Non-Violence Movement and Resistance in the US - Essay Example

Non-violence movement and resistance in the United s Non-violence movement and resistance have been applied in different parts of the world as a means of achieving certain political goals without the need to apply violence. The United States has had its fair share of non-violence movements and resistance, which has often taken different forms, for example symbolic demonstrations and protests, civil disobedience or non-cooperation (Ackerman & Du’vauli, 23). Most of the civil rights movements in the history of the United States chose to apply the non-violence tactics either to send a political statement or to achieve a certain goal. The major gains that have been registered through the non-violent movement and resistance in the history of the United States include both the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which were achieved following non-violent civil rights movements (History, n.p.). The non-violence movement and resistance in the history of the United States did not mostly entail civil disobedience or non-cooperation, but instead applied non-violence protests and non-violence philosophy mostly, with lesser degree s of non-economic cooperation, to achieve the target political goal (Samad, 39). Nevertheless, while the civil rights movements and resistance involved no violence, they were strong enough to exert coercive pressure, which would cause the government or the other opposing forces to listen and eventually negotiate with the civil rights movements. The techniques and tactics applied by different civil rights movements and resistance groups were different, based on the target objective and the actual time and context in which the non-violence resistance was applied. Thus, this discussion seeks to establish the goals and tactics applied by different non-violence movement and resistance in the USA, and how the society and the government responded. The African-American Civil Rights Movement is one of the most expounded non-violent resistances, due to its ability to achieve notable gains in the history of the USA, at a time when racial discrimination and segregation was at its peak. The non-violent resistance of the African Americans in the USA cannot be complete without a mention of Martin Luther King Jr., who played a significance role in popularizing non-violence resistance for the African Americans, as the best strategy for achieving their civil rights (Samad, 24). The goal of the African-American Civil Rights Movement was to dismantle the institutionalized racial discrimination, segregation and inequality that the African American was exposed to, after the end of slavery in the USA (History, n.p.). The first of the tactics that was applied by the African-American Civil Rights Movement, headed by Martin Luther King Jr. as his first civil rights movement resistance assignment, was the economic non-cooperation. One year after Luther King Jr. became the pastor of the Dexter Church in 1954, he was unanimously selected to lead the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1955, to the Montgomery city bus boycott after a black had been arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white (History, n.p.). The objective of the planned non-violent resistance was to end the racial segregation and discrimination that treated the African Americans as second-class citizens, who were not supposed to take a seat on a bus, when there was a white who was not seated. Therefore, the black community in Montgomery applied the economic non-cooperation tactic that entailed their failure to board any of the Montgomery city buses (Samad, 31). The economic non-cooperation tactic eventually bored fruit, through achieving the objective of ending racial segregation in the Montgomery city buses. The Montgomery boycott became one of the major successes in the history of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. This is after the Supreme Court took over the discrimination case following the Montgomery boycott, and eventually ruled that racial segregation in the city buses was unconstitutional, on November 13, 1956 (History, n.p.). The other major non-violent tactic that was applied by the African-American Civil Rights Movement was legislative lobbying and civil rights movement sponsored legal suits (History, 2015). These tactics would eventually compel the government and the other relevant authorities to act on the gains that had been made by the movements. The fact that the African-American Civil Rights Movement would achieve certain rulings from the courts in favor of their objectives did not mean that that was the end of their discrimination or segregation. The acting authorities would continue to delay the implementation of the rulings, causing the African-American Civil Rights Movement to apply legislative lobbying and sponsored legal suits, which would then compel the authorities to act (Samad, 42). For example, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is a popular case in the history of the USA African-American Civil Rights Movement, which saw the Supreme Court rule that the education segregation laws applied by the states in the USA were unconstitutional in 1954 (History, n.p.). The case was sponsored, lobbied and supported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was responsible for funding every aspect of the legal requirements during the whole period of the case hearing (History, n.p.). Thus, through legislative lobbying and the sponsored legal suits tactic, the African-American Civil Rights Movement was able to achieve one of its major objectives in the history of the USA, which was to end the discrimination that the Africans were subjected to in different public schools (Samad, 69). However, even after the ruling was delivered requiring the public schools to end the education segregation, acting authority did not act accordingly, forcing the civil rights activists to adapt the other tactic of protests, demonstrations and mobilization campaigns. These tactics would then force the federal government to act by abolishing the educational segregation. Protest marches, rallies and campaigns were also applied by the African-American Civil Rights Movement as another non-violent tactic towards achieving its set objectives. The protest rally and campaigns would be organized to bring together a large number of the black community, where the leaders of the African-American Civil Rights Movement would address the congregation on the need to fight for their rights through non-violent means (Ackerman & Du’vauli, 36). One of the notable event of the application of the protest rally and campaigns as a nonviolent resistance tactic was the August 28 1963 March on Washington, which attracted a crowd of over 200,000 people, and where Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the congregation giving his famous ‘I have a dream’ address (History, n.p.). In addition to the protest marches, sit-ins and student protests were also widely applied by the African-American Civil Rights Movement as tactics for non-violence lobbying and presentation of their demands to the relevant authorities. Sit-ins were normally applied not as the non-violent tactics per se, but as a means to achieving a session for the African Americans to congregate and form further strategies for protest, resistance and demonstrations (Samad, 14). On the other hand, the African-American Civil Rights Movement would also support student lobby groups within different institutions of higher learning, where such students would form diverse groups and movements. The students would then apply sit-ins as the vehicles through which they would present various demands for change in the segregation, discrimination and inequality faced by the African Americans. For example, students from the North Carolina formed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which was actively involved in promoting non-violent advocacy for African-American rights (History, n.p.). The students used this vehicle to conduct numerous sit-ins, voter and citizen rights education as well as other non-violent protests and marches such as the ‘freedom rides’, which were meant to end the bus segregation in Mississippi (History, n.p.). The student organizations and protests achieved their major non-violence objective of mobilizing, creating awareness, educating and sensitizing the black community on their rights and freedoms. Nevertheless, the response by most of the American society and the government towards the African-American Civil Rights Movement was negative, since the African-Americans had been perceived as slaves and nothing more by American society, most especially in the Southern States. The negative response by the society would slowly fade away, most notably in the North, where the recognition for the equal rights for the African Americans started to take shape slowly (Ackerman & Du’vauli, 21). However, the response by the government to most of the African-American Civil Rights Movement non-violent tactics was through violence and brutality (Samad, 25). This would saw most of the African-Americans killed in cold blood and numerous others injured and incapacitated by the police brutality, during the course of advocating for their rights. The Chicano Civil Rights Movement spanning since the 1940s through to the 1970s is another resistance movement that adapted the non-violent tactics towards achieving its major political objective, of achieving the empowerment of the Mexican-Americans (Gómez-Quiñones & Vásquez, 14). The non-violent resistance tactics applied by the Chicano Civil Rights Movement differed based on the context in which the demand for the Mexican rights would occur. However, the most notable non-violent tactics that were applied by the Chicano Civil Rights Movement include political activism, where the Mexican-Americans would lobby their Mexican-American fraternity to register in large numbers, and thus vote for one of their own into the state assembly or the congress (Gómez-Quiñones & Vásquez, 27). This non-violent tactic was instrument in achieving the objective of empowering the Mexican-American community, since with legislative representation in the state and the Congress; the Chicanos would have a representation of their interests. This was most especially to do with the push for legislations abolishing the discrimination of the Mexican-Americans. The other tactic that was applied by the Chicano Civil Rights Movement was the student organizations, student walkouts and sit-ins, which the Mexican-American students would use as their vehicles of protesting educational discrimination and inequality in funding (Gómez-Quiñones & Vásquez, 33). The staged Chicano high-school student walkouts were most popular in the late 1960s, where the students would protest the inequality treatment in course offering and funding of Mexican-American education through walkouts. The Chicano Civil Rights Movement also applied the Chicano art as another non-violent tactic of achieving the objective of Mexican-American empowerment, where the Chicano art became increasingly used to demonstrate and also create pride in the Chicano culture (Gómez-Quiñones & Vásquez, 58). The effect was the increased and strengthened social integration of the Mexican-American community in the USA, which then enabled the community to fight for their rights in unison, for example through fighting for voting rights and citizenship rights for the Chicanos. The American society responded to the Chicano Civil Rights Movement negatively, since the Chicano’s were not considered legitimate Americans. Equally, the government responded to the Chicanos quest for right to equality and empowerment with persistent denial of their rights and at times even with violence (Gómez-Quiñones & Vásquez, 37). However, through the forged strong integration of the Mexican-American community, the community would continue to demand for its rights, until the equality and empowerment objectives were realized. Womens suffrage in the United States is yet another movement that applied the non-violent resistance tactics to achieve its objectives. The objectives of the Womens suffrage in the USA were for the women to obtain a constitutional recognition for their right to vote as the short-term goal, and the subsequent attainment of full equality for all Americans, regardless of their sex, as the long-term objective (Flexner & Fitzpatrick, 16). The non-violent tactics applied by the Women’s suffrage in the USA include women marches and parades, among them the famous 8,000 women Washington March of 1913 (Flexner & Fitzpatrick, 19). The women suffrage movement would use such parades as a petition to the political leaders to consider the right for women citizenship and right to vote. Women lobbying, sending delegation to address political leaders and even using forceful demonstrations and protests to demand for their rights to vote were the other tactics that were applied by the women suffrage in the USA (Flexner & Fitzpatrick, 56). Additionally, realizing that their earlier tactics were not working, women suffrage applied further non-violent tactics of demanding their rights, which included picketing at White House, going for days of hunger strikes and also boycotting work, as a way of civil disobedience (Flexner & Fitzpatrick, 29). The overall effect of the women persistence with their non-violent tactics was the passage of the 19th Amendment of the USA constitution on June 4, 1920, which gave the USA women citizens the right to vote (Flexner & Fitzpatrick, 22). Nevertheless, the reaction from both the society and the government towards the women suffrage movement in the USA was ridiculing, ignoring and even blatantly refusing their quest for the right to vote. The response from the government would also turn to brutality and even violence against women suffrages when the women proved capable of resilience and persistence, resulting in long-term jailing for most of the active women suffragettes (Flexner & Fitzpatrick, 47). However, despite this maltreatment, the women suffrage movement continued undeterred, until its major objective for the right of the women to vote was achieved. References Ackerman, Peter, and Vall J. Du. A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. New York: St. Martins Press, 2003. Print. Flexner, Eleanor, and Ellen F. Fitzpatrick. Century of Struggle: The Womans Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1996. Print. Gómez-Quiñones, Juan, and Irene Vásquez. Making Aztlán: Ideology and Culture of the Chicana and Chicano Movement, 1966-1977. , 2014. Print. History. Civil Rights Movement, 2015. Available at: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement Samad, Eingereicht. Non-violence in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States of America. Berlin: JFK Institute, 2009. Print. Read More