Direct action became the movement’s salient strategic weapon by the mid-1950’s. The Highlander Folk School in Tennessee began to discuss strategic nonviolence with civil rights workers such as Rosa Parks of the Montgomery, Alabama chapter of the NAACP, who—upon her return from Highlander—was arrested for failing to give up her seat for a white man as a test case challenging the city’s racist ordinances. A bus boycott was organized under the leadership of the newly-founded Montgomery Improvement Association, which became headed by the then 26-year old Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The boycott involved 42,000 people, lasted 381 days, and economically crippled the municipal bus service, resulting in the successful integration of all city buses.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott energized young African-Americans to support broader civil rights based upon strategic nonviolent direct action. King, riding the wave of energy created in Montgomery, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with Baynard Rustin, William H. Borders, Charles K. Steele and Fred Shuttlesworth in 1957. Together they asked President Eisenhower for a White House Conference on Civil Rights. When the president refused, SCLC responds by leading 25,000 people in a prayer march on the Lincoln Memorial. Speakers called for nonviolent struggle, boycotts, work slow-downs and strikes. In the wake of the event, which remained peaceful, Wichita and Oklahoma City are targeted by sit-ins. The United States Congress, reacting to events, authorized the Justice Department in the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to sue on behalf of African Americans that are still unable to vote in the Southern States. Meanwhile, nine students created a national crisis as they tried to be the first African Americans to enroll at the newly desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. When the governor the Arkansas National Guard tried to prevent them from entering the school, public outcry led to a new judicial ruling and intervention by federal troops. CORE continued its work in the Northern States while SCLC focused on the Southern. King resigned his pastorate in Montgomery, moving with the SCLC to a new headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia in 1960.
The sit-ins pioneered by CORE rapidly spread across the southern United States in 1960. In Greensboro, North Carolina university students who had learned about nonviolent direct action from comic books and manuals published by FOR and CORE engaged in a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. Other students quickly joined. Seasoned direct action strategists James Lawson, Glen Smiley and Charles Walker arrived to advise the young activists. Dramatic footage of sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee showed students being harassed and arrested for sitting at the lunch counter. Bernard Lafayette and John Lewis are key participants of the Nashville sit-ins—both go on to make profound contributions to the movement as leaders and trainers. More sit-ins rocked South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia. Rather than slow the sit-ins, the arrests publicized them, as sit-ins hit 50 American cities in just three months. One lunch counter after another became integrated. More than 3,600 people were voluntarily arrested in the sit-ins. Out of this movement is formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April of 1960, which soon became a powerful force for civil rights.
The movement took advantage of another Supreme Court case in 1961 which expanded the ban on segregated interstate travel to include station restrooms, waiting areas and restaurants. CORE tested this ruling by organizing a second Freedom Ride, this time far deeper into the South. Seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C. on May 4 in two integrated groups were met by violent white mobs and arrests by police. Federal authorities stepped in to guarantee protection and a new group of mostly SNCC arrived to continue the Ride until they were arrested and jailed. Like the lunch counter sit-ins, more and more activists arrive to fill the seats of the jailed and beaten Riders. 328 people are arrested before they finish. By November, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the Interstate Commerce Commission intervene to force integration. In just a few months the Freedom Riders had integrated interstate travel.
Thousands more joined diverse campaigns between 1960 to 1963. In 1960 CORE, SNCC, SCLC, NAACP and the Urban League formed the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) to administer the Voter Education Project (VEP), a massive voter registration drive. Confusing and discriminatory technicalities kept many African-Americans from voting. Despite volunteer dedication VEP enjoyed little success: progress was slow and marked by violence against rights workers, including murders. At the same time SNCC and the NAACP run into trouble in Albany, Georgia, where the police chief had studied Gandhian tactics in preparation for the confrontation and developed a counter-strategy to minimize police violence, send arrested protesters out of town, and avoid negative media coverage.
As that campaign floundered, a larger campaign got underway in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, where a selective buying boycott was pressuring local businesses for equal access to jobs and sit-ins hit Birmingham libraries and restaurants. Kneel-ins disrupted services in all-white churches. Demonstrations continued in violation of a court order barring further protest, resulting in hundreds of arrests, including that of King. In a radical escalation of the conflict, over 1,000 young African-Americans, teenagers and even younger, walked out of school for a downtown protest where most were arrested. Youthful protests the following day were met with police dogs and high-pressure water cannons, provoking widespread international support for the movement as images are broadcast and published. As the protests escalated, jails overflowed and businesses were occupied by protesters, and local business leaders entered negotiations and agreed to the movement’s demands for integration and an end to discrimination in hiring.
As the movement’s strategy of direct action resulted in widespread national support for its objectives, its leaders organized a national March on Washington for Jobs and Justice in early that August, where over a quarter million people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial. Within a year, the Omnibus Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation nationwide was signed into law.
In the summer of 1964, COFO brought in a thousand activists to Mississippi to register voters, teach, and help develop—as an alternative to the segregated state branch of the Democratic Party—the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Three student volunteers were murdered by local police. In Selma, Alabama a SNCC-led effort to register voters was met with violence. A subsequent march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery was violently broken up by police before federal marshals and additional volunteers arrived to complete the initially aborted march. This provided greater momentum for the passage of a federal voting rights act, which was signed into law the following year, transforming the politics of the South.
In subsequent years, King and the SCLC began placing a greater emphasis on economic justice, particularly ending segregated housing, which also afflicts northern cities. Meanwhile, SNCC and some other elements of the movement begin adopting a strong Black Nationalist orientation and many abandoned their commitment to nonviolence. Despite King’s assassination in 1968 and further splintering in the movement, important victories continued to be won over the coming decade, including open housing legislation, increasing desegregation in schools and workplaces, stronger affirmative action, a greater number of African-American elected officials, and advances in economic opportunities. Work towards greater racial equality continues today.
In summary, there was an enormous array of tactics utilized in the movement from 1942-68. Sit-ins, boycotts, marches and civil disobedience were signature actions of the struggle, in which thousands were arrested. Hundreds of thousands participated in marches, boycotts and voter registration drives. More than almost any movement since the Indian struggle for independence, King and other leaders consciously adopted Gandhian satyagraha as the principal model for the nonviolent struggle. There was also a strong spiritual basis to the movement rooted in the African-American church. Poetry, the visual arts and particularly music played an important role in the struggle.
