1. Hill, Lance Edward. “The Deacons for ... - Freedom Archives

The young activists took seriously their Gandhian belief that their enemies could
be converted by the moral strength of nonviolence, and, accordingly, they began
earnestly searching for sympathetic white supporters among town locals . It was a short
search . Virtually all the town's leaders were segregationists, including Sheriff Newt T .
Loe (a "rabid segregationist" noted Danny Mitchell) and Police Chief Adrian Peevy.
CORE discovered only one sympathetic white person, the town pharmacist, and this lone
convert moved by "love and suffering" preferred to keep his conscience to himself.'-'-
CORE's belief in the redeemability ofwhite bigots grew from a perilous
political naivete and an astounding lack ofunderstanding about Southern history . There
were reasons for CORE's confidence in the pacifist model of social revolution .
Nonviolence appeared to have succeeded in India, one of the first successful anti-colonial
revolutions following World War II . And the wanton violence of World War II had
accomplished little more than the destruction of sixty million human lives .
But Gandhi's success blinded CORE to how difficult it would be to transfer the
strategy to America. Birmingham was not Bombay . There were critical differences
between India's anti-colonial struggle and the black liberation struggle unfolding in the
Deep South . East Indians were the vast majority in their homeland, Far outnumbering
their oppressors who constituted little more than a tiny occupying army. Support for
colonialism by the British people was waning in the postwar years . In general, British
workers did not believe that their social and economic status depended on the continued
exploitation of Indians. Cold war rhetoric exalting democracy and freedom made it
diffcult for the British to use force to suppress the rebellion Thus, Gandhi had the
2=Mitchell, "White Paper."
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