smash-pacifism-zine

Rebellion in the Ranks:
Pacifists with Guns
While pacifist mythology portrays the Black civil
rights movement as entirely nonviolent, with widespread
acceptance of the doctrine, this was not the case. In fact,
King and other reformists had difficulty persuading people
that pacifism was a viable form of resistance.
In a June 1957 speech to students in Berkeley,
California, King noted the difficulty of promoting pacifism:
“From the very beginning there was a philosophy
undergirding the Montgomery boycott, the philosophy of
nonviolent resistance. There was always the problem of
getting this method over because it didn't make sense to
most of the people in the beginning. We had to use our
mass meetings to explain nonviolence to a community of
people who had never heard of the
philosophy and in many instances
were not sympathetic to it...”
(I Have a Dream, p. 30)
King had to constantly tone
down his pacifist dogma in the face of
considerable scepticism. In a 1960
article entitled “Pilgrimage to
Nonviolence,” he stated:
“I am no doctrinaire pacifist. I
have tried to embrace realistic
pacifism. Moreover, I see the pacifist
position not as sinless but as the lesser
evil in the circumstances.”
(I Have A Dream, p. 61)
Robert Williams and wife Mabel.
More dedicated pacifists found King's initial
commitment to nonviolence questionable. It is worth
quoting again Glenn Smiley's observations on his visit to
Montgomery, during the bus boycott:
“King can be a Negro Gandhi... He had Gandhi in
mind when this thing started, he says... wants to do it right,
but is too young and some of his close help is violent. King
accepts, as an example, a body guard, and asked for a
permit for them to carry guns. This was denied by the
police, but nevertheless, the place is an arsenal... he
believes and yet he doesn't believe. The whole movement is
armed in a sense, and this is what I must convince him to
see as the greatest evil. If he can really be won to a faith in
non-violence, there is no end to what he can do. Soon he
will be able to direct the movement by the sheer force of
being the symbol of resistance.”
(To Redeem the Soul of America, p. 24-25)
Andrew Young, an SCLC member, noted a similar
lack of commitment to pacifism among many of the
grassroots participants in the movement:
“Birmingham was 'probably the most violent city
in America,' Young thought, 'and every black family had an
arsenal.' Volunteers for demonstrations had to surrender
their weapons—John Cross remembered collecting 'almost
half a trashcan of knives' one day—and received two hours'
indoctrination into nonviolence. SCLC took great pains to
disown the rowdy spectators, and when they threatened to
get out of control King stopped the demonstrations.”
(To Redeem the Soul of America, p. 138)
During the Albany campaign in July 1962, after
violent clashes erupted during a protest, King sought to
restore order and promote his pacifist doctrine:
“The next morning King read national newspaper
reports placing the blame for Tuesday night's violence
squarely on the shoulders of black protesters. King
immediately called for a 'day of penance'--a twenty-four
moratorium on further demonstrations.
Then he set off on a tour of
the town's pool halls and taverns,
where he cautioned young blacks not
to participate in any further violence.
But many were growing impatient
with King's message of peace. One
reporter who accompanied him on
the tour observed that '[h]e preached
a theme that Albany's restless
Negroes were finding harder and
harder to accept: nonviolence in their
drive to desegregate the town.'”
(The Bystander, p. 320)
As the nonviolent campaign
continued throughout the late 1950s and early '60s,
increasing incidents of conflict between Blacks and racist
whites, including police, began to occur. Reformist
organizers were quick to condemn these and distance
themselves, but it would be a growing concern until the
Birmingham riots of 1963, where the movement leaders
lost the internal struggle over tactics and would never
regain dominance, despite extensive support and sanction
from the state and ruling class.
One of the strongest examples of the total rejection
of nonviolence by civil rights organizers was that of Robert
Williams, a former US Marine:
“In the late 1950s... a renegade local official of the
NAACP named Robert F. Williams had organized a black
rifle club in Monroe, North Carolina, which soon became
an armed self-defense force. The confrontations in Monroe
were somewhat isolated, however, and not well publicized
compared to later episodes of... black violence. The erosion
of the dominance of non-violence over the movement
became more widespread and public after 1963. In 1964
and 1965 rioting would become much more frequent and
serious and self-defense groups would begin to proliferate.”
(Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream,
63