81; Arsenault, Raymond, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Oxford, 2006), 3, 9Google Scholar; Ransby, Barbara, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill, 2003), 193Google Scholar; Walker, Jenny, “The ‘Gun-Toting’ Gloria Richardson: Black Violence in Cambridge, Maryland,” in Ling, Peter and Monteith, Sharon, eds., Gender in the Civil Rights Movement (New York, 1999), 179Google Scholar; Payne, Charles M., I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, 1995), xvi–xviiGoogle Scholar; Stoper, Emily, SNCC: The Growth of Radicalism in a Civil Rights Organization (New York, 1989), 26–27, 106Google Scholar.

5 Chappell, David L., A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill, 2005), 84, 313Google Scholar; Satha-Anand, Chaiwat, “Overcoming Illusory Division: Between Nonviolence as Pragmatic Strategy and a Principled Way of Life,” in Schock, Kurt, ed., Civil Resistance: Comparative Perspectives on Nonviolent Struggle (Minneapolis, 2015), 289–301, at 290Google Scholar; Mantena, Karuna, “Showdown for Nonviolence: The Theory and Practice of Nonviolent Politics,” in Terry, Brandon M. and Shelby, Tommie, eds., To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Cambridge, MA, 2018), 78–101Google Scholar.

6 Slate, Nico, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Cambridge, MA, 2012)Google Scholar; Chabot, Sean, Transnational Roots of the Civil Rights Movement: African American Explorations of the Gandhian Repertoire (Lexington Books, 2012)Google Scholar; Scalmer, Sean, Gandhi in the West: The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kosek, Joseph Kip, Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy (New York, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kapur, Sudarshan, Raising up a Prophet: The African American Encounter with Gandhi (Boston, 1992)Google Scholar.

7 “Interview to Journalists,” 1 Dec. 1931, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), e-book (New Delhi, 1999); Bilgrami, Akeel, “Gandhi's Integrity: The Philosophy behind the Politics,” Postcolonial Studies 5/1 (2002), 79–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Skaria, Ajay, Unconditional Equality: Gandhi's Religion of Resistance (Minneapolis, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guha, Ramachandra, Gandhi before India (New York, 2014)Google Scholar; Skaria, , Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World (New York, 2018)Google Scholar; Kumar, Aishwary, Radical Equality: Ambedkar, Gandhi, and the Risk of Democracy (Stanford, 2015)Google Scholar; Vajpeyi, Ananya, Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India (Cambridge, MA, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 “Letter to Narandas Gandhi,” 28/31 July 1930, CWMG.

9 Desai, Ashwin and Vahed, Goolam, The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire (New Delhi, 2015)Google Scholar; Swan, Maureen, Gandhi: The South African Experience (Johannesburg, 1985)Google Scholar; Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism, 101–7, 134. For examples of Gandhi's antiracism see “Letter to Franklin Roosevelt,” 1 July 1942, CWMG; Mahadev Desai, “British and American Nazism,” Harijan, 15 Feb. 1942, CWMG.

10 African Americans had used civil disobedience long before Gandhi. See Norris, Marjorie M., “An Early Instance of Nonviolence: The Louisville Demonstrations of 1870–1871,” Journal of Southern History 32 (1966), 487–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Meier, August and Rudwick, Elliott M., “Early Boycotts of Segregated Schools: The Alton, Illinois Case, 1897–1908,” Journal of Negro Education 36/4 (1967), 394–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Azaransky, Sarah, This Worldwide Struggle: Religion and the International Roots of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford, 2017), 152CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jelks, Randall Maurice, Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement (Chapel Hill, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Calhoun-Brown, Allison, “Upon This Rock: The Black Church, Nonviolence, and the Civil Rights Movement,” PS: Political Science & Politics 33 (2000), 168–74Google Scholar; Dixie, Quinton and Eisenstadt, Peter, Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India and Origins of African American Nonviolence (Boston, 2011)Google Scholar; Dickerson, Dennis, “African American Religious Intellectuals and the Theological Foundations of the Civil Rights Movement, 1930–55,” Church History 74 (2005), 217–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Gregg, Richard, The Power of Nonviolence (Philadelphia, 1934), 136–7Google Scholar; Shridharani, Krishnalal, War without Violence (New York, 1939), xiv, 239Google Scholar. Also see Perry, Lewis, Civil Disobedience: An American Tradition (New Haven, 2013), 181–211Google Scholar; Kosek, Joseph Kip, “Richard Gregg, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Strategy of Nonviolence,” Journal of American History 91/4 (2005), 1318–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Pauli Murray, “Summary of Facts Leading up to Arrest of Pauli Murray and Adelene McBean,” 24 March 1940, Box 4, Folder 85, Pauli Murray Papers (PMP), Schlesinger Library, Harvard University; Murray, Pauli, Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism, 202.

13 Carbado, Devon W. and Weise, Donald, Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin (San Francisco, 2003), 9, 306Google Scholar. Also see Bayard Rustin and George Houser, We Challenge Jim Crow! (Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1947), at http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CivilRights/id/3675; Hodder, Jake, “Toward a Geography of Black Internationalism: Bayard Rustin, Nonviolence, and the Promise of Africa,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 106/6 (2016), 1360–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D'Emilio, John, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Levine, Daniel, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement (New Brunswick, 2000)Google Scholar; Anderson, Jervis, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen: A Biography (New York, 1997)Google Scholar.

14 Murray, “Diary Excerpts, 1940–42,” Folder 26, Box 1, PMP; Wolcott, Victoria, “Radical Nonviolence, Interracial Utopias, and the Congress of Racial Equality in the Early Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Civil and Human Rights 4 (2018), 31–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Danielson, Leilah C., “‘In My Extremity I Turned to Gandhi’: American Pacifists, Christianity, and Gandhian Nonviolence, 1915–1941,” Church History 72/2 (2003), 361–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Siracusa, Anthony C., “From Pacifism to Resistance: The Evolution of Nonviolence in Wartime America,” Journal of Civil and Human Rights 3/1 (2017), 55–77Google Scholar.

15 On Gandhi's vegetarianism see Slate, Nico, Gandhi's Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind (Seattle, 2019)Google Scholar; Roy, Parama, Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial (Durham, NC, 2010)Google Scholar; Alter, Joseph S., Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism (Philadelphia, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism, 224–6.

16 Perry, Civil Disobedience, 181; Euchner, Charles, Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the March on Washington (Boston, 2010), 191Google Scholar; Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 158. Also see Moses, Greg, Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; Smith, Kenneth and Zepp, Ira, Search for the Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Lanham, 1986)Google Scholar; Steinkraus, Warren E., “Martin Luther King's Personalism and Non-violence,” Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (1973), 97–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Hodder, Jake, “Casting a Black Gandhi: Martin Luther King Jr., American Pacifists and the Global Dynamics of Race,” Journal of American Studies (2019), doi: 10.1017/S0021875819000033Google Scholar; King, Martin Luther Jr, Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York, 1958), 97Google Scholar. On the authorship of King's writings and speeches see David L. Chappell, Waking from the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York, 2014), chap. 6; Bass, S. Jonathan, Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (Baton Rouge, 2001)Google Scholar; Carson, Clayborne, Luker, Peter Holloran, Ralph E. and Russell, Penny, “Martin Luther King, Jr. as Scholar: A Reexamination of His Theological Writings,” Journal of American History 78/1 (1991), 93–105, 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Miller, Keith D., “Composing Martin Luther King, Jr.” PMLA 105/1 (1990), 70–82Google Scholar.

18 Martin Luther King, “Statement to the Press at the Beginning of the Youth Leadership Conference,” at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/statement-press-beginning-youth-leadership-conference. Also see David L. Chappell, “Martin Luther King: Strategist of Force,” in Melvin L. Rodgers and Jack Turner, African American Political Thought: A Collected History (Chicago, forthcoming), 859–900; GHerstein, ary, “The Roycean Roots of the Beloved Community,” The Pluralist 4/2 (2009), 91–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marsh, Charles, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today (New York, 2006)Google Scholar.

19 “Outline, The Philosophy of Nonviolence,” at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/outline-philosophy-nonviolence.

20 “Outline, The Philosophy of Nonviolence”; “An Address by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, 15 Oct. 1962, at https://news.cornellcollege.edu/dr-martin-luther-kings-visit-to-cornell-college; “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking in London at City Temple on December 7th, 1964,” at www.commondreams.org/news/2018/01/15/newly-discovered-1964-mlk-speech-civil-rights-segregation-and-apartheid-south-africa; “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech at Illinois Wesleyan University, 1966,” at www.iwu.edu/mlk; Martin Luther King Jr., “Christmas Sermon,” Ebenezer Baptist Church, 25 Dec. 1967, at https://onbeing.org/blog/martin-luther-kings-last-christmas-sermon.

21 Martin Luther King Jr, “Address to First Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church,” 5 Dec. 1955, at www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-KingMontgomery.htm; “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech at Illinois Wesleyan University, 1966,” at www.iwu.edu/mlk; King, “SCLC President's Annual Report,” 10 Aug. 1966, King Papers Digital Archive, The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, quoted in Wirmark, Bo, “Nonviolent Methods and the American Civil Rights Movement, 1955–1965,” Journal of Peace Research 11 (1974), 115–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Carson, Clayborne, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA, 1981), 23Google Scholar; Ted Dienstfrey, “A Conference on the Sit-Ins,” Commentary (June 1960), 526.

23 Catsam, Freedom's Main Line, 80–81; Lawson, Jim, “On Nonviolence,” Southern Exposure 9/1 (1981), 31Google Scholar.

24 “Baldwin-Wallace—Classes—Philosophy and Ethics—Spring 1949,” Box 28, Lawson Papers; letter from Jere (JB), 14 Feb. 1949, “Baldwin-Wallace—Correspondence—Incoming—1949,” Box 28, Lawson Papers. Also see “The Theological Basis of Nonviolence,” “Book Draft—Chapter III,” Box 45, Lawson Papers.

25 “College Orator's Speech on Gandhi Wins Ohio Title,” newspaper clipping, “Baldwin-Wallace—Speech—“Alternative to Destruction”—ND,” Box 28, Lawson Papers; Bell, Janet Dewart, Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement (New York, 2018), 97Google Scholar.

26 Southern Christian Leadership Conference, “The Philosophy of Nonviolence and the Tactic of Nonviolent Resistance,” Folder 26, Box 12, Vertical File Collection, Civil Rights Documentation Project; “Book Draft—Chapter II,” Box 45, Lawson Papers.

27 “Book Draft—Chapter I” and “Book Draft—Chapter II,” Box 45, Lawson Papers.

28 “Book Draft—Chapter II,” Box 45, Lawson Papers; Bayard Rustin, “Reminiscences of Bayard Rustin” (Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, 1988), 137–40, quoted in Burns, Stewart, ed., Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (Chapel Hill, 1997), 169CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Lewis, John, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York, 1998), 77–8Google Scholar.

30 Rustin, “Reminiscences of Bayard Rustin,” 137–40, quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 169.

31 Mildred Forman Page, “Two Variations on Nonviolence,” in Holsaert et al., Hands on the Freedom Plow, 53–4.

32 Carson, In Struggle, 67–68; Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom, xvi–xvii.

33 “Oral History Interview with Fannie Lou Hamer,” KZSU Project South interviews, 1965, at https://purl.stanford.edu/zb317wv2717; King, Martin Luther Jr, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (New York, 1997), 57Google ScholarPubMed; Garrow, David J., Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York, 1986), 73Google Scholar. Also see Umoja, Akinyele Omowale, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the MS Freedom Movement (New York, 2013)Google Scholar; Wendt, Simon, The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Gainesville, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strain, Christopher B., Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era (Athens, GA, 2005)Google Scholar; Tyson, Timothy B., Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill, 1999)Google Scholar. Also see the debate between King and Robert Williams: Robert Williams, “Can Negroes Afford to Be Pacifists?”, Liberation 4 (Sept. 1959), 4–7; and King, “The Social Organization of Nonviolence,” Liberation 4 (Oct. 1959), 5–6.

34 Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get you Killed, 2–3, 108.

35 Joe Sinsheimer, “Interview with Robert Moses,” Cambridge, MA, 19 Nov. 1983, 19–21, at https://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/media/jpg/sinsheimerjoseph/pdf/sinsi02005.pdf. Also see Visser-Maessen, Laura, Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights and Leadership at the Grassroots (Chapel Hill, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burner, Eric, And Gently He Shall Lead Them: Robert Parris Moses and Civil Rights in Mississippi (New York, 1995)Google Scholar.

36 Robert Penn Warren interview with Robert Moses, at https://whospeaks.library.vanderbilt.edu/interview/robert-moses; “Courtland Cox,” interview by Joseph Mosnier, Washington, DC, 8 July 2011, Civil Rights History Project Collection (AFC 2010/039), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, at https://cdn.loc.gov/service/afc/afc2010039/afc2010039_crhp0030_cox_transcript/afc2010039_crhp0030_cox_transcript.pdf; “Charles McDew,” interview by Joseph Mosnier, Albany State University, 4 June 2011, Civil Rights History Project Collection (AFC 2010/039), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, at https://cdn.loc.gov/service/afc/afc2010039/afc2010039_crhp0021_mcdew_transcript/afc2010039_crhp0021_mcdew_transcript.pdf.

37 Malcolm X, “The Race Problem,” African Students Association and NAACP Campus Chapter, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 23 Jan. 1963, at http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/mxp/speeches/mxt20.html; Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 158, 164; Catsam, Freedom's Main Line, 82.

38 “Violence and Nonviolence,” “Book Draft, Writings—Violence and Nonviolence—n.d.,” Box 45, Lawson Papers.

39 “Workshop on School Desegregation Morning Session,” Youth Project Campers Panel, 15 Aug. 1960, Folder 8, Box 15, Highlander Folk School Manuscript Collection, Tennessee State Library and Archive.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Baker quoted in Payne, I've Got the Light, 93; and Ransby, Ella Baker, 193.

45 Adler, “Letter from Selma”; Horsey, “The Road to Selma.”

46 Richard Gregg to John Nevin Sayre, 9 Sept. 1960, “Gregg, Richard, 1946–1969,” Sayre Papers, Series A, Box 6, DG-117, SCPC; Kloppenberg, James T., “Thinking Historically: A Manifesto of Pragmatic Hermeneutics,” Modern Intellectual History 9/1 (2012), 201–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 202, 207, 209; Orosco, José-Antonio, Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence (Albuquerque, 2008)Google Scholar; Zunes, Stephen, “The Role of Non-violent Action in the Downfall of Apartheid,” Journal of Modern African Studies 37/1 (1999), 137–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ganguly, Debjani and Docker, John, eds., Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality: Global Perspectives (London, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Sharp, Gene, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part One: Power and Struggle (Boston, 1973), 4, 68Google Scholar; Kurlansky, Mark, Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea (New York, 2006)Google Scholar. Also see Butler, Judith, The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in the Political (New York and London, 2000)Google Scholar; Nepstad, Sharon Erickson, Nonviolent Struggle: Theories, Strategies, and Dynamics (New York, 2015)Google Scholar; Engler, Mark and Engler, Paul, This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century (New York, 2016)Google Scholar; Schock, Kurt, Civil Resistance Today (Cambridge, 2015)Google Scholar; Nagler, Michael N., The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action (Oakland, 2014)Google Scholar; Howes, Dustin Ells, “The Failure of Pacifism and the Success of Nonviolence,” Perspectives on Politics 11 (2013), 427–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chenoweth, Erica and Stephan, Maria J., Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York, 2011)Google Scholar; Schell, Jonathan, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Ackerman, Peter and Duvall, Jack, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (New York, 2000)Google Scholar.

48 Sharp, Gene, Gandhi as a Political Strategist (Boston, 1979), 503Google Scholar.

49 Stellan Vinthagen, “Four Dimensions of Nonviolent Action: A Sociological Perspective,” in Schock, Civil Resistance, 259; Gene Sharp to James Lawson, 19 Sept. 1950, “Baldwin-Wallace—Correspondence—Incoming—September 1950,” Box 28, Lawson Papers.

50 “Methods of Nonviolence,” “Book Draft—Chapter V,” Box 45, Lawson Papers; Rodgers, Daniel T., “The Commitments of Democracy,” Modern Intellectual History 16/2 (2019), 595CrossRefGoogle Scholar.