smash-pacifism-zine

inflexible bastion of segregation—agreed to desegregate
downtown stores, and President Kennedy backed the
agreement... The next day, after local white supremacists
bombed a black home and a black business, thousands of
black people rioted again, seizing a 9 block area, destroying
police cars, injuring several cops (including the chief
inspector), and burning white businesses. A month and a
day later, President Kennedy was calling for Congress to
pass the Civil Rights Act, ending several years of strategy
to stall the civil rights movement. Perhaps the largest of the
limited, if not hollow, victories of the civil rights movement
came when black people demonstrated they would not
remain peaceful forever. Faced with the two alternatives,
the white power structure chose to negotiate with the
pacifists...”
(How Nonviolence Protects the State, p. 12)
Compare this account of the Birmingham
campaign to that promoted by
pacifists:
“The Birmingham campaign
got underway with a series of
demonstrations and sit-ins in early
April 1963. As the marches spread,
hundreds were arrested, including
King...
“As the weeks passed and the
number of arrested climbed
(eventually surpassing 2,600), the
campaign strategy seemed to be
foundering. Connor [the police chief]
had not yet been provoked into
overreaction, and the numbers of
people willing to face arrest began to dwindle. In a bold
escalation of tactics, organizers called on school children to
join the marches. Hundreds of students eagerly responded
and, like other demonstrators, were promptly hauled off to
jail... Their presence was the straw that broke the back of
Connor's patience. On Friday, 3 May, as hundreds of
students and other demonstrators approached Kelly Ingram
Park near downtown, Connor unleashed police dogs and
fire hoses, and a gruesome display of police brutality
unfolded before television news cameras... This was a
decisive turning point in the Birmingham campaign, and
indeed the entire civil rights movement. It led quickly to a
negotiated agreement in Birmingham and prompted the
Kennedy administration to begin work on a national civil
rights legislation...
“The media strategy was a brilliant success locally
and nationally. The images of disruption and mass protest
contributed to the crisis atmosphere in the city...” (Gandhi
and Beyond, pp. 141-43).
Birmingham riot, May 1963.
Nowhere is there any mention of the two nights of
rioting, which significantly added to the disruption and
“crisis atmosphere” in the city. This is a classic example of
pacifist revision of history in order to promote their
doctrine.
While the boycott was undoubtedly successful in
that it deprived racist white store owners of profits, the
rioting did more than this—it destroyed substantial amounts
of their property (the businesses themselves were targeted
by rioters). It also threatened even greater escalations in
violence, with an angry, hostile, militant resistance having
now manifested itself.
Yet, this is of no concern to the pacifists, precisely
because it contradicts the belief that the Birmingham
victory was entirely the result of nonviolent protest:
“The Birmingham campaign was a dramatic
victory, brought about by the heroic sacrifice of
thousands of local citizens and by the development and
implementation of wise strategy.”
(Gandhi and Beyond, p. 144)
Nor was the Birmingham
rebellion the only manifestation of a
new militancy:
“Across America black
fury had broken loose. A swirl of
protests, touched off by weeks of
racial strife in Birmingham,
Alabama, now engulfed much of the
country. Between May and late
August of 1963, there had been
1,340 demonstrations in over 200
cities in thirty-six states. Some were
communities long fractured along
racial lines. Others had never before
been touched by violence. In
Cambridge, Maryland, a once-tranquil cannery town... the
governor declared martial law in July after black rioters
shot and wounded five whites, including two National
Guardsmen...
“But angry street protesters were not the only
problem, Henderson [a black Justice Department employee]
continued. The feeling among leading ministers was that
'they should stop preaching nonviolence'...
“In Chicago, blacks rioted through the south side in
late May after a white police officer shot a fourteen year old
black boy...
“The violence was unrelenting and continued deep
into the summer. The very randomness of the unrest made it
all the more frightening. In August, protesters in
Philadelphia... fought pitched battles with riot police. The
violence was especially shocking because the
demonstrations were sponsored by the NAACP,
traditionally one of the more restrained national civil rights
groups. 'My basic strength,' boasted Cecil Moore, the head
of the organization's local chapter, 'is those 300,000 lowerclass
guys who are ready to mob, rob, steal and kill.' For
Moore, the strategy of nonviolent protest had run its
course...” (The Bystander, pp.1-2).
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