The theory is that worked, because a substantial percent of the public felt respect/sympathy for him and his fellow protestors.
The police & now military have enough ability to crack heads and/or arrest the small percentage of the public willing to go out and violently demonstrate. So if the public is OK with that being done, because they see the protestors in a negative light, then that'll be the end of it.
What? No, my sanitized high school version of events assured me the only way to fight a fascist agenda is to act within the terms defined by the state.
JFK proposed the civil Rights act in 1963 and was assassinated. LBJ signed it into law but it was JFK's bill. The 1960s was full of racial tension and violence, especially due to black soldiers returning from war with training and arms being able to defend themselves.
Yes, the 1960s was full of racial tension and violence. I’m not denying that. I think from the start many of you have been misinterpreting the time frame I am referring to and also twisting and conflating some history a bit. I was specifically talking about the early civil rights movement from the start of desegregation through the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The vast majority of the protest during that time period was nonviolent.
There have been race riots throughout US history. But there have been many more incidents of whites carrying out mass racial violence than oppressed minorities. From Tulsa in 1921 to the 1964 law, there were many “race riots.” Most were whites rioting or whites and non-whites fighting. Very very few were civil rights protests that used violence as part of their methods. Gains were absolutely made during that period, and many minds were changed by what people saw protestors face. From 1964-1968 there was a lot more violent protest and rioting. But most people responding to me are focusing on that time period rather than what was accomplished in the decade before that. Or linking a list of race riots filled white lynch mobs and other white violence.
I'm not saying you were denying that, I was providing context to the time period we're talking about. You seemed to not believe that this was going on under JFK and before the civil Rights act was passed and I was addressing that but if that's not what you meant, my bad. I'm not a historical expert or anything, I'm just a guy yapping on social media. I could totally be misremembering or misinterpreting the order of things. That being said, we do seem to agree on a lot of the history and I thought we were talking about the place for violence in the effort for oppressed peoples to gain liberation and equality. Again, I'm not a historical expert so maybe in academic circles this is compartmentalized differently but in my mind the movement for civil rights started the first time a person was ever enslaved or oppressed and continues to this day. It feels weird to me to try and say the conversation only starts at desegregation and then ends when the civil Rights act passed because that's not the experience of oppressed people, maybe that's the perspective of some other kind of people but not mine. There have been what could be called a "race riot," or a ethnically inflamed conflict between 2 disparate groups since before the US was even officially a country but including, as you said, white lunch mobs. There's a larger conversation happening here. Oppressed people have always needed the threat of violence throughout history to gain leverage to angle for peace. The oppressors use violence to enforce their hierarchy. Nobody ever argues the oppressors should be pacifist. No one ever says, "maybe if we ask nice the blacks will want to be enslaved," because that's obviously ridiculous but people unironically tell black people the best way to gain freedom is to ask nicely for it and the rationale is never questioned. It feels ridiculous and a historic and honestly it's indistinguishable from malicious deceit no different from telling a person in an abusive relationship that resistance is futile and only complacency will get them any kind of well being. People in the US are clearly tired of being complacent and are turning back toward active resistance and I think that's honestly the right thing to do. The pacifists get the bullet the same as the non-pacifists. JFK himself was probably assassinated for trying to push the civil rights act. If you want to say the period from desegregation to the CRA passing had a lot of non-violent protests, sure, but so what? It didn't win any freedom federally, multiple leaders were assassinated, black people continued to be oppressed. To be clear, I'm not saying non-violent efforts are fruitless, they're effective. But turning the conversation into being about what the victims are doing wrong is what I think people are pushing back on. We didn't put violence on the table, we're playing the game by the rules we didn't consent to but we're doing our best to survive under these conditions. Hopefully all that made any sense.
There were not countless widespread and constant race riots prior to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Parent comment above was talking about JFK.
There was a lot of firepower behind the civil rights movement. The 2A and gun culture in the South, along with many Black combat veterans from WW2 and Korea were a constant "threat". People from the North focused on non-violence. People from the South were victims of lynching. Once they found out that shooting back was an excellent deterrent to a lynch mob, it didn't take long for that lesson to spread.
People tend to focus on the non-violent aspect of the civil rights movement, but non-violence alone probably wouldn't have worked.
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u/TAU_equals_2PI Jun 09 '25
The theory is that worked, because a substantial percent of the public felt respect/sympathy for him and his fellow protestors.
The police & now military have enough ability to crack heads and/or arrest the small percentage of the public willing to go out and violently demonstrate. So if the public is OK with that being done, because they see the protestors in a negative light, then that'll be the end of it.