Democracy Uprising
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      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

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      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

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      How to make sure your disruptive protest helps…

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      Why protests work, even when not everybody likes…

      Social Movements

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

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      Strategy is a Craft

      War / Militarism

      Does It Make Sense to Protest a President…

      War / Militarism

      Lessons from the Pledge of Resistance

      War / Militarism

      Is Rambo Still A Republican?

      War / Militarism

      War: The Wrong Jobs Program

      War / Militarism

      The Ascent of Niall Ferguson

      War / Militarism

      Those Who Don’t Count

      War / Militarism

      Six Essays About War and About Peace

      War / Militarism

      The Dangerous Dignity of War

      Book Reviews

      The Pan American

      Book Reviews

      The Godfather of Microcredit

      Book Reviews

      Capitalism as Catastrophe

      Book Reviews

      Four Ways of Looking at an Aztec Eagle

      Book Reviews

      The Ascent of Niall Ferguson

      Book Reviews

      Ordinary Outrages

      Book Reviews

      No Better Place

      Book Reviews

      In God’s Country

      Environment

      Why Wendell Matters

      Environment

      The Gulf at the Gas Station

      Environment

      Climate Disobedience

      Environment

      Farming the Everglades

      Environment

      The Winter of the Climate Denier

      Environment

      Climate of Change: An “Inside-Outside” Strategy Against Global…

      Environment

      Provoking an American Climate Crisis

      Environment

      The Real “Farmer” Story: So God Made High-Fructose…

      Essays / First Person

      Is Rambo Still A Republican?

      Essays / First Person

      On the Price is Right

      Essays / First Person

      The Last Porto Alegre

      Essays / First Person

      Six Essays About War and About Peace

      Essays / First Person

      Republicans Among Us

      Essays / First Person

      New York Says “No”

      Essays / First Person

      The Sideshow Rebels

      Essays / First Person

      A Week in New York

      Global Economy

      Meet the Bailout’s New Slush Fund for Corporate…

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      The Seattle Protests Showed That Another World Is…

      Global Economy

      Jeff Bezos Has Enough! It’s Time for a…

      Global Economy

      The Amazon Effect: Sweat, Surveillance, Exploitation

      Global Economy

      The Godfather of Microcredit

      Global Economy

      Capitalism as Catastrophe

      Global Economy

      Immigration Economics: An Interview with Professor Giovanni Peri

      Global Economy

      The World Is Not Flat

      Immigration

      When Undocumented Activists Infiltrated ICE

      Immigration

      The Children of Intervention

      Immigration

      Immigration Economics: An Interview with Professor Giovanni Peri

      Immigration

      Science Fiction From Below

      Immigration

      Four Ways of Looking at an Aztec Eagle

      Immigration

      Treated Like a Criminal

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      When Sanctuary is Resistance

      Immigration

      The Massive Immigrants Rights Protests of 2006 Are…

      Labor

      This new model for upholding labor law may…

      Labor

      Democrats Won Power in Several States. Will They…

      Labor

      The Case for a Social Distancing Wage

      Labor

      The Seattle Protests Showed That Another World Is…

      Labor

      Reviving the General Strike

      Labor

      Jeff Bezos Has Enough! It’s Time for a…

      Labor

      There’s Still Power in a Strike

      Labor

      The Amazon Effect: Sweat, Surveillance, Exploitation

      Latin America

      How movements can maintain their radical vision while winning…

      Latin America

      The Pan American

      Latin America

      Lessons from the Pledge of Resistance

      Latin America

      The Children of Intervention

      Latin America

      Against Shithole Nationalism

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      The Last Porto Alegre

      Latin America

      Kissinger Is Not Our Friend

      Latin America

      Even If You Have Nothing to Hide

      Social Movements

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      Social Movements

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      Social Movements

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      Social Movements

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      Social Movements

      How to make sure your disruptive protest helps…

      Social Movements

      Why protests work, even when not everybody likes…

      Social Movements

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      Social Movements

      Strategy is a Craft

      Religion

      In God’s Country

      Religion

      Reverend Billy’s Holiday Shopocalypse

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      Toward the “Rights of the Poor”

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      The Pope and the Poor

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      Will the Next Pope Embrace Liberation Theology?

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      Remembering Romero

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      John Paul II’s Economic Ethics

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      Against the God of Free Trade

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Strategy is a Craft

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Think #MeToo didn’t make a real difference? Think…

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      This new model for upholding labor law may…

  • Translations
    • All Português Arabic Thai Chinese Deutsch Español Français Italiano Japanese
      Translations

      Jordlösa kombinerar radikala visioner med praktiska reformer (Swedish)

      Español

      Hacer Que Nuestras Demandas Sean Tanto Orácticas Como…

      Italiano

      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

      Português

      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

      Español

      Las reformas no reformistas de André Gorz

      Deutsch

      Die nicht-reformistischen Reformen von André Gorz

      Italiano

      Richieste dei movimenti: sia pratiche che visionarie

      Chinese

      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

      Português

      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

      Português

      A vida na Nação Prisão

      Português

      Outro pretexto?

      Português

      Imigração tem efeito positivo sobre emprego e salários

      Português

      O império hipotecado

      Arabic

      Abandoning the World Bank (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Return of Daniel Ortega (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Where’s The Jubilee? (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Last Porto Alegre (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Seattle At Five (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty? (in…

      Arabic

      Mexico’s Democratic Transition Still Incomplete (in Arabic)

      Thai

      Progressive Good Tidings of 2007 (in Thai)

      Thai

      2006: A Global Justice Year in Review (In…

      Thai

      WTO: Best Left For Dead? (In Thai)

      Thai

      Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty? (In…

      Thai

      Bush’s Bad Business Empire (In Thai)

      Thai

      The Last Porto Alegre [Thai]

      Thai

      Globalizers, Neocons, or… ? (in Thai)

      Chinese

      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

      Chinese

      Why Wendell Matters (in Chinese)

      Chinese

      Globalization’s Watchdogs (in Chinese)

      Deutsch

      Die nicht-reformistischen Reformen von André Gorz

      Deutsch

      Als Martin Luther King seine Feuerwaffen aufgab

      Deutsch

      Mikrokredite: Die Entlassung eines Nobelpreisträgers

      Deutsch

      CAFTA – am besten stillschweigend beerdigen

      Deutsch

      Bush in Mexiko

      Deutsch

      Das globale Duell in Evian

      Deutsch

      Die Rückkehr des Daniel Ortega

      Español

      Hacer Que Nuestras Demandas Sean Tanto Orácticas Como…

      Español

      Las reformas no reformistas de André Gorz

      Español

      ¿Adoptará el nuevo papa la teología de la…

      Español

      Wall Street quiere que les estemos agradecidos

      Español

      Si Las Monjas Se Fueran a una Huelga,…

      Español

      ALEC retrocede; a la derecha le da un…

      Español

      ¿ALEC disgustado ante la pérdida de patrocinadores? Se…

      Español

      La vida en la nación prisión

      Français

      La révolution non-violente a-t-elle échoué en Egypte?

      Français

      Le pari risqué du populisme au Pérou

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      Hong Kong Phooey

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      Bush Nuit Même Aux Compagnies U.S.

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      Le dynamisme du mouvement pour la paix

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      La déroute de l’ALCA dans une Miami en…

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      Ceux qui ne comptent pas

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      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

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      Richieste dei movimenti: sia pratiche che visionarie

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      IL BANK TRANSFER DAY: UN SUCCESSO

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      Come il movimento Occupiamo Wall Street si sta…

      Italiano

      Economia tabù

      Japanese

      ガンジーはどのように勝利したのか? (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Truth Versus Superpower (Japanese)

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      Japanese

      Revenge of the Combat Cartoonist (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Bush’s Uneasy Mexican Visita (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Mark Twain in Iraq (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Globalization’s “Lost Decade” (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Hawks Say the Damnedest Things (Japanese)

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Democracy Uprising

  • About
    • About Mark Engler
    • About Democracy Uprising
  • Books
    • This Is An Uprising
    • How To Rule the World
  • Topics
    • All War / Militarism Book Reviews Environment Essays / First Person Global Economy Immigration Labor Latin America Social Movements Religion U.S. Politics / Elections
      2023-2025

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      Social Movements

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      Social Movements

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      Social Movements

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      Social Movements

      How to make sure your disruptive protest helps…

      Latest Articles

      Why protests work, even when not everybody likes…

      Social Movements

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      Social Movements

      Strategy is a Craft

      War / Militarism

      Does It Make Sense to Protest a President…

      War / Militarism

      Lessons from the Pledge of Resistance

      War / Militarism

      Is Rambo Still A Republican?

      War / Militarism

      War: The Wrong Jobs Program

      War / Militarism

      The Ascent of Niall Ferguson

      War / Militarism

      Those Who Don’t Count

      War / Militarism

      Six Essays About War and About Peace

      War / Militarism

      The Dangerous Dignity of War

      Book Reviews

      The Pan American

      Book Reviews

      The Godfather of Microcredit

      Book Reviews

      Capitalism as Catastrophe

      Book Reviews

      Four Ways of Looking at an Aztec Eagle

      Book Reviews

      The Ascent of Niall Ferguson

      Book Reviews

      Ordinary Outrages

      Book Reviews

      No Better Place

      Book Reviews

      In God’s Country

      Environment

      Why Wendell Matters

      Environment

      The Gulf at the Gas Station

      Environment

      Climate Disobedience

      Environment

      Farming the Everglades

      Environment

      The Winter of the Climate Denier

      Environment

      Climate of Change: An “Inside-Outside” Strategy Against Global…

      Environment

      Provoking an American Climate Crisis

      Environment

      The Real “Farmer” Story: So God Made High-Fructose…

      Essays / First Person

      Is Rambo Still A Republican?

      Essays / First Person

      On the Price is Right

      Essays / First Person

      The Last Porto Alegre

      Essays / First Person

      Six Essays About War and About Peace

      Essays / First Person

      Republicans Among Us

      Essays / First Person

      New York Says “No”

      Essays / First Person

      The Sideshow Rebels

      Essays / First Person

      A Week in New York

      Global Economy

      Meet the Bailout’s New Slush Fund for Corporate…

      Global Economy

      The Seattle Protests Showed That Another World Is…

      Global Economy

      Jeff Bezos Has Enough! It’s Time for a…

      Global Economy

      The Amazon Effect: Sweat, Surveillance, Exploitation

      Global Economy

      The Godfather of Microcredit

      Global Economy

      Capitalism as Catastrophe

      Global Economy

      Immigration Economics: An Interview with Professor Giovanni Peri

      Global Economy

      The World Is Not Flat

      Immigration

      When Undocumented Activists Infiltrated ICE

      Immigration

      The Children of Intervention

      Immigration

      Immigration Economics: An Interview with Professor Giovanni Peri

      Immigration

      Science Fiction From Below

      Immigration

      Four Ways of Looking at an Aztec Eagle

      Immigration

      Treated Like a Criminal

      Immigration

      When Sanctuary is Resistance

      Immigration

      The Massive Immigrants Rights Protests of 2006 Are…

      Labor

      This new model for upholding labor law may…

      Labor

      Democrats Won Power in Several States. Will They…

      Labor

      The Case for a Social Distancing Wage

      Labor

      The Seattle Protests Showed That Another World Is…

      Labor

      Reviving the General Strike

      Labor

      Jeff Bezos Has Enough! It’s Time for a…

      Labor

      There’s Still Power in a Strike

      Labor

      The Amazon Effect: Sweat, Surveillance, Exploitation

      Latin America

      How movements can maintain their radical vision while winning…

      Latin America

      The Pan American

      Latin America

      Lessons from the Pledge of Resistance

      Latin America

      The Children of Intervention

      Latin America

      Against Shithole Nationalism

      Latin America

      The Last Porto Alegre

      Latin America

      Kissinger Is Not Our Friend

      Latin America

      Even If You Have Nothing to Hide

      Social Movements

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      Social Movements

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      Social Movements

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      Social Movements

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      Social Movements

      How to make sure your disruptive protest helps…

      Social Movements

      Why protests work, even when not everybody likes…

      Social Movements

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      Social Movements

      Strategy is a Craft

      Religion

      In God’s Country

      Religion

      Reverend Billy’s Holiday Shopocalypse

      Religion

      Toward the “Rights of the Poor”

      Religion

      The Pope and the Poor

      Religion

      Will the Next Pope Embrace Liberation Theology?

      Religion

      Remembering Romero

      Religion

      John Paul II’s Economic Ethics

      Religion

      Against the God of Free Trade

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Strategy is a Craft

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Think #MeToo didn’t make a real difference? Think…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      This new model for upholding labor law may…

  • Translations
    • All Português Arabic Thai Chinese Deutsch Español Français Italiano Japanese
      Translations

      Jordlösa kombinerar radikala visioner med praktiska reformer (Swedish)

      Español

      Hacer Que Nuestras Demandas Sean Tanto Orácticas Como…

      Italiano

      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

      Português

      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

      Español

      Las reformas no reformistas de André Gorz

      Deutsch

      Die nicht-reformistischen Reformen von André Gorz

      Italiano

      Richieste dei movimenti: sia pratiche che visionarie

      Chinese

      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

      Português

      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

      Português

      A vida na Nação Prisão

      Português

      Outro pretexto?

      Português

      Imigração tem efeito positivo sobre emprego e salários

      Português

      O império hipotecado

      Arabic

      Abandoning the World Bank (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Return of Daniel Ortega (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Where’s The Jubilee? (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Last Porto Alegre (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Seattle At Five (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty? (in…

      Arabic

      Mexico’s Democratic Transition Still Incomplete (in Arabic)

      Thai

      Progressive Good Tidings of 2007 (in Thai)

      Thai

      2006: A Global Justice Year in Review (In…

      Thai

      WTO: Best Left For Dead? (In Thai)

      Thai

      Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty? (In…

      Thai

      Bush’s Bad Business Empire (In Thai)

      Thai

      The Last Porto Alegre [Thai]

      Thai

      Globalizers, Neocons, or… ? (in Thai)

      Chinese

      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

      Chinese

      Why Wendell Matters (in Chinese)

      Chinese

      Globalization’s Watchdogs (in Chinese)

      Deutsch

      Die nicht-reformistischen Reformen von André Gorz

      Deutsch

      Als Martin Luther King seine Feuerwaffen aufgab

      Deutsch

      Mikrokredite: Die Entlassung eines Nobelpreisträgers

      Deutsch

      CAFTA – am besten stillschweigend beerdigen

      Deutsch

      Bush in Mexiko

      Deutsch

      Das globale Duell in Evian

      Deutsch

      Die Rückkehr des Daniel Ortega

      Español

      Hacer Que Nuestras Demandas Sean Tanto Orácticas Como…

      Español

      Las reformas no reformistas de André Gorz

      Español

      ¿Adoptará el nuevo papa la teología de la…

      Español

      Wall Street quiere que les estemos agradecidos

      Español

      Si Las Monjas Se Fueran a una Huelga,…

      Español

      ALEC retrocede; a la derecha le da un…

      Español

      ¿ALEC disgustado ante la pérdida de patrocinadores? Se…

      Español

      La vida en la nación prisión

      Français

      La révolution non-violente a-t-elle échoué en Egypte?

      Français

      Le pari risqué du populisme au Pérou

      Français

      Hong Kong Phooey

      Français

      Bush Nuit Même Aux Compagnies U.S.

      Français

      Le dynamisme du mouvement pour la paix

      Français

      La déroute de l’ALCA dans une Miami en…

      Français

      Ceux qui ne comptent pas

      Français

      La guerre en Irak : une expo des…

      Italiano

      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

      Italiano

      Richieste dei movimenti: sia pratiche che visionarie

      Italiano

      La strategia di Gandhi per il successo –…

      Italiano

      Le promesse infrante di Obama

      Italiano

      Guantanamo deve sparire

      Italiano

      IL BANK TRANSFER DAY: UN SUCCESSO

      Italiano

      Come il movimento Occupiamo Wall Street si sta…

      Italiano

      Economia tabù

      Japanese

      ガンジーはどのように勝利したのか? (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Truth Versus Superpower (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Bush’s Bad Business Empire (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Revenge of the Combat Cartoonist (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Bush’s Uneasy Mexican Visita (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Mark Twain in Iraq (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Globalization’s “Lost Decade” (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Hawks Say the Damnedest Things (Japanese)

    • Other Translations
  • Appearances
  • Archive
    • 2023-2025
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2013-2014Global Economy

When Martin Luther King Gave Up His Guns

by Mark Engler and Paul Engler January 15, 2014
written by Mark Engler and Paul Engler January 15, 2014
When Martin Luther King Gave Up His Guns

It took years of political evolution for King to understand nonviolence not merely as a moral force, but as an effective strategy for leveraging political change.

Published in Waging Nonviolence, Salon, and the Guardian.


Few are aware that Martin Luther King, Jr. once applied for a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

In his 2011 book Gunfight, UCLA law professor Adam Winkler notes that, after King’s house was bombed in 1956, the clergyman applied in Alabama for a concealed carry permit. Local police, loathe to grant such permits to African-Americans, deemed him “unsuitable” and denied his application. Consequently, King would end up leaving the firearms at home.

The lesson from this incident is not, as some NRA members have tried to suggest in recent years, that King should be remembered as a gun-toting Republican. (Among many other problems, this portrayal neglects to acknowledge how Republicans used conservative anger about Civil Rights advances to win over the Dixiecrat South to their side of the aisle). Rather, the fact that King would request license to wear a gun in 1956, just as he was being catapulted onto the national stage, illustrates the profundity of the transformation that he underwent over the course of his public career.

While this transformation involved a conversion to moral nonviolence and personal pacifism, that is not the whole of the story. More importantly, for those who are interested in how nonviolence can serve as a useful strategy for leveraging social change, King’s evolution also involved a hesitant but ultimately forceful embrace of direct action — broad-scale, confrontational and unarmed. That stance had lasting consequences in the struggle for freedom in America.

* * * * *

A personal conversion

The 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the campaign that first established King’s national reputation, was not planned in advance as a Gandhian-style campaign of nonviolent resistance. At the time, King would not have had a clear sense of the strategic principles behind such a campaign. Rather, the bus boycott came together quickly in the wake of Rosa Park’s arrest in late 1955, taking inspiration from a similar action in Baton Rouge in 1953. (Interestingly, the Montgomery drive was initially quite moderate in its demands, calling only for modest changes to the seating plans on segregated buses.)

King, a newcomer to Montgomery, was unexpectedly thrust into the leadership of the movement, chosen in part because he was not identified with any of the established factions among the city’s prominent blacks. He was reluctant about his new role and its burdens. Soon he was receiving phone calls on which unidentified voices warned, “Listen, nigger, we’ve taken all we want from you. Before next week you’ll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery.” After such threats resulted in the bombing of King’s home in February 1956, armed watchmen guarded against further assassination attempts.

This response reflected King’s still-tentative embrace of the theory and practice of nonviolence. In his talks before mass meetings, King preached the Christian injunction to “love thy enemy.” Having read Thoreau in college, he described the bus boycott as an “act of massive noncooperation” and regularly called for “passive resistance.” But King did not use the term “nonviolence,” and he admitted that he knew little about Gandhi or the Indian independence leader’s campaigns. As King biographer Taylor Branch notes, out-of-state visitors who were knowledgeable about the principles of unarmed direct action — such as Rev. Glenn Smiley of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Bayard Rustin of the War Resisters League — reported that King and other Montgomery activists were “at once gifted and unsophisticated in nonviolence.”

Both Rustin and Smiley took notice of the firearms around the King household and argued for their removal. In a famous incident described by historian David Garrow, Rustin was visiting King’s parsonage with reporter Bill Worthy when the journalist almost sat on a pistol. “Watch out, Bill, there’s a gun on that chair,” the startled Rustin warned. He and King stayed up late that night arguing about whether armed self-defense in the home could end up damaging the movement.

While today’s NRA members might prefer to forget, it was not long before King had come around to the position advocated by groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Smiley would make visits to Montgomery throughout King’s remaining four years there, and the civil rights leader’s politics would be shaped by many more late-night conversations.

In 1959, at the invitation of the Gandhi National Memorial Fund, King made a pilgrimage to India to study the principles of satyagraha, and he was moved by the experience. Ultimately, he never embraced the complete pacifism of A. J. Muste; later, in the Black Power years, King made a distinction between people using guns to defend themselves in the home and the question of “whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized protest.” But, for himself, King claimed nonviolence as a “way of life,” and he maintained his resolve under conditions that would make many others falter. While SCLC staffers, fearing an assassination attempt, often implored police and federal authorities to ensure public safety at civil rights gatherings, King regularly refused to travel with an armed guard, and he showed a sometimes-disturbing acceptable of the idea of that he might someday be killed.

In September 1962, when King was addressing a convention, a 200-pound white man, the 24-year-old American Nazi Party member Roy James, jumped onto the stage and struck the clergyman in the face. King responded with a level of courage that made a lifelong impression on many of those in the audience. One of them, storied educator and activist Septima Clark, described how King dropped his hands “like a newborn baby” and spoke calmly to his attacker. King made no effort to protect himself even as he was knocked backwards by further blows. Later, after his aides had pulled the assailant away, he talked to the young man behind the stage and insisted that he would not press charges.

* * * * *

Nonviolence as a political weapon

Believers in pacifism often contend that such principled nonviolence represents the high point in a person’s moral evolution. They argue that those who merely use unarmed protest tactically — not because they accept it as an ethical imperative, but because they have decided it is the most effective way to propel a given campaign for social change — practice a lesser form of nonviolence. Gandhi advanced this position when he claimed that those who forgo violence for strategic reasons, rather than ethical ones, employ the “nonviolence of the weak.” King echoed the argument when he wrote that “nonviolence in the truest sense is not a strategy that one uses simply because it is expedient in the moment,” but rather is something “men live by because of the sheer morality of its claim.”

Despite such admonitions, the opposite case can be made: Moral nonviolence without strategic vision rings hollow. And, in holding up King as an icon of individual pacifism, we fail to see his true genius.

It is possible for someone to make a commitment to nonviolence as a point of personal principle without ever taking part in the kind of action that would make their convictions a matter of public consequence. Indeed, this is common, since most people prefer the comforts of private life to the tension of political conflict. Pacifists who do put their beliefs to the test might undertake civil disobedience individually — performing acts of moral witness that pose no real threat to perpetrators of injustice. It is only when the tenets of unarmed direct action are strategically employed, made into effective weapons of political persuasion through campaigns of widespread disruption and collective sacrifice, that nonviolence gains its fullest power.

Martin Luther King did embrace strategic nonviolence in its most robust and radical form — and this produced the historic confrontations at Birmingham and Selma. But it is important to remember that these came years after his initial baptism into political life in Montgomery, and that they might easily not have happened at all.

* * * * *

The road to Birmingham

Following the successful bus boycott, King sought out ways to spread the Montgomery model throughout the South. He knew that there existed strategists who had immersed themselves in the theory and practice of broad-scale confrontation, but he acknowledged that this organizing tradition had yet to take root in the civil rights movement. In early 1957, King met James Lawson, a savvy student of unarmed resistance who had spent several years in India. As Branch relates, King pleaded with the young graduate student to quit his studies: “We need you now,” King said. “We don’t have any Negro leadership in the South that understands nonviolence.”

Despite this recognition, the idea of waging broadly participatory campaigns of direct action fell far outside of King’s organizational frame of reference, and in many ways he remained a reluctant convert to mass action. Founded in 1957, King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC, was conceived as a coalition of ministers. It thought of itself, in the words of one historian, as the “political arm of the black church.” However, as Ella Baker biographer Barbara Ransby writes, that institution was none too bold on civil rights, and “the majority of black ministers in the 1950s still opted for a safer, less confrontational political path;” even King and his more motivated cohort “defined their political goals squarely within the respectable American mainstream and were cautious about any leftist associations.”

Frustrated that SCLC’s program in the first years involved more “flowery speeches” than civil disobedience, the militant Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham warned that, if the organization did not become more aggressive, its leaders would “be hard put in the not too distant future to justify our existence.”

The next major breakthroughs in civil rights activism would come not from the SCLC’s hesitant ministers, but through the student lunch counter sit-ins that swept through the South starting in Spring of 1960, and then through the 1961 Freedom Rides. In each case, when young activists implored King to join them, the elder clergyman — himself just in his early 30s — held back. When King told the students that he was with them in spirit, they pointedly shot back, “Where’s your body?”

According to John Lewis, then a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, King replied with irritation, making reference to the site of Jesus’ crucifixion: “I think I should choose the time and place of my Golgatha,” he said.

When King’s SCLC did get directly involved in a major campaign of strategic nonviolence, the organization was drawn into an effort that was already underway — one in Albany, Ga., starting in late 1961. Even then, the SCLC did not fully commit until after King and close colleague Ralph Abernathy were swept up in an unplanned arrest. Unfortunately, the effort in Albany was beset by rivalries between different civil rights groups, and it ended in failure. As Garrow notes, the New York Times ended up praising “the remarkable restraint of Albany’s segregationists and the deft handling by the police of racial protests,” while another national publication remarked that “not a single racial barrier fell.”

Nevertheless, the sense of potential he experienced in Albany, combined with the inspiration of the Freedom Rides and student sit-ins, convinced King that the time had come for a campaign of mass action that, in the words of Andrew Young, could be “anticipated, planned and coordinated from beginning to end” using the principles of nonviolent conflict. King had chosen his time and place: Birmingham, 1963.

* * * * *

Big enough to fail, big enough to win

King’s political genius was in putting the institutional weight of a major national civil rights organization behind an ambitious, escalating deployment of civil resistance tactics. In the case of Birmingham, this meant taking many of the approaches that had been tried before — the economic pressure leveled against merchants during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the dramatic sit-ins of Nashville, the fill-the-jails arrest strategy of Albany — and combining them in a multi-staged assault that sociologist and civil rights historian Aldon Morris would dub “a planned exercise in mass disruption.”

In creating an engineered conflict that could capture the national spotlight, King took huge risks. It would have been far easier for an organization of the size and background of the SCLC to turn toward more mainstream lobbying and legal action — much as the NAACP had done. Instead, by following SNCC’s student activists in embracing nonviolent confrontation, SCLC organizers and their local allies created a dramatic clash with segregationists that put the normally hidden injustices of racism on stark public display. As historian Michael Kazin argues, the famous scenes from Birmingham of police dogs snapping at unarmed demonstrators and water canons being opened on young marchers “convinced a plurality of whites, for the first time, to support the cause of black freedom.” Likewise, King would later write that, in watching marchers defy Bull Connor’s menacing police troops, he “felt there, for the first time, the pride and power of nonviolence.”

Ultimately, King was a follower, not a leader, in cultivating a new tradition of strategic nonviolent action in the United States. Yet acknowledging this should not diminish his significance. Because when he did commit himself to spearheading the type of broad-based nonviolent protest he had been talking about for years, it resulted in campaigns that profoundly altered the public sense of what measures were needed to uphold civil rights in the United States. The Birmingham model would prove widely influential. Victory in that city sent ripples throughout the country: In the two and a half months after the Birmingham campaign announced a settlement with store owners that commenced desegregation, more than 750 civil rights protests took place in 186 American cities, leading to almost 15,000 arrests.

Given the demonstrated power of mass disruption to shift the political discussion around an issue, why don’t more organizations pursue such strategies? Why aren’t more groups using militant nonviolence to confront pressing challenges such as economic inequality and global climate change?

There is a certain paradox at work here, one that should enhance our appreciation of King’s courage. As veteran labor strategist Stephen Lerner argued in 2011, major organizations have just enough at stake — relationships with mainstream politicians, financial obligations to members, collective bargaining contracts — to make them fear the lawsuits and political backlash that come with sustained civil disobedience. What Lerner says of unions applies equally to large environmental organizations, human rights groups, and other nonprofits: they “are just big enough — and just connected enough to the political and economic power structure — to be constrained from leading the kinds of activities that are needed” for bold campaigns of nonviolent conflict to be successful. As a consequence, explosive direct actions — from the Nashville sit-ins to Occupy to the revolution in Egypt — are often led by scrappy, under-funded upstarts. Such ad hoc groups can risk daring campaigns because they have nothing to lose, but they commonly lack the resources to escalate or to sustain multiple waves of protest over a period of years, a rare and powerful ability that established institutions can provide.

To not merely adopt pacifism as a personal philosophy, but rather to stake your career and your organization’s future on a belief in the power of nonviolence as a political force, requires tremendous determination. It took years of deliberation and delay for Martin Luther King to take such a step. But when he finally did, the result was decisive: King went from being someone who had been repeatedly swept up in the saga of civil rights — a reluctant protagonist in the battle against American apartheid — to being a shaper of history.

__________

Photo credit: Abernathy Family / Wikimedia Commons.

Mark Engler and Paul Engler

Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia and an editorial board member at Dissent magazine. Paul Engler is founding director of the Center for the Working Poor, in Los Angeles. They are the authors of This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century.

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The Author

Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia and an editorial board member at Dissent magazine. His latest book, written with Paul Engler, is entitled This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century (Nation Books). Mark’s full bio is available here.

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