smash-pacifism-zine

debate (the Voting Rights Bill would be passed on August
6).
On March 21, some 3,000 people set out for the
march to Montgomery from Selma, protected by FBI,
marshals, and Alabama National Guard soldiers. The march
concluded on March 25 with a large rally of some 25,000.
The march from Selma
to Montgomery was seen as a
victory celebration of sorts, due
to the federal government's
haste in introducing the Voting
Rights Bill. This was the last
major civil rights campaign of
the SCLC, and the movement
in general. After a failed
attempt to mount a campaign in
Warrenpoint, Virginia, King
and the SCLC then focused
their main organizing effort on
the North.
Despite thousands of
nonviolent protesters being arrested, extensive boycotts and
other public demonstrations, desegregation was ultimately
imposed not by people power, but through the deployment
of US Army and National Guard troops. Without such
forces, or the threat to deploy them, many more Blacks (and
their white allies) would undoubtedly have been killed
through white racist terror.
The government intervened militarily in order to
minimize growing social unrest, to ensure that federal laws
were enforced, and to blunt the growing militancy of the
Black movement. Although the civil rights campaign relied
almost exclusively on state laws and military force,
pacifists still claim the struggle to have been an entirely
nonviolent victory:
“[P]roponents of nonviolence frequently
rely on the violence of the state, not just to protect
them, but also to accomplish their goals... Pacifists
claiming to eschew violence helped to desegregate
schools and universities throughout the South, but,
ultimately, it was armed units of the National Guard
that allowed the first black students to enter these
schools and protect them from forceful attempts at
expulsion and worse. If pacifists are unable to
defend their own gains, what will they do when
they don't have the organized violence of the police
and National Guard (Incidentally, would pacifists
remember desegregation as a failure for
nonviolence if black families had needed to call in
the Deacons for Defense, instead of the National
Guard, to protect their children entering those allwhite
schools).”
52-53)
(How Nonviolence Protects the State, pp.
Freedom Riders under armed guard, 1961.
1965: 'Freedom Summer' and Watts Riot
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was
assassinated in New York. 22,000 people attended his
funeral. Malcolm had only recently left the Nation of Islam
and had established the Organization of Afro-American
Unity. He had dramatically altered his views
on Europeans, still promoted Black
nationalism and self-defence, as well as
African culture, and still advocated
revolution. His legacy would have a large
influence over the next generation of Black
militants.
From June to August, SNCC and
CORE conducted voter registration in
Mississippi as part of the 'Freedom
Summer' campaign. That same summer,
major riots occurred in New York,
Rochester, Philadelphia, New Jersey and
Chicago. From August 11-16, the Watts
district in Los Angeles exploded in largescale
rioting, with 34 people killed and over $30 million in
damages.
“In these [riots], 36 persons were killed and 1,026
were injured. Arrests numbered over 10,000 and total
property damage was estimated at over $40 million... One
of the 1965 riots, however, was the first of the truly massive
and catastrophic outbreaks. It occurred in the Watts section
of Los Angeles, and it accounted for most of the deaths,
injuries, arrests and property damage... It is very likely that
at least 20 percent of the area's residents participated in
some way in the riot.”
(Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream,
pp. 51-51)
Columns of smoke rise from Watts, California, during revolt in
August, 1965.
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