essay on non violence movement

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Collection Civil Rights History Project

Nonviolent philosophy and self defense.

The success of the movement for African American civil rights across the South in the 1960s has largely been credited to activists who adopted the strategy of nonviolent protest. Leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Jim Lawson, and John Lewis believed wholeheartedly in this philosophy as a way of life, and studied how it had been used successfully by Mahatma Gandhi to protest inequality in India. They tried to literally “love your enemies” and practiced pacifism in all circumstances. But other activists were reluctant to devote their lives to nonviolence, and instead saw it as simply a tactic that could be used at marches and sit-ins to gain sympathy for their cause and hopefully change the attitudes of those who physically attacked them. Many interviewees in the Civil Rights History Project discuss their own personal views of nonviolence and how they grappled with it in the face of the daily threats to their lives.

When the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded at a conference for college students in 1960, members debated whether the group should adopt nonviolence as a way of life or as a tactical strategy for its mission. Courtland Cox remembers the debates at this meeting: “One of the things that the nonviolent people’s philosophy – those people, they felt that, you know, you could appeal to men’s hearts. You know, my view, and which I’ve said to them, was that you might as well appeal to their livers, because they’re both organs of the body.  There was nothing to that.  You did not – you engaged in nonviolence because the other side had overwhelming force.  There was not a sense that the other side would do the right thing if you told them, because at the end of the day, the other side knew what it was doing to you better than you did.” Chuck McDew was also at this meeting and recalls, “My position was when Gandhi tried nonviolence in South Africa he was beaten, jailed, and run out of the country.  As I said, in the United States nonviolence won’t work.  Because when Gandhi used, in India, the tactic of having people lay down on railroad tracks to protest, I said, ‘and it worked.’ I said, ‘But if a group of black people lay down on railroad tracks here, in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, any of these Southern states, a train would run you over and back up to make certain you’re dead.  You cannot make a moral appeal in the midst of an amoral society.’  And I said that it was not immoral.  We lived in a society that was amoral , and as such, nonviolence was not going to work.  And so, I said I couldn’t and the people with me could not join Dr. King.  And, uh, ‘Thank you, but no thanks.’”

Even though activists used nonviolence at protests to gain sympathy for their cause, arming themselves with guns for self-protection was not uncommon. Mildred Bond Roxborough was a longtime secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and traveled throughout the South regularly to help with organizing. She tells a story about driving through Mississippi with Medgar Evers during a particularly violent time: “We had had two branch presidents who had been killed just before this particular time.  It was difficult to believe that these people would continue to carry on like this because the situation was so oppressive in Mississippi. We were driving one night and I had taken off my shoes and felt something on the floor which was cold. I said to Medgar, "What is this?  Maybe I can move it."  He said, ‘Well, that's my shotgun you have your feet on.’ Of course my feet flew up.  But this is just to give you an idea of the sense of the environment.”

The Deacons for Defense and Justice was a group founded in Jonesboro, Louisiana, in 1964 to organize men to guard the homes of activists and to protect them while they traveled. A second branch was started in Bogalusa, Louisiana, the following year. The Hicks family was protected by the Deacons, and Barbara Collins, the daughter of activist Robert Hicks, reflects on her father’s position on armed self-defense in an interview with the family : “And my dad always said, ‘What kind of man –?’  You know, Martin Luther King was a good man.  He had a dream.  But my Daddy fought for the dream.  And it was his right to fight for the dream.  You have a Constitutional right, and that’s what Daddy said, ‘I have a right to bear arms.  And if I need to protect my family,’ especially when the police did not protect us, then he had a right to do that.  The Deacons had a right to carry the guns.”

These interviews and many others from the Civil Rights History Project complicate our understanding of nonviolence in the movements for social justice. For more about nonviolence and armed self-defense, watch a book talk webcast from our Civil Rights History Project public programs series featuring Charlie Cobb, a former SNCC activist, on “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.” External

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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The Ethics of Nonviolence: Essays by Robert L. Holmes

Robert L. Holmes,  The Ethics of Nonviolence: Essays by Robert L. Holmes , Predrag Cicovacki (ed.), Bloomsbury, 2013, 263pp., $34.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781623568054.

Reviewed by Andrew Fiala, California State University, Fresno

This is a collection of essays by Robert L. Holmes, a philosopher known primarily for his extensive body of work on nonviolence and war, including his influential book, On War and Morality (Princeton University Press, 1989). The essays include some of Holmes' early articles on American pragmatism and ethical theory. But its primary focus is later work, including some important material on the philosophy of nonviolence (some of it published previously in journals and books along with some previously unpublished material). The book concludes with a short essay on Holmes' teaching philosophy and an interview with the editor that provides some biographical material about Holmes' education and life.

While the earlier essays on pragmatism and ethical theory may be of interest to academic philosophers, and the later items would be of interest to those who know Holmes as a teacher or colleague, the primary focus of the volume is on the ethics of nonviolence. The essays on this topic are both readable and important. They would be of interest to a broad audience and not merely to academic philosophers. Indeed, these essays should be read and carefully considered by students of peace studies and peace activists.

One significant contribution is Holmes' is analysis of the difference between nonviolentism and pacifism. Indeed, it appears that he coined the term "nonviolentism" in a 1971 essay that is reprinted in this collection (157). According to Holmes, pacifism is a narrow perspective that is merely opposed to war, while nonviolentism is a broader perspective that is opposed in general to violence.

Holmes' account is a fine piece of analytic philosophy that reminds us that conceptual analysis matters. One concrete outcome of his analysis is the idea that one need not be an absolutist to be a pacifist or a nonviolentist. According Holmes, pacifists and nonviolentists get painted into a conceptual corner when they are thought to be absolutists. Absolute nonviolentism is easily overcome by imagined thought experiments in which a minor amount of violence is necessary in order to save a large number of people. Holmes concedes this point, admitting that absolute pacifism is "clearly untenable" (158).

Holmes' admission that pacifism is not appropriate for all conceivable worlds and in any conceivable circumstance may appear to doom his effort to defend nonviolence. And some may object that once Holmes makes this concession, continued discussion of nonviolentism becomes moot. Why bother to discuss nonviolentism when it won't work for the really hard cases?

But in fact, his admission of the limits of absolute moralizing is interesting as a meta-philosophical thesis, as a comment about absolutism in philosophy. And it links to his understanding of nonviolence as a way of life. Holmes connects the idea of nonviolence as a way of life with the tradition of virtue ethics -- and with non-Western sources such as Taoism. Holmes' goal is to describe a way of life in which nonviolence governs all of life, including both thought and deed.

Nonviolence in this maximalist sense does govern all of our life. Once we satisfy its requirements, we may in other respects act as we choose toward others. Even though I have stated it negatively, it has, for all practical purposes, a positive content. It tells us to be nonviolent . (174)

This is somewhat vague. A critic may worry -- as critics of virtue ethics often do -- that this is not very helpful when considering concrete cases. Such a retreat to virtue may not be readily accepted by absolutists who want clarity about moral principles. But Holmes fends of this sort of critique in his theoretical essays. In an essay with the polemical title "The Limited Relevance of Analytical Ethics to the Problems of Bioethics," Holmes aims to show that analytic ethics fails in important ways. In general Holmes holds that moral philosophy is situated in a broader context in which philosophers come to their work with a set of predispositions that are apparent even in the choice of methodology. And he points to a gap between the way philosophers proceed and the way the vast majority of people proceed, when reflecting on moral issues. What most of us want is a way of life and system of virtue -- not merely a decision procedure based on abstract principles.

This leads Holmes to conclude that academic philosophy is not very good at creating moral wisdom. Moral philosophizing attempts to hover free from value claims -- in attempting to be neutral -- and thus can end up being used to support immoral outcomes. A related point is made in Holmes' broader claim about the way that universities are too cozy with the military-industrial complex -- for example in supporting ROTC programs. While his criticism of ROTC was made in the early 1970's, we might note that ROTC still exists on campuses across the country, often free from criticism. It is worth considering whether the values embodied in academic philosophy and the larger academy are nonviolentist in Holmes' sense.

In the metaphilosophical and metaethical concerns of the earlier essays, Holmes clarifies the source of his thinking in American pragmatism (with special emphasis on Dewey). He also discusses the problem of finding a middle path between consequentialist and nonconsequentialist moral theory. And he criticizes philosophers' tendency to rely on imagined thought experiments.

He explains, for example, that most people are simply not absolutists, who hold to principles in the face of all possible counter-examples. He writes that although some philosophers believe that "far-fetched counterexamples" may crushingly refute absolute principles, "the philosopher's refutation of the philosopher's interpretation of the principle becomes conspicuously irrelevant to the issues in which ordinary people find themselves caught up" (57). Holmes' immediate target here is moral reasoning that occurs in applied ethics -- specifically Judith Thomson's widely read 1971 article "In Defense of Abortion." Holmes aims beyond the postulation of absolutist principles and attempted refutations of these by imagined counter-examples.

The imagined examples that are offered to refute pacifism are, for the most part irrelevant to Holmes' endeavor of describing and defending an ethic of nonviolence. He rejects an exclusive focus on "contrived cases, such as that of a solitary Gandhi assuming the lotus position before an attacking Nazi panzer division" (146). Holmes admits that killing could be justified in some rare situations. But such an admission does not help us make moral judgments in the real world of war and militarism. I think he is right about this. But one might worry that Holmes does not offer enough analysis of the concrete and ugly reality of war. For example, there is no discussion of post-traumatic stress disorder or suicide by soldiers or fragging -- let alone an account of war on children, widows, and the social fabric. Indeed, there is little here in terms of descriptions of the ugly reality of war that is often left out by defenders of militarism. Holmes may imagine that we already know that ugly reality. But his argument could be bolstered by more concrete detail.

One significant point Holmes makes is that much of the evil of the world -- and especially the evil of war -- is not deliberately intended. Holmes rejects the doctrine of double effect by noting that an exclusive focus on intention is insufficient. But he points toward a larger problem, which he names "the Paradox of Evil": "the greatest evils in the world are done by basically good people" (209). Truly evil people are usually only able to harm a few others. But the greatest harms are done by large social organizations that use good people to create massive suffering. Holmes suggests that the worst things happen when basically good people end up sacrificing for and supporting political and military systems. One reason for this is that they have been persuaded that nonviolentism is silly -- by those pernicious and fallacious arguments that consist primarily of contrived imagined cases.

Rather than dwelling on those contrived cases, Holmes emphasizes that we ought to work to develop plausible alternatives to violence and war. He imagines a nonviolent army or peaceforce, consisting of tens of thousands of trained persons, funded and educated at levels equivalent to that of the military. While it may seem that "nonviolent social defense" (as Holmes prefers to call it) is feckless in a world of military power, Holmes points out that there have been successful cases of nonviolent social transformation in recent history: in the Indian campaign for independence from Britain, in the American Civil Rights movement, in the demise of the Soviet Union, and in the end of apartheid in South Africa. This is all useful as a reminder of the fact that nonviolence can work. But one thing missing here is a concrete analysis of how and why nonviolent social revolutions work.

Holmes does argue that in order to complete the work of creating a "nonviolent American revolution" as he puts it, we ought to leave our violentist/realist assumptions about history behind and acknowledge that nonviolence can work to produce positive social change. For example, Holmes points out that national economies are grounded in value judgments and that we could create a nonviolent national economy, rather than our current militarized economy.

This points toward Holmes' basic optimism and idealism. Holmes suggest that our world is based in thought: "much of the world that most of us live in consists of embodied thought" (233). Injustices such as slavery are grounded upon a set of values and concepts that could be otherwise. One of the problems of the ubiquity of militarism in the United States is the feeling that military power is inevitable and normal. But Holmes points out that things could be different -- that we could imagine the social and political world differently and reconstitute it accordingly.

One significant problem is that we are miseducated about the usefulness of violence. Prevailing historical narratives make it appear that progress is usually made by the use of military power. But Holmes is at pains to point out that war and violence have often not worked. "We know that resort to war and violence for all of recorded history has not worked. It has not secured either peace or justice to the world" (197). While we often hear a story touting the usefulness of violence -- as in the Second World War narrative -- it turns out that in reality war merely prepares the way for future conflict -- as the Second World War gave way to the Cold War.

A further problem is that Holmes thinks that we defer too willingly to the narratives told by those in power and that we are too quick to give our loyalty to the state. Holmes espouses loyalty to the truth -- not loyalty to the state -- and a higher patriotism that is directed beyond borders. "It is from love of one's country, and for humankind generally, that a nonviolent transformation of society must proceed" (232). Running throughout his essays is a sort of anarchism, which Holmes sees in the ideas of those authors he admires: Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Gandhi. Holmes concludes, "the consistent and thoroughgoing nonviolentist, as Tolstoy saw, will be an anarchist" (180). To support this idea, Holmes reminds us that there is nothing permanent or sacred about the system of nation-states. "Nation-states are not part of the nature of things. They certainly are not sacrosanct. If they perpetuate ways of thinking that foster division and enmity among peoples, ways should be sought to transcend them" (120).

The just war tradition and political realism appear to go astray when they turn the state into an end in itself, rather than viewing it as a means to be used to create positive social living. Holmes locates one source of this in Augustine, who compromised so much with state power that he ended up closer to Hobbes than to Jesus -- a line of political realism that Holmes claims is picked up by Reinhold Niebuhr.

This train of thought points toward a critique of the logic of militaristic nation-states, which will tend to grow in power and centralized control. This leads to what Holmes calls the "garrison mentality" and "the garrison state" (114). He maintains that under the guise of a realist interpretation of history we end up assimilating military values, thinking that we can solve both international and domestic problems through the use of military tactics. But the development of the garrison state chained to a permanent war economy is an impending disaster, especially in a democracy. Holmes suggests, "This most likely would not happen by design, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, through prolonged breathing of the air of militarism, deceptively scented by the language of democratic values" (114). But in the long run, the growth of militarism comes at the expense of democracy. These prescient ideas were originally published in 1998, prior to 9/11, the war on terrorism, and recent revelations about the growing extent of security agencies and spying. The perceptive insight of Holmes' remarks reminds us that the perspective of nonviolentism is a valuable one, which helps to provide a critical lens on the world.

In general, this book provides a useful collection of essays on the ethics of nonviolence. Some of the earlier essays can be seen as a bit academic and boring. But, as noted above, the metaphilosophical considerations found in these earlier essays are clearly connected to the more concrete considerations on the ethics and philosophy of nonviolence. If one thing is missing, it is a more extensive practical account of how and why nonviolence works. Holmes mentions that some of the evidence for his claims about the effectiveness of nonviolence can be found in the work of authors such as Gene Sharp. However, there are very few details. Nor is there much in terms of a description of what a nonviolent way of life would look like. Would it be vegetarian? Would it include religion? Would a nonviolentist play violent video games or films? How would nonviolence impact gender relations? Would a nonviolentist with anarchist sympathies such as Holmes retreat to a 21 st century version of Walden Pond? Or would nonviolence lead us to a life of activism and social protest? One hopes that Holmes may take up the practical particulars of a life of nonviolence in future work.

Essay Curve

Essay on Non Violence – Samples, 10 Lines to 1500 Words

Essay on Non Violence: Non-violence is a powerful tool that has been used throughout history to bring about social change and promote peace. In this essay, we will explore the concept of non-violence and its impact on society. We will discuss the principles of non-violence, its effectiveness in resolving conflicts, and the role it plays in promoting justice and equality. By examining the power of non-violence, we can better understand its importance in creating a more peaceful and harmonious world.

Table of Contents

Non Violence Essay Writing Tips

1. Start by defining what non-violence means to you. This could include the refusal to use physical force to achieve a goal, the promotion of peace and harmony, or the belief in resolving conflicts through peaceful means.

2. Research the history of non-violence and its impact on society. Include examples of famous non-violent movements and leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela.

3. Discuss the principles of non-violence, such as compassion, empathy, and understanding. Explain how these principles can be applied in everyday life to promote peace and harmony.

4. Explore the benefits of non-violence, both on an individual and societal level. This could include reduced conflict, improved relationships, and a more peaceful world.

5. Address the challenges of practicing non-violence in a world that is often filled with violence and aggression. Discuss strategies for overcoming these challenges, such as communication, conflict resolution, and empathy.

6. Provide examples of how non-violence has been used to bring about social change and justice. This could include the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, and the fight for gender equality.

7. Discuss the role of education in promoting non-violence. Explain how teaching empathy, conflict resolution, and peaceful communication skills can help create a more peaceful society.

8. Offer practical tips for incorporating non-violence into your daily life. This could include practicing active listening, resolving conflicts peacefully, and promoting understanding and empathy in your interactions with others.

9. Conclude your essay by emphasizing the importance of non-violence in creating a more peaceful and harmonious world. Encourage readers to embrace non-violence as a guiding principle in their lives and to work towards building a more peaceful society.

10. Proofread and edit your essay to ensure clarity, coherence, and accuracy. Make sure your arguments are well-supported with evidence and examples, and that your writing is engaging and persuasive.

Essay on Non Violence in 10 Lines – Examples

1. Nonviolence is a philosophy and practice of avoiding physical, verbal, or emotional harm to others. 2. It is based on the belief that violence only begets more violence and does not lead to long-lasting solutions. 3. Nonviolence promotes peaceful conflict resolution through dialogue, negotiation, and compromise. 4. It is often associated with figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. who used nonviolent methods to bring about social change. 5. Nonviolence can be practiced on an individual level in daily interactions with others. 6. It can also be used as a strategy in social movements and protests to resist oppression and injustice. 7. Nonviolence requires courage, patience, and a commitment to empathy and understanding. 8. It is rooted in the belief that all individuals have inherent dignity and worth. 9. Nonviolence is a powerful tool for creating positive change in society and promoting peace and justice. 10. By embracing nonviolence, we can work towards a more compassionate and harmonious world for all.

Sample Essay on Non Violence in 100-180 Words

Non-violence is a powerful tool for bringing about social change and resolving conflicts without resorting to physical force. It is a philosophy that promotes peaceful resistance and the use of non-violent tactics to achieve justice and equality. Non-violence is based on the belief that all human beings have the capacity for empathy and compassion, and that violence only begets more violence.

Non-violence has been used throughout history by individuals such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. to bring about significant social and political change. By refusing to engage in violent acts and instead using peaceful protests, civil disobedience, and other non-violent methods, these leaders were able to inspire others to join their cause and create lasting change.

In today’s world, non-violence is more important than ever as we face increasing levels of conflict and division. By embracing non-violence and promoting peaceful solutions to our problems, we can create a more just and harmonious society for all.

Short Essay on Non Violence in 200-500 Words

Non-violence is a principle that has been practiced by many great leaders throughout history, including Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. It is a philosophy that advocates for resolving conflicts and achieving goals through peaceful means, rather than resorting to violence or aggression.

One of the most famous proponents of non-violence was Mahatma Gandhi, who led India to independence from British rule through non-violent civil disobedience. Gandhi believed that violence only begets more violence, and that true change could only come through peaceful resistance. His philosophy of non-violence, or ahimsa, inspired millions of people around the world to fight for justice and equality without resorting to violence.

Similarly, Martin Luther King Jr. used non-violent tactics to lead the civil rights movement in the United States. King believed in the power of love and forgiveness to overcome hatred and discrimination. He organized peaceful protests, marches, and boycotts to bring attention to the injustices faced by African Americans, and his efforts eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Nelson Mandela also embraced non-violence as a means of achieving social change in South Africa. Despite spending 27 years in prison for his anti-apartheid activities, Mandela never wavered in his commitment to non-violence. After his release from prison, he worked tirelessly to dismantle the apartheid system through peaceful negotiations and reconciliation, eventually becoming the first black president of South Africa.

Non-violence is not just a tactic for achieving political change; it is also a way of life that promotes compassion, empathy, and understanding. By choosing non-violence, individuals can break the cycle of violence and create a more peaceful and harmonious society. Non-violence teaches us to respect the dignity and humanity of all people, even those with whom we disagree.

In today’s world, where conflicts and violence seem to be ever-present, the philosophy of non-violence is more important than ever. By practicing non-violence in our daily lives, we can create a more just and peaceful world for future generations. Whether it is through peaceful protests, acts of kindness, or simply choosing to resolve conflicts through dialogue rather than aggression, each of us has the power to make a difference through non-violence.

In conclusion, non-violence is a powerful tool for social change that has been used by many great leaders throughout history. By embracing non-violence in our own lives, we can work towards a more peaceful and just society for all. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Let us choose non-violence as a way to heal the wounds of the past and build a brighter future for all.

Essay on Non Violence in 1000-1500 Words

Non-violence is a philosophy and practice that has been embraced by many individuals and movements throughout history as a means of promoting peace, justice, and social change. The concept of non-violence, also known as ahimsa in Sanskrit, was popularized by Mahatma Gandhi during India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule. Gandhi believed that non-violence was not only a moral imperative, but also an effective strategy for achieving political and social goals.

Non-violence is based on the principle of refraining from using physical force or aggression to achieve one’s objectives. Instead, it advocates for the use of peaceful means such as dialogue, negotiation, civil disobedience, and non-cooperation. Non-violence is rooted in the belief that all human beings are interconnected and that violence only begets more violence, leading to a never-ending cycle of conflict and suffering.

One of the key tenets of non-violence is the idea of active resistance to injustice and oppression. This can take many forms, from peaceful protests and demonstrations to acts of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance. By refusing to participate in systems of violence and oppression, individuals and communities can challenge the status quo and bring about positive social change.

Non-violence has been used as a powerful tool for social and political transformation throughout history. Gandhi’s non-violent resistance movement in India inspired similar movements around the world, including the civil rights movement in the United States led by Martin Luther King Jr. King’s philosophy of non-violence was deeply influenced by Gandhi’s teachings, and he used non-violent tactics such as sit-ins, boycotts, and marches to challenge racial segregation and discrimination.

Non-violence has also been used as a means of resolving conflicts and promoting peace at the international level. Organizations such as the United Nations and the International Red Cross promote non-violent conflict resolution and peacebuilding efforts in regions affected by war and violence. Non-violent peacekeeping missions have been successful in de-escalating tensions and preventing violence in conflict zones around the world.

Non-violence is not only a political strategy, but also a moral and ethical principle that guides individuals in their personal lives. Many religious and spiritual traditions teach the importance of non-violence as a way of living in harmony with others and with the natural world. The concept of ahimsa is central to the teachings of Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, among other faith traditions.

In today’s world, non-violence is more important than ever as we face global challenges such as climate change, poverty, inequality, and political instability. The use of violence as a means of resolving conflicts only exacerbates these problems and leads to further suffering and destruction. By embracing non-violence as a guiding principle, individuals and communities can work together to create a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world for future generations.

Non-violence requires courage, discipline, and a deep commitment to justice and equality. It is not always easy to practice non-violence in the face of injustice and oppression, but the rewards are great. By choosing non-violence as a way of life, individuals can inspire others to do the same and create a ripple effect of positive change in their communities and beyond.

In conclusion, non-violence is a powerful philosophy and practice that has the potential to transform individuals, communities, and societies. By refraining from using violence and instead choosing peaceful means to achieve our goals, we can create a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world for all. As Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Let us all strive to embody the principles of non-violence in our thoughts, words, and actions, and work together to build a more peaceful and just world for future generations.

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WORK  EXPERIENCE

• Jason Manrique
• May 27, 2021
• 13 min read

Introduction to Nonviolence

Updated: Jan 12, 2022

By Jason Manrique (April, 2020)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Nonviolent Movements

International Nonviolent Struggle

Nonviolence in Academia and in the 21st Century

Nonviolence: an introduction.

Nonviolent activism over the course of the 20th century helped influence the world and century in a positive direction. There now is an effective option to fight back against injustice and oppression around the world without having to cause more pain and conflict. These days, nonviolence has an academic catalog full of examples, theory and scholars who help guide those in search of learning more on the subject of nonviolent philosophy. But first, What is Nonviolence?

A simple definition for nonviolence can be that it is the use of peaceful means, not by force, to bring about social change. However, this is a very simple and broad definition of what nonviolence is or can be. There are different aspects of the nonviolent philosophy that require their own meaning:

Nonviolent Communication for example is about expressing and hearing needs nonviolently resulting in mutual understanding and agreements between cooperating groups.

Nonviolent Conflict Resolution and Mediation are where special measures and techniques are employed to resolve conflicts that previously had been found to be irretractable. Mediation is where these techniques are employed by a neutral third party.

Nonviolent Noncooperation can be defined as when one group applies symbolic methods to disrupt daily processes of life in order to bring awareness to society of injustices or inequities.

Nonviolent Resistance is when oppositional measures are taken in different forms of protest to provoke and expose unacceptable actions and thus embarrass and shame the group doing the actions in the eyes of the public and the international community.

Examples of these forms of nonviolence will be provided later in this article.

Notable Nonviolent Movements: Early 20th Century

Nonviolent movements were active throughout the 20th century, helping shape society into what it is today.

Early on, it was the Women's Suffrage movement in the United States during the early 1900’s. One of the most notable events to come from that movement was the Suffrage Parade of 1913. The reason why is because this parade marked the first large march to take place in Washington D.C, where women from all over the country came together and marched for the right to vote. President Woodrow At the time, Wilson was going to have his inaugural address. This event helped ignite the suffragist movement and continue to hold Wilson’s administration accountable culminating in the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Meanwhile, around the same time in another part of the world, a young Mahatma Gandhi was preparing one of his first large-scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Empire. The 1920 Non-Cooperation movement was Gandhi’s example of what nonviolent noncooperation can look like when being implemented in real life. The movement had participants resign from positions en masse (election workers, teachers, courts, other administrative positions) and threaten to not pay taxes as well. While the non-cooperation movement ended in 1922, it marked the first time where civil disobedience came from all parts of Indian society instead of just an educated middle class, signifying that the independence movement was gaining popular support.

Nonviolence During the Civil Rights Era

The success of India's independence movement due in large part to Gandhi’s nonviolent philosophy helped inspire an upcoming generation of activists around the world that it is possible to fight back against oppressors without using violence. This would be seen best in the tactics and philosophies of activists during the American Civil Rights Era of the 1950s-1960s. The most significant example of this would have to be the civil rights work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who directly cited Gandhi as an inspiration and applied Gandhi’s methods of nonviolence to what King was trying to accomplish working toward abolishing the discriminatory Jim Crow laws in the American South. For example, King played a pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott as President of the Montgomery Improvement Association, preached nonviolence even after threats and attempts on his life were made, met with students of Gandhi, and delivered his iconic “I have a dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington. MLK’s nonviolent philosophy remains one of his most notable characteristics in the eyes of the American public. Another lesser-known activist of the era is James Lawson. Lawson, similar to King, also came from a Christian upbringing revolving around nonviolence. It was his work in India where he directly learned about Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence, Satyagraha, and then even had Dr. King urge him to move to the South and help teach people the nonviolent activism he had learned in India from Gandhi’s students. Lawson's teachings would prove to be very important and impactful during the Civil Rights Era, being a mentor and teacher to notable young activists such as Diane Nash and John Lewis, who themselves would go on to lead the sit-in movement throughout the South.

In the West, there was another similar struggle going on in the western part of the country during this time. Racism, corruption, and poor working conditions were common amongst farm workers in the western United States (workers who were often Mexican or Filipino immigrants). The man who would directly challenge the oppressive system rose from those ranks was Cesar Chavez. Chavez, very much like Martin Luther King was inspired by his religious upbringing (MLK with the Baptist church and Chavez with the Catholic church) and the work of Gandhi. A notable difference in Chavez’s experience is that he was also inspired by the Civil Rights movement that had been going on in the South at almost the exact same time he was fighting for labor rights in the west. A very crucial moment came in 1965 when the union he created joined a grape strike that was soon elevated to national notoriety due to the nonviolent tactics Chavez helped lead. Things such as asking for strike members to commit to nonviolence, long marches, and even a hunger strike by Chavez to protest the talks of committing acts of violence within the striking worker's ranks. Cesar’s work was recognized by notable Civil Rights figures such as Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, receiving a letter of praise and solidarity from King at one point. Chavez and the grape workers won in 1970 when their union was officially recognized.

International Nonviolent Struggles

While the work of nonviolent activists such as Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, and James Lawson and so many others during the American Civil Rights Era brought groundbreaking change, there were (and are) still ongoing struggles in other parts of the world.

Halfway across the world from America, the indigenous Africans of South Africa were in the midst of an ongoing struggle that would last much longer than the Civil Rights Era in America. The Apartheid regime in South Africa was a brutal system set in place by the white minority-controlled government beginning in the late 1940s. The country where Gandhi had first learned and implemented his early nonviolent philosophy was now the setting for another struggle. There were different forms of opposition used against the apartheid regime, from nonviolent ones to armed resistance. 1952 was when anti-apartheid activists implemented their first wide-scale act of nonviolent resistance. Disobeying the laws of apartheid by meeting in massive groups at locations such as train stations, post offices bus stops, schools, this would be known as the National Defiance Campaign. Thousands of people were arrested and membership for the African National Congress (ANC) political party skyrocketed.

Unfortunately, the campaign was met by harsh retaliation by the apartheid government and no concessions were made. However, nonviolence was still the main tool used by the South Africans throughout that period. Others actions were taken such as bus boycotts, demonstrations, and even burning passes. International pressure from the United Nations also dealt significant blows to the apartheid regime with arms embargoes on South Africa (Security Council Resolution 181, 182) , condemnation from the Commission on Human Rights and the General Assembly to name some examples.

It was during the 1970s and 1980s where different methods of civil disobedience were taken as a result of the oppression by the South African government. By that point, many activist leaders who were imprisoned were being released and at the same time, labor strikes were rising which helped show anti-apartheid activists that they can sabotage the inner workings of the Apartheid system using labor power. Mass work strikes, school boycotts, funerals for murdered activists were the new actions being used. These tactics served as a leverage system in that government officials and employers were worried about having a shortage of skilled workers in the near future and/or not having labor leaders/activists to negotiate with during labor disputes.

Economic boycotts had also become popular where practically the entire community does not go to work or shop at local businesses, hurting the white-owned businesses and other employers. As a result of the constant boycotts and other actions by the anti-apartheid activists, mixed with the international condemnation and sanctions brought by the UK and USA, the South African government slowly began making concessions by the mid to late 1980s and in 1994 a new constitution along with a non-white majority in government marked an end to Apartheid in South Africa.

Similar to South Africa, the struggle for the Palestineans in the Middle East has been a long one full of oppression from the Israeli side no matter what form of resistance is used against the Israeli government. Nonviolence has been prevalent in Palestinian resistance even before the issue of Israeli occupation. During the late 1930s, resistance to the British empire by Palestinians consisted of protests, strikes, and diplomatic petitions. Several decades after the formation of Israel (1948) a movement began where large portions of the Palestinian population acted in civil disobedience against the Israeli government. This event would come to be known as the First Intifada (1987).

During the Intifada, the people took nonviolent actions in large groups. Examples of these actions include: staging sit-ins, blocking roads, burning tires, having large demonstrations. The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) even classified over 95% of the activities as nonviolent. It was during the First Intifada when a champion for nonviolence would emerge within the Palestinian community. Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian Christian who had studied notable figures in the field of nonviolence (MLK, Gandhi, Gene Sharp) became a major organizer during the Intifada. Awad translated into Arabic the work of those thinkers and wrote and distributed pamphlets in Arabic on the subject of nonviolent non-cooperation and nonviolent theory all over the West Bank. Mubarak’s actions got him put on notice by the Israeli authorities and eventually resulted in his deportation. He helped promote nonviolent actions that would be in direct opposition to Israeli control of Palestinians. Planting olive trees in potential sites for new Israeli settlements, flying the Palestinian flag, directly opposing curfews, not presenting IDs, were just some of the actions Mubarak Awad helped promote. Unfortunately, unlike Apartheid in South Africa, the Palestinian struggle has lasted for much longer. To this day, the Palestineans continue to be subject to the oppressive, illegal policies of the Israeli government. The Intifada was able to make some progress in terms of having all sides of this conflict come together and attempt to really negotiate a deal for the first time.

Even though Israel has forbidden his return to Palestine, Mubarak Awad continues to advocate for nonviolence in Palestine and wherever in the world there is a similar struggle for civil and human rights through his organization that he has started in the U.S.A. in Washington, D.C., called Nonviolence International. It is interesting to note that his nephew, Sami Awad has continued his efforts in Palestine through the Holy Land Trust based in Bethlehem.

Today, there exists a vast academic field in nonviolence based on theory and the experiences/ analysis of notable events that occurred during the 20th Century. Researchers and scholars during the 20th century helped create the academic field of nonviolence to compliment the direct work being performed in real life settings. One of the best known and influential scholars on nonviolence is Gene Sharp. Sharp was an American political scientist who protested the Korean War by not participating in the draft and spending time in prison.

It was afterwards, when he went to go and study in Oslo, that Sharp got very involved in studying nonviolence (specifically how teachers in Norway resisted against fascist education). Sharp went on to receive a Doctorate from Oxford University and in 1973, published a three volume work called “ The Politics of Nonviolent Action ”. It was in one of these volumes where he wrote 198 Methods of Nonviolent Actions, a groundbreaking work that is still referenced to this day and only recently has been updated for modern times. (Nonviolence International will be publishing a book on over 300 methods in 2021). Gene listed and wrote in detail 198 different ways people can perform nonviolent acts. Sharp is also credited for moving the work of Gandhi outside of religion and ethics courses and into political science and sociology departments. Institutes and other organizations are now active in promoting the theory of nonviolent philosophy. His writings are still used as training for nonviolent activists around the world even after his passing in 2018 and were cited in movements around the world over several decades.

Here is a short list of the organizations working to promote nonviolence worldwide.

Following Sharp’s inspiring example, other activists have gone on to create other institutes to promote the nonviolent philosophy for the younger generations. One example is the James Lawson Institute . This institute was created by Civil Rights activist James Lawson in collaboration with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) as a way for American activists and organizers to learn nonviolent disobedience. James Lawson personally was a major force in the American Civil Rights movement who worked personally with Dr. King.

The Center for Nonviolent Communications was created by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg and specializes specifically in nonviolent communications as a way to improve communications resulting in improved relationships, project planning and problem-solving. According to Rosenberg, nonviolent communications emphasizes a very positive view of human nature, and that an authentic human connection can overcome almost all problems, conflicts and obstacles. Thus, in essence, human behavior is based on common needs, and thus only optimized nonviolent communications are needed to make the most of the best that humanity has to give and thus overcome conflict and obstacles, and establish true human relations and intimacy. Thus Rosenberg’s organization teaches techniques and philosophy for optimizing communications that he pioneered for realizing the full potential of human relationship and life.

Another organization created by a nonviolent activist is Nonviolence International (or NVI). This international non-profit organization was founded by Mubarak Awad in the late 1980’s as a way to promote nonviolence around the world and to continue spreading the nonviolent philosophy he taught protesters in Palestine and to others willing to learn about nonviolence. Granted special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (Eco-Soc), NVI works with other Nonprofits and Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO) within UN Civil Society in such events as NGO-CSW and the HLPF. The NVI website contains many resources such as webinar series, training manuals, position papers, videos and backgrounders on UN-related events. One notable project from Nonviolence is an updated version of Gene Sharps 198 Methods of Nonviolent Actions by CEO Michael Beer. An academic in the field of nonviolence himself, Beer has trained many activists around the world (Tibet, USA, Thailand, etc.) on the practice of nonviolence. This book and online database exceeds the original 198 to over 300 nonviolent tactics as a result of Michael Beer’s extensive research which adds modern tactics better suited for this day and age.

The Martin Luther King jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University is where Martin Luther King’s nonviolent philosophy is provided open and free to the public for research and education. With the blessings of King’s wife, Coretta King, the institute holds the King Papers, being digitized into an online database years in the making (still not complete) this collection is a project with the goal of collecting all of MLKs writings (published and unpublished) in one database, and making it freely available to all to inspire and guide future social improvement and human rights work. Thus, many primary sources on MLK speeches, sermons and other writings are now freely available to the public.

Started by the Gandhi-King Foundation located in Hyderabad, India, and now based at the MLK Research and Education Institute in Stanford University, is the Gandhi-King Global Initiative . Beginning in October 2019 (the 150th anniversary of Gandhi's birthday), a large international conference was held to commemorate the event and served as the first big event of the global initiative. The purpose of the Gandhi-King Global Initiative is to create an international network of activists who aspire to continue advocating for nonviolence and international collaboration. Currently including almost 100 members in the global network, including family members of Gandhi, King, Chavez, Mandela, and staff of Awad’s organization, GKGI strives to utilize the latest in online and communications technology to encourage communications, cooperation and collaboration amongst it’s members and others to create online and in the world events (before and after the COVID-19 pandemic of course) promoting peace, justice, equality and nonviolence and celebrate diversity.

The Albert Einstein Institution was founded by nonviolent scholar Gene Sharp in 1983. The institution operated out of Gene’s home in East Boston, as a way to focus on “pragmatic nonviolent struggle”. Much of Gene Sharps publications, which includes 20 books, are available at the Einstein Institutes website. Sharp picked Einstein as the name given that he had come into contact with Einstein himself early in his life and in his career as an advocate of nonviolence. Sharp was arrested when he protested the Korean War draft and wrote a letter to Einstein - and the physicist agreed and responded back to Sharp in support of his antiwar stance. The institution holds workshops, consultations, conferences and more.

The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (or ICNC) is a non-profit, educational foundation that provides resources on civil resistance for people around the world and from different backgrounds. Since its formation in 2002, scholars, activists, NGOs, policy analysts are among the groups welcomed to use the ICNC for learning more on nonviolence since 2002. Grants for researchers are also provided by the center as well. As mentioned earlier, the James Lawson Institute was formed in part thanks to the ICNC. From a resource library full of articles, to films and translated writings, the ICNC serves as an international library of nonviolence.

The nonviolence movements that went on during the 20th century laid the groundwork for the modern academic and organized field seen today. People who participated in different movements like Mubarak Awad in Palestine and James Lawson in the United States went on to set up institutes and organizations to continue promoting the nonviolence they learned. Thus their organizations publish works based on nonviolence and teach activists the same nonviolent tactics they learned during their time as activists in the streets of Palestine and America. Gandhi’s work in South Africa and successful campaign for Indian independence inspired Martin Luther King, Lawson and Cesar Chavez to implement that nonviolent philosophy in America. Thanks to Gene Sharp, the writings and actions of Gandhi were exposed to a much larger academic audience in America. That led to countless American students (to this day) learning about one of the best nonviolent campaigns and practitioners, ensuring Gandhi’s philosophy lives on in the minds of generations to come. Sharp's own work has been cited in countries around the world as a tool for combatting oppressive regimes. The Suffrage Parade, the first large, peaceful organized protest in D.C was planned by women challenging the incoming president to give them equal rights.Since then, countless other groups have taken action to march nonviolently across the capital as an open symbol of nonviolent civil disobedience. Today, younger generations can look back at these historic movements and continue the fundamental mission of using nonviolence to tackle injustice. In some cases being taught by the same activists from that period or the students/colleagues of those activists. All the institutes, resource websites and nonprofits aligned with nonviolence have ensured that the work of all those activists in the 20th century can also serve as a knowledge hub for those seeking a way of learning more on the nonviolent philosophy.

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Non-Violence Approach to Conflicts Essay

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Necessities of non-violent approach to conflicts

Non-violence is a form of protest, philosophy and a way of life. The term non-violence refers to the negation of violence. Non-violence is a way of resisting and relates to conflicts and not peace. Many countries have embraced the non-violence approach to conflicts (King 1958, p.24).

Countries accept non-violence as an international means of protest applicable in most conflicts. There had been several non-violence protests in the world. Some of them were successful, while others failed.

However, the most successful and long-term non-violence protests against oppression were the Indian Independent struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi against British colonial government.

The other renowned non-violent protest was the African-America civil rights movement in the United States of America. The movements involved non-violent protests method. Their approach included non-violence philosophies and ideologies.

In contrary, very many non-violent revolutions lasted for a short duration. This shows that non-violence approach by social movements and campaigns are not simply a way of solving any societal conflicts. Non-violence approach to conflict has mechanisms and dynamics aspects as its necessities (Curry 2002, p.34).

Non-violence approach to conflict depends largely on the nature of the conflict referred to and the cultural behaviours of the protesters (King 1986, p.12). The rarity of success of non-violence approach to conflicts is a clear indicator that there is the need for further analysis of both the failure and success of non-violent movements.

The analysis of non-violent movements and campaigns can occur from different perspectives such as the philosophical, religious, ethical, moral and pragmatic points of views. Martin Luther king and Mahatma Gandhi are the two leaders in the world history who successfully led long-term non-violent approach to conflicts.

It is therefore important that we analyze the approach that the two leaders used in relation to non-violence as a means of solving conflicts.

However, other prominent personalities led long-term non-violent movements against oppression such as Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Doris Day, Cesar Chavez, Abdel G. Khan among others (Franzen2010, p.245).

The application of non-violence as a tool by protestors towards their stronger opponents normally upsets the opponent’s tactics of violence. This allows the protesters, who are weaker compared to the opponents, to set the pace of the conflict.

Non-violence acts as a means of dislocating opponents’ psychological and physical balance and strength (Merton & Mattingly1965, p.44). This has proved to be a vital tool to a successful attempt to overthrow the enemy from power. Supporters of non-violence argue that it is more superior to violent approach to conflict.

Non-violence is a perfect tool to eliminate social evils such as racial discrimination in the African-American civil conflict during Martin Luther’s time, oppression by the British colonies in India during Gandhi’s time. Martin Luther king described non-violence as the best world’s alternative to war and destruction of lives and property.

Non-violence approach tends to seek a peaceful resolution to conflict and avoids destruction at all cost. Non-violence contributes to positive change and economic development in a society.

Luther King argued that non-violence was the most potent asset and force that were available to cub oppression of the blacks by white Americans in their struggle to obtain freedom. Mahatma Gandhi referred to the non-violence approach to conflicts as the best philosophical approach to human needs including freedom.

Mahatma Gandhi believed that violent approach to conflict automatically fails to address sensitive issues at stake. The main aim of non-violence is not to destroy, defeat, or humiliate the opponent.

The main aim of non-violence is to embrace the diplomatic approach so that issues at stake are addressed in a sober manner. The major aim of most non-violent activists is to reconcile and create a beloved society and peaceful coexistence of people with different ideologies (Attenborough 1982, p. 85).

The non-violent movement by the civil rights society in the United States was one of the most successful reform movements, not only in the United States of America but also in the world at large.

One of the major necessities of non-violence is its dynamics. Dynamic is the ability of a non-violent protest action or movement to spread to other regions (Forsythe 2000, p.443). Dynamic aspect of non-violence approach to conflict aims at attracting the attention of media and public opinion.

Because of its positive publicity, non-violent movement may draw financial support from donors into the movement or campaigns. If the non-violent protesters do not achieve their aim of mobilizing more people to gain a strong political and financial ground, then the protesters may turn to violence as a desperate attempt to solve the conflict.

For example, political success by civil rights movement in the African-American conflict helped the movement to enjoy a greater legitimacy in 1965.

The success of their non-violent campaigns and protests actions was the decisive factor that enabled the protester in the African-American conflict to negotiate with the federal government of the United States. Another necessity of non-violence is the mechanism of its success.

It is important to note that the survival of a non-violent protest or movement relies on their ability to demonstrate success. Mechanisms of success have a huge psychological influence on the non-violent protesters, media and public opinions, and the longevity of the movement.

For the public and other interested parties to believe in the non-violent movement, the protestors must believe and show the society that it is possible and realistic to succeed in attaining the freedom.

Non-violence would be unnecessary and irresponsible if there was no strong belief that there could be success at the end of the conflict (Carson 2003, p.78).

For any non-violent movement to succeed, the protestors must focus on three major aspects. These include believing in the outcome at the end of the conflict, being able to convince the public to join the movement, and being able to gain both political and financial grounds within the society.

A non-violent movement must advocate and portray to the society that its success is eminent in order to convince more people to join the movement to gain political ground. Once the movement gains the political power, the opponents will have no otherwise but to accept to negotiate terms with the protesters.

Non-violence is the best way of solving conflicts because its aim is not destructive. The property and lives of the protesters are not at risk, as opposed to war and violent way of solving conflicts. Non-violence only affects the psychological mindset of the enemy.

By influencing the public to engage in the movement, the opponents reasoning and power weakens. Non-violent movements have impacts that are more positive to the society compared to violent ways of solving conflicts.

There is assurance concerning the security of community’s resources. There is no reconstruction of infrastructures at the end of the conflict as in the case of violence and civil wars.

Attenborough, R. (1982). The words of Gandhi., Newmarket Press: New York

Carson, C. (2003). Reporting civil rights. Literary Classics of the United States: New York.

Curry, D., Mercer, H., & Mattingly, S. (2002). Prisoners of hope: the story of our captivity and freedom in Afghanistan. Doubleday: New York.

Forsythe, D. P. (2000). The United States and human rights: looking inward and outward. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln.

Franzen, J. (2010). Freedom. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York.

King, M. L. (1958). Stride toward freedom: the Montgomery story. Harper: New York.

King, M. L., & Washington, J. M. (1986). A testament of hope: the essential writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Harper & Row: San Francisco.

Merton, T. (1965). Gandhi on non-violence. New Directions Pub. Corp: New York.

• John Rawl’s Philosophy of Liberalism
• Victorian Desalination Project
• Gandhism and Its Significance in India and World
• Martin Luther King and Malcolm X
• P. Ackerman on Nonviolence in “A Force More Powerful”
• Social Welfare in Australia
• Nation Development Theory
• Theory of Andre Gunder Frank
• How Is Today’s Capitalism Society Changed by the “New Left?”
• The Conceptions of Power and Domination Found in the Works of Karl Marx, Max Weber and Michel Foucault
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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The Future of Nonviolent Resistance

• Erica Chenoweth

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Over the past fifty years, nonviolent civil resistance has overtaken armed struggle as the most common form of mobilization used by revolutionary movements. Yet even as civil resistance reached a new peak of popularity during the 2010s, its effectiveness had begun to decline—even before the covid-19 pandemic brought mass demonstrations to a temporary halt in early 2020. This essay argues that the decreased success of nonviolent civil resistance was due not only to savvier state responses, but also to changes in the structure and capabilities of civil-resistance movements themselves. Perhaps counterintuitively, the coronavirus pandemic may have helped to address some of these underlying problems by driving movements to turn their focus back to relationship-building, grassroots organizing, strategy, and planning.

T he year 2019 saw what may have been the largest wave of mass, nonviolent antigovernment movements in recorded history. 1  Large-scale protests, strikes, and demonstrations erupted across dozens of countries on an unprecedented scale. While 2011 has been called the year of the protester, 2019 has an even greater claim to that title.

About the Author

Erica Chenoweth is Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. This essay is adapted from their next book  Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know,  which is forthcoming from Oxford University Press .

View all work by Erica Chenoweth

In some cases, these uprisings yielded dramatic results. In April 2019, Omar al-Bashir—the Sudanese tyrant who had overseen the massacre of hundreds of thousands in Darfur, given sanctuary to jihadist groups in the 1990s, and terrorized opponents with mass arrests, torture, and summary executions—fell from power. Weeks later, Algeria’s president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was seeking an unconstitutional fifth term in office, also fell, toppled by a popular uprising known as the Smile Revolution. In July 2019, the governor of Puerto Rico was forced to resign after hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans gathered in mass demonstrations and carried out work stoppages, demanding accountability for his ineptitude and mocking statements regarding victims of Hurricane Maria. And since October 2019, governments have fallen to popular protest movements in places as diverse as Iraq, Lebanon, and Bolivia. In Chile, protests against austerity measures forced the government into prolonged negotiations over its fiscal policies. In Hong Kong, the leaderless movement that emerged to resist a pro-Beijing extradition law bolstered its numbers and escalated its demands following a mismanaged and brutal crackdown, propelling prodemocracy parties to victory in November 2019 local-government elections. In the first serious  [End Page 69]  challenge to the legitimacy of the right-wing turn carried out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, hundreds of thousands of Indians began taking part in a mass campaign to resist citizenship-registration plans that threaten to render millions of Indian Muslims stateless. And since 2017, the United States has experienced its own wave of mass movements mobilizing for racial justice, immigration justice, gun control, women’s rights, climate justice, LGBTQ rights, and Donald Trump’s impeachment or resignation, among other goals.

Within a few months, however, most of this street activity had ground to a halt. The global coronavirus pandemic—and government responses to it—forced people in early 2020 to abandon mass demonstrations. Taking advantage of this sudden lapse in conventional forms of popular resistance, a host of governments across the world have pushed forward divisive policies that range from the suspension of free speech to controversial judicial appointments to bans on immigrant or refugee admissions.

The interruption caused by the pandemic only added to a series of daunting challenges that have plagued mass movements in recent years. In fact, although nonviolent resistance campaigns reached a new peak of popularity over the past decade, their effectiveness had begun to decline even before the pandemic hit. The main culprit for this has been changes in the structure and capabilities of these movements themselves. Perhaps counterintuitively, the coronavirus pandemic may have helped to address some of these underlying problems by driving movements to turn their focus back to relationship-building, grassroots organizing, strategy, and developing narratives that resonate with a captive audience. And as 2020 continues to unfold, many movements—including those in the United States—have roared back with much greater strength and capacity for long-term transformation.

The Expansion of Nonviolent Resistance

Nonviolent resistance is a method of struggle in which unarmed people confront an adversary by using collective action—including protests, demonstrations, strikes, and noncooperation—to build power and achieve political goals. Sometimes called civil resistance, people power, unarmed struggle, or nonviolent action, nonviolent resistance has become a mainstay of political action across the globe. Armed struggle used to be the primary way in which movements fought for change from outside the political system. Today, campaigns in which people rely overwhelmingly on nonviolent resistance have replaced armed struggle as the most common approach to contentious action worldwide.

For example, over the period 1900–2019, analysts have identified a total of 628 maximalist mass campaigns (those that seek to remove the incumbent national leadership from power or create territorial independence  [End Page 70]  through secession or the expulsion of a foreign military occupation or colonial power). 2  Although liberation movements are often depicted as bands of gun-wielding rebels, fewer than half these campaigns (303) involved organized armed resistance. The other 325 relied overwhelmingly on nonviolent civil resistance. 3  Faced with dire circumstances, more people turn to nonviolent civil resistance than to violence—and this has become increasingly true over the past fifty years.

Why have people seeking political change increasingly been turning to civil resistance? There are a few possible reasons.

First, it may be that more people around the world have come to see nonviolent resistance as a legitimate and successful method for creating change—a factor addressed in greater detail below. Although nonviolent resistance is not yet universally understood or accepted, the preference  [End Page 71]  for nonviolent resistance has become more widespread. 4

Second, new information technology is making it easier to learn about events that previously went unreported. 5  As internet access expands, more and more people are consuming news online via newspaper websites, social media, private chatrooms, and more. People in Mongolia can read about, become inspired by, and learn from the deeds of people in Malawi. As an increasingly common and effective method of struggle, civil resistance may be drawing increased attention from news outlets and scholars around the globe. And with access to new channels of communication, people can also bypass formal gatekeepers to communicate directly with others whom they perceive as likeminded. Since elites can no longer control information as easily as they once could, news and information featuring ordinary people may be easier to find today.

Third, the market for violence is drying up. This is most strikingly obvious with regard to outside state support for armed groups, which fell off sharply with the breakup of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, the United States and USSR armed and financed dozens of rebel groups across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A changed global balance of power after 1991 functionally ended this competition-by-proxy.

Fourth, in the postwar era, wider segments of society have come to value and expect fairness, the protection of human rights, and the avoidance of needless violence. 6  This normative shift may have heightened popular interest in civil resistance as a way to advocate for human rights. 7  The horrors of war have become much more visible than in the past, while realistic alternatives are more clearly within reach. As Selina Gallo-Cruz points out, the post–Cold War rise in nonviolent resistance also coincided with the growing presence of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) explicitly focused on sharing information about the theory and practice of nonviolent resistance, such as the Albert Einstein Institution, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Nonviolence International, and the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies. 8

Fifth, more troublingly, people today may have new motivations to resist. Over the past decade, more and more democratic governments have faltered and reverted into authoritarianism. 9  In recent years, the erosion of democratic rights has provoked mass protest movements both in authoritarian countries such as Egypt, Hungary, and Turkey, and in  [End Page 72]  democracies such as Brazil, Poland, and the United States. With the advent of the Trump presidency, many people in the United States have begun to embrace the theory and knowledge of civil resistance—and to put these insights into action. And the U.S. retreat from a global democracy agenda—and indeed, the erosion of democratic institutions within the United States itself—has shaken confidence that established institutions are willing or able to manage urgent policy challenges such as racial justice, climate change, public health, and rising inequality. Throughout much of the world, youth populations are increasing, and these demographic pressures are producing growing demands for jobs, education, and opportunity. Record numbers of highly educated youth are unemployed in some places. Even before the covid-19 pandemic wreaked economic havoc around the world, popular expectations of economic justice and opportunity have clashed with disappointing realities in economies that have been weakened in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.

The massive growth of civil-resistance campaigns around the world is therefore both a sign of success and a sign of failure. The success is that so many people have come to believe that they can confront injustice using strategic nonviolent methods, while fewer are turning to armed action. The failure is that so many injustices remain—and so few institutions are equipped to address them—that the demand for civil resistance has increased.

The Record of Nonviolent Resistance

Without understanding the dynamics of civil resistance, it would be hard to make sense of the political world that we live in today. At the outset of 1989, the international system appeared to be organized entirely around powerful nation-states and the elites who governed them. The civil uprisings that toppled the Soviet-backed regimes of Central and Eastern Europe in that year marked the start of three decades of dramatic change. The Black-led anti-apartheid movement in South Africa succeeded in bringing down the country’s regime of legally enshrined racial discrimination, although racism, segregation, and economic inequality persist. A number of autocratic regimes in postcommunist Europe and Central Asia have succumbed to so-called color revolutions. Primarily peaceful resistance movements have deposed three Arab dictators and shaken the grip of several others.

All these shifts flowed—in whole or in part—from sustained grassroots civic action. Indeed, the third and fourth waves of democratization were driven to a large extent by bottom-up movements demanding that their governments expand individual political rights and be held accountable through fair elections, a free press, an impartial criminal-justice system, and so on. 10  [End Page 73]

Scholars of civil resistance generally define “success” as the overthrow of a government or territorial independence achieved because of a campaign within a year of its peak. 11  Among the 565 campaigns that have both begun and ended over the past 120 years, about 51 percent of the nonviolent campaigns have succeeded outright, while only about 26 percent of the violent ones have. Nonviolent resistance thus outperforms violence by a 2-to-1 margin. (Sixteen percent of the nonviolent campaigns and 12 percent of violent ones ended in limited success, while 33 percent of nonviolent campaigns and 61 percent of violent ones ultimately failed.) Moreover, in countries where civil-resistance campaigns took place, chances of democratic consolidation, periods of relative postconflict stability, and various quality-of-life indicators were higher after the conflict than in the countries that experienced civil war. 12

This holds true even when nonviolent campaigns faced down brutal autocrats. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the case that nonviolent campaigns emerge or win out mainly when the regimes they confront are politically weak, incompetent, or unwilling to employ mass violence. Once a mass movement arises and unsettles the status quo, most regimes confront unarmed protesters with brute force, only to see even larger numbers of demonstrators turn out to protest the brutality. 13  Besides, even when regime type, government repression, and military capacity are taken into account, nonviolent campaigns are still far more likely to succeed than violent resistance. 14  This is because they tend to be larger, more cross-cutting, and therefore more politically representative than armed movements. This provides numerous openings through which they can bring about defections, pulling the regime’s pillars of support out from under it at decisive moments. This happens when security forces refuse to follow orders to shoot at demonstrators, as in Serbia in 2000. Or it can happen when business or economic elites start responding to public pressure by voicing support for the movement, as numerous white business owners did in South Africa following waves of Black-led strikes, boycotts, and global sanctions initiated in support of the anti-apartheid movement. In other settings, important political players, such as powerful labor unions or professional associations, begin to stop cooperating with the regime, as happened during the Sudanese revolution of 2019. Basically, the larger the movement, the more likely it is to disrupt the status quo and induce defections that sever the regime from its major pillars of support. And nonviolent movements have the capacity to expand participation in ways that armed groups cannot. 15  The widespread view that only violent action can be strong and effective is deeply mistaken.

Of course, civil-resistance campaigns do not always usher in peace and prosperity. In Syria in 2011, dictator Bashar al-Assad responded to a nonviolent struggle by unleashing military force and even chemical weapons against his civilian population. The resulting conflict has  [End Page 74]  continued for nearly ten years now and has become the bloodiest civil war of the current century, forcing some three-million people to flee the country. In 2011, the U.S.-backed government of Bahrain crushed a nonviolent movement that tried to challenge the monarchy there. And in Ukraine, a people-power movement managed to push Russian-backed kleptocrat Viktor Yanukovych from power in February 2014—but rather than permitting Ukraine to move deeper into the European orbit, Russia seized the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and has fueled an ongoing and deadly war of secession in Ukraine’s east.

Nonviolent campaigns over the past ten years have succeeded less often than their historical counterparts. From the 1960s until about 2010, success rates for revolutionary nonviolent campaigns remained above 40 percent, climbing as high as 65 percent in the 1990s. But success rates for all revolutions have since declined, as shown in Figure 2. Since 2010, less than 34 percent of nonviolent revolutions and a mere 8 percent of violent ones have succeeded.

While governments have had greater success at beating down challenges to their authority, nonviolent resistance still outperformed violent resistance by a 4-to-1 margin. That is because armed confrontation has grown even less successful, continuing a downward trend that has been underway since the 1970s. These caveats notwithstanding, the last decade has seen a sharp decline in the success rate for civil resistance—reversing  [End Page 75]  much of the overall upward trend of the previous sixty years.

The past decade therefore presents a troubling paradox: Just as civil resistance has become the most common approach to challenging regimes, it has begun to grow less effective—at least in the short term.

What Has Changed?

The most tempting explanations for the decline in effectiveness of civil-resistance campaigns center on the changed environment within which they now operate.

First, movements may be facing more entrenched regimes—ones that have prevailed against repeated challenges by shoring up support from local allies and key constituencies; imprisoning prominent oppositionists; provoking opponents into using violence; stoking fears of foreign or imperial conspiracies; or obtaining diplomatic cover from powerful international supporters. The regimes in Belarus, Iran, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Venezuela have proved especially resilient in the face of challenges from below. There is no doubt that activists who work in such settings are confronting grave difficulties. Yet this post hoc explanation for movement failure has its shortcomings. Many regimes—such as Bashir’s government in Sudan—are seen as immutable and resilient up until the moment that a nonviolent resistance movement topples them, after which observers claim that the regimes were weak after all. But over history, many once-stable autocratic regimes—such as Chile under Augusto Pinochet, East Germany under Erich Honecker, Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, and communist Poland—succumbed to nonviolent movements after skillful mobilizations that often marked the culmination of years of effort.

Second, governments may be learning and adapting to nonviolent challenges from below. 16  Several decades ago, authoritarian regimes frequently found themselves surprised by the sudden onset of mass nonviolent uprisings, and governments struggled to find ways to suppress these movements without triggering increased popular sympathy and support for the repressed. Elites may also have underestimated the potential of people power to seriously threaten their rule. Today, given the ample historical record of successful nonviolent campaigns, state actors are likelier to perceive such movements as genuinely threatening. Consequently, autocratic regimes have developed a repertoire of politically savvy approaches to repression. 17  One prominent strategy is to infiltrate movements and divide them from within. In this way, the authorities can provoke a nonviolent movement into using more militant tactics, including violence, before the movement has built a broad enough base to ensure its popular support and staying power.

Third, with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the United States has accelerated its retreat from its global role as a superpower with a  [End Page 76]  prodemocracy agenda. Although many have critiqued this agenda as a form of neo-imperialism shrouded in liberalism, the liberal international order established by the U.S. and other leading Western nations also coincided with an expansion of human-rights regimes that produced governmental and nongovernmental watchdogs who named and shamed human-rights abuses. These trends may have opened space for political dissent in many countries around the world. 18  Daniel Ritter has argued that in the post–Cold War world, authoritarian regimes were particularly susceptible to nonviolent challenges from below because they needed to maintain the semblance of respect for human rights in order to appease their democratic allies and patrons. 19  For instance, Egypt’s dependence on foreign assistance meant that when revolution broke out in 2011, the Egyptian military was highly attuned to scrutiny from liberal democracies such as the United States. Without an activist United States—and, more broadly, without powerful champions of human rights who have real leverage or enforcement capacity vis-à-vis autocratic regimes—we would expect greater brutality against nonviolent dissidents.

That argument may have some merit. But it also it overstates the degree to which the United States has been a genuine champion of democracy and human rights around the world. After all, the United States has a long history of helping to install right-wing autocrats in the postwar period—including Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran, General Joseph Mobutu in Congo, General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and others who came to power through U.S.-backed coups. The argument also overestimates the degree to which democratic patrons have real leverage over how their autocratic allies conduct their domestic affairs. Historically, the fate of nonviolent resistance campaigns has depended much more on their ability to build their power by securing mass participation, as well as defections among security forces and economic elites, than on the behavior of fickle foreign governments. 20

Therefore, upon deeper inspection, although it may be that states have begun to better anticipate and suppress nonviolent resistance, the two structural arguments have little support in the historical record. Instead, the most compelling explanations for the declining effectiveness of nonviolent campaigns lie in the changing nature of the campaigns themselves.

How Movements Have Changed

First, in terms of participation, civil-resistance campaigns have become somewhat smaller on average than in the past. There have certainly been impressive mass demonstrations in the years since 2010. In 2017 and 2019, millions of people turned out to protest against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. And in Chile, the October 2019 uprising against the government of President Sebastián Piñera reportedly drew a million people nationwide. Yet despite the dramatic images of crowds  [End Page 77]  filling public spaces, recent movements on the whole, at their peaks, have actually been smaller than successful movements of the late 1980s and 1990s. In the 1980s, the average nonviolent campaign involved about 2 percent of the population in the country where it was underway. In the 1990s, the average campaign included a staggering 2.7 percent of the population. But since 2010, the average peak participation has been only 1.3 percent, continuing a decline that began in the 2000s. This is a crucial change. A mass uprising is more likely to succeed when it includes a larger proportion and a more diverse cross-section of a nation’s population.

Second, contemporary movements tend to over-rely on mass demonstrations while neglecting other techniques—such as general strikes and mass civil disobedience—that can more forcefully disrupt a regime’s stability. Because demonstrations and protests are what most people associate with civil resistance, those who seek change are increasingly launching these kinds of actions before they have developed real staying power or a strategy for transformation. Compared to other methods, street protests may be easier to organize or improvise on short notice. In the digital age, such actions can draw participants in large numbers even without any structured organizing coalition to carry out advanced planning and coordinate communication. 21  But mass demonstrations are not always the most effective way of applying pressure to elites, particularly when they are not sustained over time. Other techniques of noncooperation, such as general strikes and stay-at-homes, can be much more disruptive to economic life and thus elicit more immediate concessions. It is often quiet, behind-the-scenes planning and organizing that enable movements to mobilize in force over the long term, and to coordinate and sequence tactics in a way that builds participation, leverage, and power. 22  For the many contemporary movements organized around leaderless resistance, such capacities can be difficult to develop.

Very possibly related to movements’ overemphasis on public demonstrations and marches is a third important factor: Recent movements have increasingly relied on digital organizing, via social media in particular. 23  This creates both strengths and liabilities. On the one hand, digital organizing makes today’s movements very good at assembling participants en masse on short notice. 24  It allows people to communicate their grievances broadly, across audiences of thousands or even millions. It gives organizers outlets for mass communication that are not controlled by mainstream institutions or governments. But the resulting movements are less equipped to channel their numbers into effective organizations that can plan, negotiate, establish shared goals, build on past victories, and sustain their ability to disrupt a regime. 25  Some movements that have emerged from digital organizing have found ways to create long-term organizations. But even then, their initial reliance on  [End Page 78]  the internet has a dark side: Easier communication also means easier surveillance. Those in power can harness digital technologies to monitor, single out, and suppress dissidents. Autocrats have also exploited digital technologies not only to rally their own supporters, but also to spread misinformation, propaganda, and countermessaging.

This leads to the fourth factor that may be contributing to the decreased effectiveness of contemporary civil-resistance movements: Nonviolent movements increasingly embrace or tolerate fringes that become violent. 26  From the 1970s until 2010, the share of nonviolent movements with violent flanks remained between 30 and 35 percent. In 2010–19, it climbed to more than half.

Even when the overwhelming majority of activists remain nonviolent, civil-resistance movements that mix in some armed violence—such as street fighting with police or attacking counterprotesters—tend to be less successful in the end than movements that remain disciplined in rejecting violence. 27  This is because violence tends to increase indiscriminate repression against movement participants and sympathizers while making it harder for the movement to paint participants as innocent victims of this brutality. Entrenched regimes can cast violent skirmishers as threats to public order. In fact, governments often infiltrate movements to provoke them into adopting violence at the margins, thereby giving the regime justification for the use of heavy-handed tactics. What powerholders really fear is resilient, nonviolent, mass rebellion—which exposes as a lie their aura of invincibility while simultaneously removing any excuses for violent crackdowns.

Several clear lessons emerge from comparing contemporary movements to their historical antecedents. First, movements that engage in careful planning, organization, training, and coalition-building prior to mass mobilization are more likely to draw a large and diverse following than movements that take to the streets before hashing out a political program and strategy. Second, movements that grow in size and diversity are more likely to succeed—particularly if they are able to maintain momentum. Third, movements that do not rely solely on digital organizing techniques are more likely to build a sustainable following. And finally, movements that come up with strategies for maintaining unity and discipline under pressure may fare better than movements that leave these matters to chance.

Does Nonviolent Resistance Have a Future?

There is no doubt that the covid-19 pandemic has been a sharp and sudden blow to the dozens of ongoing civil-resistance movements around the world. Indeed, in the pandemic’s early months it became standard to see headlines in major newspapers announcing the end of protest as a result of social-distancing mandates combined with the expansion  [End Page 79]  of executive powers in an array of countries. 28  But as made clear by the widespread antiracism protests in the United States in response to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery by white vigilantes and the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd at the hands of police, the era of mass demonstrations is not about to end, in the United States or anywhere else.

Still, even as the causes that power movements remain alive, the global shutdown has provided opportunities for important stocktaking, regrouping, and planning for the next phase of protracted struggles for democracy and rights. Indeed, given the reduced success of recent movements, such regrouping and stock-taking may be essential if mass movements are to make meaningful progress. Movements’ future capacity to build people power from below depends on how they invest their time and resources during the global shutdown.

There is reason for hope in this regard. First, many of the measures now in common use by prodemocracy and progressive activists—mutual-aid pods, strikes, stay-at-homes, sick-ins, online teachins, and various expressions of solidarity with and collective support for frontline workers—are positive shifts in the movement landscape. In the United States alone, mutual-aid networks in New York, Boston, the Bay Area, and other cities have crowdsourced emergency relief funds, food, personal protective equipment, and errands; coordinated the distribution of money and vital supplies; and raised community awareness about the unequal effects of the pandemic (and government responses) on Black and brown communities in particular. Those networks strengthened communication networks, grassroots provision of public goods, and communal trust and reciprocity during the pandemic. These efforts were supercharged with the onset of the antiracism uprisings, with many mutual-aid networks immediately mobilizing donations to bail funds and other forms of community relief in the wake of a heavy-handed government response to mass protests.

Although such measures rarely make for eye-catching photos in the way that mass demonstrations do, they represent a new phase of tactical innovation. Through these efforts, movements are updating and renewing the outdated playbook that has led them to rely exclusively on protest at the expense of methods such as noncooperation and the development  [End Page 80]  of alternative institutions. From the Indian independence movement to Poland’s Solidarity to Black liberation groups in South Africa and the United States, movements have gained civic strength when they have developed alternative institutions to build self-sufficiency and address community problems that governments have neglected or ignored. Gandhi called this the “constructive program” and considered it one of the two pillars of his technique of  satyagraha , equal in importance to noncooperation.

Of course, many protests continue—either in outright defiance of social-distancing measures or in spite of them. But this makes such actions all the more striking—and compelling. The fact that people are willing to risk their health to resist injustice raises awareness of the gravity and urgency of their claims. Elsewhere, people are experimenting with socially distant protests—including car caravans, pots-and-pans protests or  cacerolazos , and even socially distant protests such as a 1,200-person action against Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu that took place in Tel Aviv in April 2020. And across the globe, essential workers—from warehouse employees to grocers to nurses at emergency departments and beyond—have used walk-outs, sick-ins, and strikes to demand safer workplace conditions, often yielding immediate concessions from employers in the forms of masks, gloves, and hazard pay. Work stoppages in the medical, grocery, tech, and meatpacking sectors and other forms of noncooperation put significant power in the hands of these workers, precisely because they are vital to keeping the food supply flowing, transport running, and public-health services in operation. Strikes and work stoppages among these workers are very difficult to combat without risking a major public backlash, creating a key vulnerability for governments.

Second, the pandemic may provide a much-needed pause for many activists and organizers who tend to move from one march to the next with very little time for reflection, strategy, or relationship-building. During lockdowns, movements have been able to step away from planning large-scale events and focus on building resilient coalitions with a greater capacity for bringing about lasting transformation. Many movements around the world have used the time to invest in planning longer-term strategies, building relationships among potential coalition partners, and developing training modules aimed at launching more effective challenges. Events such as Earth Day Live—a multiday online action for climate justice—brought together hundreds of organizations to share skills, strategies, and inspiration for global action on climate change. Movements such as Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and the Sunrise Movement organized webinars to talk about the ways in which they could continue to promote climate action during lockdown. In the United States, movements fighting for racial justice, voting rights, and climate action convened skills-shares and teach-ins, helping to shine the light on the unequal effects of the pandemic on marginalized  [End Page 81]  communities, including African Americans. Such activities have helped to galvanize public awareness of urgent inequalities in a way that set the stage for much larger and more sustained collective action.

Finally, the pandemic is giving publics a view of the stark contrast between populists and autocrats on the one hand and liberal or social democrats on the other when it comes to how they respond to crises. The four top countries in terms of the number of reported coronavirus infections as of this writing in June 2020—the United States, Russia, Brazil, and the United Kingdom—are helmed by populist or authoritarian leaders whose handling of the pandemic has been disastrous. Instead of acting preemptively to prepare their publics for a protracted period of quarantine, making testing widely available, and prioritizing flattening the curve through timely and accurate information, leaders in these countries have denied or minimized the pandemic, invoked conspiracy theories to deflect blame, and stoked domestic political divisions—for instance, by calling on supporters to defy mayors and governors who advocated strict public-health mandates, or by blaming national crises on protesters fighting for racial justice.

These missteps with their deadly consequences may have sinister long-term implications, but they could also sharpen public awareness of the urgency of political change, reminding voters that mismanaged crises affect everyone living in the country. Many movements have already adjusted their frames to focus on the need for genuine democratic renewal in the face of government incompetence in responding to the pandemic, threats to civil rights, racism and ethnocentrism, and economic insecurity. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro is facing his first real political crisis as his public-approval ratings plummet due to his flouting of global public-health recommendations. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega’s leadership failures have similarly provided prodemocracy activists with renewed motivation to push for change.

In February in Hong Kong, hospital workers went on strike to protest the government’s unwillingness to close the border with mainland China in order to stop the spread of the virus—echoing the earlier resistance to China’s encroachment on Hong Kong’s independence. That strike forced the government to close all save three of its border checkpoints, demonstrating the power of noncooperation by essential workers. And at the end of May, thousands of Hong Kong protesters filled the streets in defiance of stay-at-home guidance to resist Beijing’s plans to push through a new national-security law that threatens to further tighten the mainland’s grip on Hong Kong. Movements fighting for climate justice have also adjusted their frames to reflect the growing concern that future pandemics could emerge as a result of climate inaction now. And the ongoing U.S. protests against racism and police violence are tied to the fact that African Americans have perished from coronavirus at much higher rates than whites—among other persistent social, political, and economic inequalities. Because the pandemic has already affected the  [End Page 82]  lives of billions of people worldwide, these messages are likely to resonate with a broader base now than they did before the crisis.

Thus, in spite of the recent setbacks for nonviolent campaigns around the world, 2020 need not represent the end of successful nonviolent resistance. Instead, the pandemic has served as a much-needed reset for movements around the world—and many of them have used the time wisely.  [End Page 83]

The author thanks Sooyeon Kang and Christopher Wiley Shay for their contributions to the data collection, and participants in academic seminars at Columbia University, Wellesley College, and Harvard University for their useful feedback. I am also grateful to Zoe Marks for comments on a draft of this article, and to E.J. Graff for editorial assistance. Remaining errors are my own.

1.  Erica Chenoweth et al., “This May Be the Largest Wave of Nonviolent Mass Movements in World History. What Comes Next?”  Washington Post , Monkey Cage blog, 16 November 2019.

2.  This count combines data from the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes Data Project (v. 1.3) with the Major Episodes of Contention Data Set. During the same time period, there have been thousands of campaigns pursuing other goals, such as women’s rights, labor rights, queer and LGBTI rights, environmental justice, economic justice, corporate accountability, peace, and various policy changes. The statistics presented in this essay focus primarily on maximalist campaigns. This is not because I am more interested in these campaigns, but because they constitute a more limited subset of mass movements for which figures are widely available. Data are available from the author on request.

3.  About 40 percent of the nonviolent campaigns also involved a violent flank, which I address in later in this essay.

4.  Erica Chenoweth, “Why is Nonviolent Resistance on the Rise?”  Diplomatic Courier  (28 June 2016).

5.  Erica Chenoweth, “Why is Nonviolent Resistance on the Rise?”

6.  Steven Pinker,  The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined  (New York: Viking, 2011).

7.  For more detail and some additional hypotheses, see Maciej Bartkowski, ed.  Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles  (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2013).

8.  Selina Gallo-Cruz, “Nonviolence Beyond the State: International NGOs and Local Nonviolent Mobilization,”  International Sociology  34 (November 2019): 655–74.

9.  See Freedom House’s  Freedom in the World 2020  report,  https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2020/leaderless-struggle-democracy .

10.  Jonathan C. Pinckney,  From Dissent to Democracy: The Promise and Perils of Civil Resistance Transitions  (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Markus Bayer, Felix S. Bethke, and Daniel Lambach, “The Democratic Dividend of Nonviolent Resistance,”  Journal of Peace Research  53 (November 2016): 758–71; Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan,  Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict  (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); Mauricio Rivera Celestino and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Fresh Carnations or All Thorn, No Rose? Nonviolent Campaigns and Transitions in Autocracies,”  Journal of Peace Research  50 (May 2013): 385–400.

11.  This definition of success is contested, although for practical purposes it is the most reliable to use in comparing across cases. Some research also focuses on longer-term successes, such as the expansion of democracy, rights, and stability.

12.  Judith Stoddard, “How Do Major, Violent and Nonviolent Opposition Campaigns, Impact Predicted Life Expectancy at Birth?”  Stability: International Journal of Security & Development  2, no. 2 (2013).

13.  Brian Martin,  Justice Ignited: The Dynamics of Backfire  (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007); Lester R. Kurtz and Lee A. Smithey, eds.  The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements  (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2018).

14.  Chenoweth and Stephan,  Why Civil Resistance Works , Chapter 3.

15.  Chenoweth and Stephan,  Why Civil Resistance Works .

16.  Erica Chenoweth, “Trends in Nonviolent Resistance and State Response: Is Violence Toward Civilian-Based Movements on the Rise?”  Global Responsibility to Protect  9 (January 2017): 86–100.

17.  Erica Chenoweth, “The Trump Administration’s Adoption of the Anti-Revolutionary Toolkit,”  PS: Political Science and Politics  51 (January 2018): 19–20; Chenoweth, “Trends in Nonviolent Resistance and State Response.”

18.  Kathryn Sikkink,  Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21 st  Century  (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).

19.  Daniel P. Ritter,  The Iron Cage of Liberalism: International Politics and Unarmed Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa  (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

20.  Chenoweth and Stephan,  Why Civil Resistance Works .

21.  Zeynep Tufekci,  Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest  (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).

22.  Chenoweth et al., “This May Be the Largest Wave.”

23.  Linda Herrera,  Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet  (London: Verso, 2014).

24.  Tufekci,  Twitter and Tear Gas .

25.  Asef Bayat,  Revolution Without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring  (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017); George Lawson,  Anatomies of Revolution  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

26.  See also Erica Chenoweth, “The Rise of Nonviolent Resistance,” PRIO Policy Brief 19 (2016); Chenoweth, “Why Is Nonviolent Resistance on the Rise?”

27.  Omar Wasow, “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion, and Voting,”  American Political Science Review  (forthcoming); Erica Chenoweth and Kurt Schock, “Do Contemporaneous Armed Challenges Affect the Outcomes of Mass Nonviolent Campaigns?”  Mobilization: An International Quarterly  20 (December 2015): 427–51.

28.  Evan Gerstmann,”How the COVID-19 Crisis is Threatening Freedom and Democracy Across the Globe,”  Forbes , 12 April 2020,  www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2020/04/12/how-the-covid-19-crisis-is-threatening-freedom-and-democracy-across-the-globe/#6dec63234f16 .

Copyright © 2020 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press

Further Reading

Volume 19, Issue 4

Georgia’s Year of Turmoil

• Miriam Lanskoy
• Giorgi Areshidze

A domestic political crisis began brewing in Georgia long before the current conflict with Russia. Since the Rose Revolution, the country has been troubled by flawed elections, a “superpresidency,” and…

Volume 20, Issue 1

Debating the Color Revolutions: An Interrelated Wave

• Mark R. Beissinger

Authoritarian weakness alone cannot explain why the mobilization process during the color revolutions assumed similar forms across varied contexts.

Volume 23, Issue 3

Putinism Under Siege: Can There Be a Color Revolution?

• Sharon Wolchik

The recent protests in Russia raise the question of whether the Putin regime could fall to a “color” or electoral revolution like those that have ousted other autocratic regimes in…

Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field We invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

Follow BI and the Hyper-Polarization Discussion on BI's New Substack Newsletter .

Hyper-Polarization, COVID, Racism, and the Constructive Conflict Initiative Read about (and contribute to) the  Constructive Conflict Initiative  and its associated Blog —our effort to assemble what we collectively know about how to move beyond our hyperpolarized politics and start solving society's problems. 

By Máire A. Dugan

Originally published in September 2003 with Current Implications added by Heidi Burgess in September, 2020  

Current Implications

We are living in an era in which spontaneous, large-scale protests are arising in many parts of the world.[15] In the United States, the summer of 2020 was rife with protests over the horrifying death of George Floyd and several other cases of police brutality directed toward Black men. These were met with counter protests supporting "law and order," as well as other protests over pandemic-related health restrictions.   More...

If asked for an example of nonviolent action, one is likely to mention Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr., and maybe Rosa Parks. Strong and courageous people whose effective movements resulted, respectively, in Indian independence from decades of British rule, and the initial steps toward freeing African-Americans from decades of discrimination.

Such well-known cases notwithstanding, most of us tend to think of nonviolence as ineffectual, the weapon of the weak. We stand with Mao in presuming that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

The source of the problem lies partly in the way the words are structured -- defining the concepts in terms of what they are not. Nonviolence and nonviolent action, by their appearance, simply mean "not violence" and "not violent action." It is a short mental jump to presume that they are everything violence and violent action are not. And, since the latter are associated with force , power , and strength, the former must be the absence of these attributes.

The situation is further complicated by a confusion of like-sounding terms -- nonviolence (as a philosophy or lifestyle) and nonviolent action. Before discussing the potential contribution of nonviolent action to the constructive termination of intractable conflict, it seems helpful to clarify our central terms and their relationship to one another.

Nonviolence as Philosophy and Lifestyle

Pacifism is a philosophy which, in its absolutist form, proposes that "all forms of violence, war, and/or killing are unconditionally wrong. The proposed ideal is that social intercourse should be completely nonviolent and peaceful..."[1] In conditional pacifism, nonviolence is still the ideal, but violence may be justified under certain, typically extreme, circumstances. Self-defense in the face of attack may be justified, but one should nonetheless do what one can to minimize the harm inflicted on the perpetrator.

While pacifism may simply be part of a broader humanist philosophy, it is most often associated with a large number of religious traditions. The Christian peace denominations such as the Quakers and the Mennonites have a rejection of violence as a core component, as do a number of non-Christian traditions such as the Jains. The Great Peace of the Iroquois is based on values of caring, citizenship, co-existence, fairness, integrity, reasoning, and respect.[2] Additionally, there are significant pacifist traditions in more mainstream religions such as Judaism, Islam, and Catholicism.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to describe the pacifist traditions of the world's religions individually, let alone in detail. But they share a key central value -- that life is precious and that it is not the right of any person to take the life of another. Some extend this mandate beyond human life to all animal life forms. This results in a range of behavior from vegetarianism to soft-spokenness, from withdrawal from society to active involvement against war and the death penalty.

The focus of religious nonviolence is not necessarily directed at the broader society. The main concern is often with one's own spiritual wellbeing. This may simply require one to avoid engaging in violent behavior oneself, maybe even at the extreme of not defending oneself from attack. On the other hand, many pacifist traditions encourage believers to work to end war and other forms of violence.

Indeed, the directive to "Love thine enemy" is often married to a hope of affecting the opponent. "If through love for your enemy you can create in him respect or admiration for you, this provides the best possible means by which your new idea or suggestion to him will become an auto-suggestion within him, and it will also help nourish that auto-suggestion."[3] For Gregg, the goal of nonviolence is to convert the enemy.

The opponent, caught off guard by one's refusal to initiate violence or even to reciprocate violence, may come to question his/her own behavior or stance. Gregg calls this "moral jiu jitsu." While it may seem fanciful to think that one's commitment to nonviolence can have this impact, many case studies have shown that this is sometimes the case, particularly when the commitment is constant over time.

One such case concerns Vykom in Travancore Province , India.[4] Under India's caste system, Brahmins (the upper caste) and Untouchables (the lowest caste) were kept apart in a variety of ways. In this case, Untouchables were not allowed to walk on a road that passed in front of a Brahmin temple, but had to walk a lengthier route to their own homes. At its outset, Hindu reformers walked with Untouchables down the road and stood in front of the temple. Protestors were beaten, arrested, and jailed. The Maharajah ordered the police to prevent reformers and Untouchables from entering the road. They shifted their tactics to standing prayerfully in front of police, seeking entry, but not attempting to disobey the directive. Participants stood on the road in shifts of several hours each, weathering the monsoon season during which the water level reached their shoulders. After 16 months, centuries of segregation came to an end as the Brahmins announced simply, "We cannot any longer resist the prayers that have been made to us and we are ready to receive the Untouchables."

A less-cited case, which demonstrates moral jiu jitsu on a personal level, involved a young man named Eddie Dickerson. Dickerson joined a group of other young men in attacking a group of CORE (Congress on Racial Equality) protestors who were attempting to integrate lunch counters in a nearby town on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Returning home after the beating, he found himself haunted by the nonviolent response of those whom he had beaten. He left his friends and walked several miles to the church at which the CORE volunteers were staying to pose the question, "Why didn't you hit back?"

Their behavior and their answers to his question caused him to begin to question both his violent behavior and even segregation itself. His family kicked him out of the house, but he continued his exploration, ending up working for CORE himself. "I don't have any doubts no more. I feel pretty strong that everyone -- no matter what color skin he has -- should have equal opportunities. God meant it that way. And it don't make sense to beat them up so they'll believe it. It has to be done by nonviolence if it's going to work..."[5]

In some faith traditions, nonviolent action becomes a moral imperative in the face of rampant social injustice. Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff discusses the need to resist that form of violence, which he labels "originating violence."

• Originating violence has its roots in the elite institutions of power, in a social structure that protects the interests of the dominant groups, and in the extreme right, which will not tolerate any social change out of fear of losing its privileged status. As a result many countries of the Third World are in the grips of state terrorism.[6]

Such structural violence demands a response; it is morally imperative to strike against it. Rather than retaliatory violence or even revolutionary violence, however, Boff suggests nonviolent action. Through it, we avoid becoming accomplices of injustice by refusing the status quo; yet retain our own human dignity by refraining from violence. He propounds a mistica underlying nonviolent struggle:

• The mistica of active nonviolence implies changing ourselves as well as working to change the world. We must live the truth. We must be just, our integrity transparent. We must be peacemakers. It is not enough simply to confront external violence. We must also dig out the roots of violence in our own hearts, in our personal agendas, and in our life projects. In both a personal and a political sense we must seek to live today in miniature what we are seeking for tomorrow.[7]

Gandhian Nonviolent Action

Gandhian nonviolence is based on religious principles drawn from a diversity of scriptures, particularly the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, and the Koran. Gandhi looked toward higher authority for absolute truth. His central concept, Satyagraha, translated both as "truth seeking" and "soul force," presupposed that the activist could learn from the opponent and vice versa. Truth could neither be achieved nor disseminated by force. Therefore, the concept of ahimsa was also key to the satyagrahi (the person engaged in truth seeking). While ahimsa is typically translated "nonviolence," it is not encumbered in the original transcript by the negative construction and connotation of the English word.

The Indian independence movement lasted over a period of almost three decades, and involved thousands of Indians from all walks of life. Despite its size and duration, it remained almost uniformly nonviolent. Even when law enforcement agents resorted to violence, even when protestors were beaten and/or imprisoned, they themselves eschewed violence.

According to Paul Wehr, Gandhi was able to keep the Indian independence movement from lurching out of control (and possibly becoming violent) through a number of strategies:

• A "step-wise"[8] process. Gandhian campaigns began with negotiation and arbitration , during which he worked not only on the issues in dispute, but also on developing a cooperative relationship with the British officials involved. If the conflict was not resolved at this state, the satyagrahis prepared for nonviolent action including "agitation, ultimatum, economic boycott and strikes, noncooperation, civil disobedience, usurpation of governmental functions and the creation of parallel government."[9]
• Commitment to nonviolence. Each participant in a Gandhian campaign had to make a personal and absolute commitment to nonviolence. According to Wehr, "[i]t was primarily because of this personalized self-control that such a massive movement developed with surprisingly little violence."[10]
• Controlling the dynamics of escalation . Gandhi avoided common precipitators of escalation. For example, he tied each campaign to a single issue and thus avoided proliferation of issues or parties. He put an emphasis on developing personal relationships with opponents, and thus refrained from the tendency to move from confrontation to antagonism. By announcing all intended moves, he minimized the possibility of information becoming distorted.

Looking at the Indian independence movement from the vantage of the 21st century, it may not seem to be as significant an achievement as it was at the time.Colonial governance is an anachronism in our time, scorned for its non-recognition of peoples' rights to self-governance. Things were must different in the early 20th century, however. Half of the world's peoples lived in territories controlled by other powers. In the 1940s, Britain took great pride in its empire, the result of almost three centuries of conquest, acquisition, and effective colonial administration.

King's Nonviolent Action

It is not surprising that, like Gandhi's, Martin Luther King Jr.'s decision to utilize nonviolence was based on religious principles. In fact, King discovered the use of nonviolent action as a political tool through learning about Gandhi's success in India.

King's approach was specifically Christian in orientation, drawing on his own status as a minister and the centrality of the Church in the lives of the Montgomery, Alabama, African-Americans who were the first protestors he led. His speeches utilized the inspirational crescendo structure of African-American sermonizing and he typically used biblical themes in them. This provided a deeper source of unity than the specific issue at hand and his able lieutenants were drawn from the rolls of black preachers.

Like Gandhi's, King's methods were also "step-wise." The King Center lists six:

• Step One. Information gathering
• Step Two. Education
• Step Three. Personal commitment
• Step Four. Negotiations
• Step Five. Direct action
• Step Six. Reconciliation[11]

As with Gandhi, the process is step-wise, creating opportunities for resolution without confrontation and ensuring that both proponents and adversaries have sufficiently accurate information to make decisions both about the issue and the process.

Nonviolent Action as a Political Strategy

While faith- or philosophy-based nonviolence often leads to political change, one can also look at nonviolence from a purely strategic vantage point.This is the view of Gene Sharp, the preeminent cataloguer of nonviolent action. As described above, moral jiu jitsu operates by generating questions within the adversary who comes to a change of heart in the course of this process. Sharp, on the other hand, refers to "political jiu jitsu."

By combining nonviolent discipline with solidarity and persistence in struggle, the nonviolent actionists cause the violence of the opponent's repression to be exposed in the worst possible light.[12]

According to Sharp, non-violent action acts in three ways to change opponents' behavior:

• Accommodation

Conversion involves a change of heart in the opponent to the point where the goals of the protestors are now her/his own. At the other extreme, in coercion , the opponent has had no change of heart or mind, but acquiesces to the demands of the protestors because s/he feels there is no choice. In between is accommodation, probably the most frequent mechanism through which nonviolent action is effective.

In the mechanism of accommodation the opponent resolves to grant the demands of the nonviolent actionists without having changed his mind fundamentally about the issues involved. Some other factor has come to be considered more important than the issue at stake in the conflict, and the opponent is therefore willing to yield on the issue rather than to risk or to experience some other condition or result regarded as still more unsatisfactory.[13]

A Gandhian approach suggests that conversion is the appropriate goal of nonviolence. Not all nonviolent action proponents, however, adhere to this standard. On the other extreme there are those whose only concern is achieving the desired goal and the most effective and/or expeditious way of getting there. In between are those who prefer conversion where possible, but not at the cost of significantly prolonging the struggle or participants' suffering.

Sharp defines three major categories of nonviolent action:

• Protest and Persuasion . These are actions that highlight the issue in contention and/or a desired strategy for responding to the situation. Specific methods include petitions, leafleting, picketing, vigils, marches, and teach-ins.
• Noncooperation . Protestors may refuse to participate in the behavior to which they object socially, economically, and/or politically. Specific methods include sanctuary, boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience.
• Nonviolent intervention. This category includes techniques in which protestors actively interfere with the activity to which they are objecting. Specific methods include sit-ins, fasts, overloading of facilities, and parallel government.

In general, the level of disruption and confrontation increases as one moves from protest and persuasion to intervention. If the protestors' goal is to convert, "protest and persuasion" is likely to be the most appropriate category from which to choose. If the protestors wish to force their opponents to change their behavior, they will probably need to include nonviolent intervention methods in their overall strategy. Those who are seeking accommodation might best mix protest and persuasion tactics with noncooperation if the former are not having the desired impact.

When arranging nonviolent action, it is particularly important to consider the audience. A rally may serve to inspire the already committed (sometimes it is important to "speak to the choir"), but is not likely to change minds; a boycott of a service provided by someone who has not been educated about the issues in question is likely to produce an unnecessary level of resentment.George Lakey and Martin Oppenheimer offer a particularly helpful way of looking at this issue. They point out that any person or group can be categorized according to where she, he or it stands in regard to the issues:

• Active proponents
• Active supporters
• Passive supporters
• Passive opponents
• Active supporters of the opposition
• Active opponents[14]

They then make the point that one's aim in any action should be to move the target population up one notch.

Whatever criteria are chosen to assess possible tactics before embarking on them, nonviolent actionists would do well to imitate their military counterparts at least in the following categories: careful planning and discipline of participants. With that, nonviolence may be just as likely to be successful in a conflict as violence, and it is much less likely to cause much increased hostility, escalation , and backlash .

We are living in an era in which spontaneous, large-scale protests are arising in many parts of the world.[15] In the United States, the summer of 2020 was rife with protests over the horrifying death of George Floyd and several other cases of police brutality directed toward Black men. These were met with counter protests supporting "law and order," as well as other protests over pandemic-related health restrictions .  

While most of the protestors were peaceful, a few were not, resulting in substantial amounts of property damage as well as injuries and a few deaths. Law enforcement response to these protests was often militaristic, severe, and contributed to (and, often initiated) the violence. In Portland, for example, President Trump sent in Federal agents ostensibly to protect the federal courthouse, but some commentators observed, the goal was actually to stoke violence in order to bolster Trump's "law and order" bona fides in an election year.  Regardless of intent, that did, indeed, transpire—violence increased dramatically once the federal troops arrived.[16] 

Much discussion has ensued — among protestors, other activists and advocates as well as scholars — about whether violence or nonviolence is a better strategy for addressing instances of racially-motivated police brutality  and, more widely, and for highlighting "systemic racism" throughout the United States.

This article, written in 2003, is still worth reading when one is considering one's answer to that question. It describes two different kinds of nonviolence: principled nonviolence as practiced by Gandhi and King, and strategic nonviolent direct action, as studied and advocated by Gene Sharp, among others. Gandhi and King were both very successful in their nonviolent campaigns—winning major victories against formidable opposition.   (Gandhi's movement won Indian independence from Great Britain; King's movement significantly diminished discrimination and contributed to the passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act.)  Sharp's works have reportedly been followed extensively around the world—most notably in Egypt during the protests and eventual overthrow of Hosnai Mubarak, but also in Serbia, a large number of former Soviet states), Iran, and Northern Ireland [17]

Dugan ends her article by saying "nonviolence may be just as likely to be successful in a conflict as violence, and it is much less likely to cause much increased hostility,  escalation , and  backlash ."  Research released after this was written suggests a stronger conclusion:  nonviolence and nonviolent direct action is more successful than violence in attaining the actors' interests and needs. 

Most noteworthy among such research is that done by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan.  In their 2011 book  Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, Chenoweth and Stephan conclude:  

Though it defies consensus, between 1900 and 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts. Attracting impressive support from citizens that helps separate regimes from their main sources of power, these campaigns have produced remarkable results, even in the contexts of Iran, the Palestinian Territories, the Philippines, and Burma.[18]. 

And directly relating to U.S. race relations, Omar Wasow has published an article explaining the effectiveness of Black nonviolent protests in the 1960s.

Evaluating black-led protests between 1960 and 1972, I find nonviolent activism, particularly when met with state or vigilante repression, drove media coverage, framing, congressional speech, and public opinion on civil rights. Counties proximate to nonviolent protests saw presidential Democratic vote share increase 1.6–2.5%. Protester-initiated violence, by contrast, helped move news agendas, frames, elite discourse, and public concern toward “social control.” In 1968, ... I find violent protests likely caused a 1.5–7.9% shift among whites toward Republicans and tipped the election. [19]

Other scholars are not as convinced about the superiority of nonviolence, arguing that it was actually the combination of nonviolence with the threat of, or actual use of violence that brought about U.S. civil rights progress. For instance, in "Violence and/or Nonviolence in the Success of the Civil Rights Movement: The Malcolm X–Martin Luther King, Jr. Nexus", August Nimtz asserts:

that it was the combination of that course [non-violent action]  and  the threat of violence on the part of African Americans that fully explain those two victories [the Civil Rights Act (CRA) and the Voting Rights Act (VRA)]. A close reading of the texts and actions of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X is indispensable for my claim. The archival evidence, as well, makes a convincing case for the CRA, its proposal by the John F. Kennedy (JFK) administration and enactment by Congress. For the VRA, its proposal by the Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) administration and enactment by Congress, the evidence is more circumstantial but still compelling. The evidence reveals that for the threat of violence to have been credible, actual violence was required, as events in Birmingham, Alabama, demonstrate. Such violence, the “long hot summers” of the 1960s that began with Birmingham, probably aided and abetted subsequent civil rights gains—a story that has potential lessons for today’s struggles for social equality. [20]

If one is considering the efficacy of violence over nonviolence, however, Guy Burgess suggests one do a thought experiment.  "Pretend you are being confronted by two people whose beliefs are polar opposite your own, and who are trying to get their policies enacted, which would greatly harm you. One approaches you with threats, saying if you don't let them have their way, they'll burn down your business or your house or send protesters out to harass you.  The other one approaches you and asks to sit down with you, explain their concerns, get your reactions, see if there are areas of common ground, and find a constructive way of dealing with differences.    How would you react to each?"

Guy also points out that Trump and his followers are trying hard to create the impression that violent Antifa thugs are coming to ransack conservative communities.  The goal is to frame the Antifa and the Left, in general, as violent adversaries.  If violent threats are so effective, then why would Trump be trying to make his opponents appear more violent (and, hence, more effective)?  The answer: he isn't.  He knows that most people don't like others who are violent—they turn against the violent actors and towards those who promise law and order. (Just as Wasow said.)

So we (Guy and Heidi Burgess) come down on the side of nonviolence, and urge you to read about the theory behind it, and its past uses in Maire Dugan's original article. 

--Heidi Burgess, Sept 15, 2020

Back to Essay Top

[1] Moseley, Alex. "Pacifism," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/p/pacifism.htm . Accessed 10/15/02.

[2] http://www.greatpeace.org/ ; http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v04n6p06.htm .

[3] Gregg, Richard B. The Power of Nonviolence . The Rev. Ed. Nyack, NY: Fellowship Publications, 1959, p. 50.

[4] http://www.progress.org/archive/vv12.htm ; Sharp, Gene . The Politics of Nonviolent Action . Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973.

[5] Robbins, Jhan and Rune Robbins. "Why Didn't They Hit Back?" in A. Paul Hare and Herbert H. Blumberg, eds., Nonviolent Direct Action; American Cases: Social and Political Analyses , Washington, D.C.: Corpus Books, 1968, pp. 107-127, p. 126.

[6] Boff, Leonardo. "Active Nonviolence: The Political and Moral Power of the Poor. Forward to Relentless Persistence: Nonviolent Action in Latin America . Philip McManus and Gerald Schlabach, eds., Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 1991, pp. vii-xi, p. vii

[7] Ibid., p. ix

[8] Wehr, p. 57

[9] Wehr, p. 58

[10] Wehr, p. 59

[11] http://www.thekingcenter.com/prog/non/6steps.html , accessed Oct. 30, 2002.

[12] Sharp, Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973, p. 657.

[13] Ibid., p. 733

[14] list modified from Oppenheimer, Martin and George Lakey. A Manual for Direct Action . Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965. A similar (though somewhat different) list is presented in the ICKB essay Intra-Party Differences

[15] Yasmeen Serhan "The Common Element United Worldwide Protests." The Atlantic .  November 19, 2019.  https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/11/leaderless-protests-around-world/602194/ 

[16]  Chris McGreal and Martin Pengelly "What is happening in Portland and what does Trump hope to gain?" T he Guardian . July 26, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/26/portland-oregon-protests-what-is-happening-trump-chicago-albuquerque] and https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trump-portland-protests-federal-agents-polls.html/ 

[17 ] Wikipedia article on Gene Sharp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp.  

[18] Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan.  Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict  (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, August 2011).  https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw

[19] Omar Wasow. "Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting" American Political Secine Review. June 25, 2020.  https://politicalsciencenow.com/agenda-seeding-how-1960s-black-protests-moved-elites-public-opinion-and-voting/

[20]  August H. Nimtz "Violence and/or Nonviolence in the Success of the Civil Rights Movement: The Malcolm X–Martin Luther King, Jr. Nexus" New Political Science  Volume 38, Issue 1, Feb. 5, 2016.   https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07393148.2015.1125116?src=recsys&journalCode=cnps20

Use the following to cite this article: Dugan, Máire A.. "Nonviolence and Nonviolent Direct Action." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: September 2003 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/nonviolent-direct-action >.

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Lesson 1: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nonviolent Resistance

Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mathew Ahmann in a crowd.)

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

"I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek." ⁠—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

These words were spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr. during his ten-day jail term for violating a court injunction against any "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing" in Birmingham. He came to Alabama's largest city to lead an Easter weekend protest and boycott of downtown stores as a way of forcing white city leaders to negotiate a settlement of black citizens' grievances. King wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in response to a public statement by eight white clergymen appealing to the local black population to use the courts and not the streets to secure civil rights. The clergymen counseled "law and order and common sense," not demonstrations that "incite to hatred and violence," as the most prudent means to promote justice. This criticism of King was elaborated the following year by a fellow Baptist minister, Joseph H. Jackson (president of the National Baptist Convention from 1953–1982), who delivered a speech counseling blacks to reject "direct confrontation" and "stick to law and order."

By examining King's famous essay in defense of nonviolent protest, along with two significant criticisms of his direct action campaign, this lesson will help students assess various alternatives for securing civil rights for black Americans in a self-governing society.

Guiding Questions

To what extent was King's nonviolent resistance to segregation laws the best means of securing civil rights for black Americans in the 1960s?  

Learning Objectives

Explain Martin Luther King, Jr.'s concept of nonviolent resistance and the role of civil disobedience within it.

Analyze the concerns regarding King's intervention in Birmingham and King's responses to those concerns.

Evaluate the arguments made against King's protest methods and the alternatives recommended.

Evaluate the arguments regarding non-violence and the effect these strategies had on civil rights in the United States.

Lesson Plan Details

If students know anything about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s, it will probably be Martin Luther King, Jr.'s role in leading the Movement along the path of nonviolent resistance against racial segregation. Most likely, they will have seen or read his "I Have a Dream" speech (August 28, 1963), delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which closes with the famous line, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Next to the "I Have a Dream" speech, King's most famous writing is his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." He began writing the lengthy essay while jailed over Easter weekend in 1963. He eventually arranged its publication as part of a public relations strategy to bring national attention to the struggle for civil rights in the South.

The Birmingham campaign of March and April 1963 followed a less successful protest the previous year in Albany, Georgia. Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett did not want to draw media attention to the Albany protest led by King and local citizens. He dispersed jailed protesters to surrounding jails to avoid overcrowding, and had local city officials post bail for King any time he got arrested. King eventually left Albany in August 1962 when the protest movement stalled for months and when the city reneged on its promise to desegregate bus and train stations. Discouraged by the Movement's inability to provoke a reaction that would precipitate change, King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference decided to accept the invitation of Birmingham activist Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth to agitate for change there. In Birmingham they devised a new strategy called "Project C" (for "confrontation").

Birmingham was Alabama's largest city, but its 40 percent black population suffered stark inequities in education, employment, and income. In 1961, when Freedom Riders were mobbed in the city bus terminal, Birmingham drew unwelcome national attention. Moreover, recent years saw so many bombings in its black neighborhoods that went unsolved that the city earned the nickname "Bombingham." In 1962, Birmingham even closed public parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, and golf courses to avoid federal court orders to desegregate. Nevertheless, the fight to hold onto segregationist practices began to wear on some whites; the question remained, how best to address the concerns of local black citizens?

When eight white clergymen (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish) learned of King's plans to stage mass protests in Birmingham during the Easter season in 1963, they published a statement voicing disagreement with King's attempt to reform the segregated city. It appeared in the Birmingham News on Good Friday, the very day King was jailed for violating the injunction against marching. The white clergymen complained that local black citizens were being "directed and led in part by outsiders" to engage in demonstrations that were "unwise and untimely." The prudence of the Movement's actions in Birmingham was also called into question by local merchants who believed the new city government and mayor—replacing the staunch segregationist Eugene "Bull" Connor (the commissioner of public safety who later employed fire hoses and police dogs against protesters, many of whom were high school and college students)—would offer a new opportunity to address black concerns. Even the Justice Department under President John F. Kennedy urged King to leave Birmingham. The clergymen advised locals to follow "the principles of law and order and common sense," to engage in patient negotiation, and, if necessary, seek redress in the courts. They called street protests and economic boycotts "extreme measures" and, thus, saw them as imprudent means of redressing grievances. Finally, if peaceful protests sparked hatred and riots, they would hold the protesters responsible for the violence that ensued.

In spite of the court injunction, King went ahead with his protest march on Good Friday, and was promptly arrested, along with his close friend and fellow Baptist preacher Ralph Abernathy and fifty-two other protestors. King served his jail sentence in solitary confinement, but soon began reading press reports of the Birmingham campaign in newspapers smuggled into his cell by his lawyer. Both local and national media expressed greater optimism for reform from the new city government and lesser sympathy for King and his nonviolent, direct action campaign. But what irked him most was the criticism from the Birmingham clergymen, most of whom had actually criticized Governor George Wallace's inauguration proclamation of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" So King began to write, using the margins of the Birmingham News .

King's reply to the clergymen's public letter of complaint grew to almost 7,000 words, and presented a detailed response to the criticisms of his fellow men of the cloth. Employing theological and philosophical arguments, as well as reflections on American and world history, King defended the legitimacy of his intervention to desegregate Birmingham. He explained how the nonviolent movement employed peaceful mass protest and even civil disobedience to bring pressure to bear on the social and political status quo. Given that the immediate audience of his letter were religious leaders, his letter made numerous references to biblical and historical events and figures they might find persuasive. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was a plea for a more robust and relevant participation of white church leaders (and members) in the affairs of this world, starting with the just complaints of their black neighbors and fellow Christians.

The following year, a longstanding critic* of King delivered an address that focused on an alternative way for black Americans to secure progress in civil rights. Dr. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, was known as "the black pope" because of his leadership of the largest religious organization of blacks in the United States. Jackson thought King's civil disobedience and nonviolent but confrontational methods undermined the very rule of law that black Americans desperately needed. Appealing to the historic contribution of blacks to the development and prosperity of America, Jackson counseled that less controversial and provocative means should be adopted in the struggle for civil rights. He also encouraged them not to neglect their "ability, talent, genius, and capacity" in efforts of self-help and self-improvement. Citing the 1954 Brown v. Board decision and 1964 Civil Rights Act as important signs of progress and hope for black Americans, Jackson argued that to advance in America, blacks had to work with and not against the structures and ideals of the nation.

* In 1961, after failing to oust Jackson from the presidency of the National Baptist Convention, King broke away from the organization and founded a rival group, the Progressive National Baptist Convention. In 1967, Jackson would publish Unholy Shadows and Freedom's Holy Light , which reaffirmed his "law and order' approach to the civil rights struggle.

NCSS. D1.2.6-8. Explain points of agreement experts have about interpretations and applications of disciplinary concepts and ideas associated with a compelling question. NCSS. D1.3.6-8. Explain points of agreement experts have about interpretations and applications of disciplinary concepts and ideas associated with a supporting question. NCSS. D2.Civ.2.9-12. Analyze the role of citizens in the U.S. political system, with attention to various theories of democracy, changes in Americans’ participation over time, and alternative models from other countries, past and present.  NCSS. D2.His.1.9-12. Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.  NCSS.  D2.His.2.9-12. Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.  NCSS.  D2.His.3.9-12. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context.  NCSS. D2.His.4.9-12. Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras. NCSS.  D3.1.9-12. Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the sources to guide the selection.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and the public statement of the white Birmingham clergymen make a natural pairing for a discussion of the pros and cons of nonviolent resistance. However, because the "Letter to Martin Luther King from a Group of Clergymen" is a relatively short document compared with King's 6,800-word reply, this lesson includes a longer statement critical of King's campaign of mass protest and civil disobedience: Joseph H. Jackson's 1964 Address to the National Baptist Convention.

This lesson contains written primary source documents, photographs, sound recordings, and worksheets, available both online and in the Text Document that accompanies this lesson. Students can read and analyze source materials entirely online, or do some of the work online and some in class from printed copies.

Read over the lesson. Bookmark the websites that you will use. If students will be working from printed copies in class, download the documents from the Text Document and duplicate as many copies as you will need. If students need practice in analyzing primary source documents, excellent resource materials are available at the EDSITEment-reviewed Learning Page of the Library of Congress . Helpful Document Analysis Worksheets may be found at the Educator Resources site of the National Archives .

Activity 1. Understanding the Primary Sources: What Do They Tell You?

This activity is arranged around the following primary sources:

• Birmingham's Racial Segregation Ordinances (1951)
• " Letter to Martin Luther King from a Group of Clergymen " (April 12, 1963)
• Audio recording of Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" (August 28, 1963)
• Martin Luther King, Jr., " Letter from Birmingham Jail " (April 16, 1963)
• Photograph of fire hoses turned against Birmingham demonstrators
• Joseph H. Jackson, "Annual Address to the National Baptist Convention" (September 10, 1964)
• Photograph of voter registration in Mississippi
• In the video clip below, Dr. King discusses the place of love within his philosophy of non-violence:

In addition to primary source documents, this activity contains questions that will help students interpret the content. The questions are included below for review and are also found on pages 5, 11–12, and 17–18 of the Text Document .

Divide the class into small groups in which they will begin working on the questions together, and then assign the unfinished questions for homework.

To provide some background on the sort of discrimination faced by African-Americans in Birmingham (as well as in most of the South), have students read Sections 369, 597, 359, and 1413 of the Birmingham Segregation Ordinances (1951) at the EDSITEment-reviewed site "American Studies at the University of Virginia ." The relevant sections from the 1951 Ordinances, found on pages 1–2 of the Text Document , can also be printed out and distributed to students.

Then have students read the " Letter to Martin Luther King from a Group of Clergymen " (April 12, 1963) and answer the questions that follow (also available in worksheet form on page 5 of the Text Document ). A link to the text of the "Letter to Martin Luther King" can be found at the EDSITEment-reviewed site " Teaching American History ." The letter is also included in the Text Document on pages 3–4 , and can be printed out for student use.

• In 1963, what two recommendations did a group of Alabama clergymen propose to resolve the racial conflict in Birmingham, Alabama?
• Identify two or three criticisms they gave of the political demonstrations and protests taking place in Birmingham.
• What praise did they give to "local news media and law enforcement officials" for their conduct during the demonstrations?

Next, for an introduction to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s stirring rhetoric, have students listen to a brief excerpt from his " I Have a Dream " speech. Go to the EDSITEment-reviewed site "Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project: Popular Requests" and click the Quicktime or Realmedia link for a three-minute, audio excerpt from " March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom ."

Next have students read King's reply to the Alabama clergymen, known as the " Letter from Birmingham Jail ," and answer the questions that follow below (available in worksheet form on pages 11–12 of the Text Document ). A link to the full text of King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" can be found at the EDSITEment-reviewed site " Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project ." For purposes of this lesson, use the excerpts from the essay, located on pages 6–10 of the Text Document .

• Does King consider himself an "outsider" by staging a civil rights protest in Birmingham? List three reasons he gives in response to this criticism.
• List and explain the four-step process King outlines for their nonviolent campaign. [Note: for an example of the nonviolent mindset King wanted to instill in his protest movement, have students read the Commitment Card that participants were asked to sign in preparation for the protest, which is located at the " Teaching American History " site
• If King admits that breaking laws in order to change them is "a legitimate concern," how does he still justify civil disobedience? List two reasons for his defense of civil disobedience, and explain how King thought a law can be disobeyed without leading to anarchy
• How does King's appeal to "eternal and natural law" help him examine human laws?
• Explain why King thinks the tension stirred up by his protest movement promotes social and political reform.
• How does King respond to the charge that he is an extremist? Whom does he identify as the real extremists?
• Why is King hopeful about the prospects for equal rights for black Americans? Give specific examples and reasons he mentions to support your answer.
• What is King's response to the clergymen's approval of how the police kept order during the demonstrations?

For a visual image of a police response to nonviolent resistance, described in King's letter, have students access online the famous Charles Moore photograph of a water hydrant being turned against Birmingham demonstrators. This photograph can be found at a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed " American Studies of the University of Virginia ." (To view additional photographs in the Charles Moore collection, scroll down to Section VIII, Extending the Lesson, and click on the link provided there.)

Finally, have students read Joseph H. Jackson's "Annual Address to the National Baptist Convention" (September 10, 1964) and answer the questions that follow ( available on pages 17–18 of the Text Document ). A link to the full text of Jackson's "Annual Address to the National Baptist Convention " can be found at Teaching American History . For a shorter version (about half the length), print out and distribute an excerpted version on pages 13–16 of the Text Document .

• Why does Jackson think "street marches, boycotts, and picket lines" on behalf of civil rights are counterproductive? How does his view of America, and especially the role of black Americans in its development, inform his reaction to the mass protest movement?
• Why does Jackson disagree with civil disobedience, which he calls "open opposition to the laws of the land"?
• How do his references to Thurgood Marshall's victory in the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 strengthen his argument? Note: Students can find helpful background on the 1954 Brown decision at " Teaching With Documents: Documents Related to Brown v. Board of Education " at the EDSITEment-reviewed National Archives Education site. For a brief explanation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, students can read " Congress and the Civil Rights Act " at the EDSITEment-reviewed National Archives site.
• What recommendations does he make to black Americans for securing equal rights?
• Why does he think that direct confrontation is not likely to be successful?

For a visual image of the pursuit of civil rights by following principles of law and order, have students access online a Charles Moore photograph of the registering of black voters in Mississippi. This photograph can be found at Powerful Days in Black and White , linked from the EDSITEment-reviewed " American Studies of the University of Virginia ." (To view additional photographs in the Charles Moore collection, scroll down to Extending the Lesson, and click on the link provided there.)

Activity 2. Student Debate: "Law and Order" or "Nonviolent Resistance"?

Divide students into two teams for a debate based on the sources they studied in the previous activity. One team will represent King's nonviolent resistance and the other team will represent the clergymen's and Jackson's "law and order" position. Inform students at the outset that they will be given participation points for listening, helping to develop team arguments, and questioning/dialoguing with the opposing side.

Arrange desks so that each team faces the other. Each team chooses three speakers, one to make the main points of the argument (principal speaker), one to focus attention on one or two key points (second speaker), and one to summarize the argument (summarizer).

Armed with their answers to the questions from Activity 1, each side should spend one 45-minute class period developing arguments and preparing speakers. If the class is too large to make this feasible, have each side divide into three groups, with one speaker in each group. Each small group will then help its speaker to develop his or her argument.

During the following class session give the principal speaker for each side an allotted amount of time to make his or her speech. Do the same for the second speakers (usually less time than the first). Then throw the debate open so that team members from each side can question or make comments to the other side. Alternate this process back and forth several times, as interest requires or time permits, so that each side has an equal chance to state its views. The summarizer concludes the debate by making the team's best case, using the earlier input from his team and the strongest points of the team's two speakers and the open debate.

Allow students additional discussion time, if needed and time permits. Tell them that they will be making a decision about which side of the debate they found more persuasive. Point out that it is quite possible to argue from one perspective in the debate, but to actually hold the opposing view as a matter of preference, principle, or belief.

Assessment 1. To Obey the Laws of the Land or To Resist Them Peacefully—That Is Your Question!

Instruct students to put themselves in the position of someone who must decide which course of action to take: the path of following "law and order" or the path of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience.

• Have students evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments of each side. This can be done in paragraph form, or by filling the worksheet located on pages 19–20 of the Text Document . You may want to have students fill out this form before and during the debate in Section VI, Activity 2.
• Ask students to make a decision: Which route will they take? Obedience to the laws of the land (through the courts and the legislature), or nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience? Ask for a one- or two-paragraph essay giving reasons for their choice. They should justify their decision in light of their understanding of the issue.

Assessment 2. Evaluate, Reflect, Predict

Instruct students to give a one- or two-paragraph answer to each of the following questions:

• Give your evaluation of the strongest argument of each viewpoint and justify your choice.
• Do you think evidence shows that King's viewpoint carried the day? Why or why not?
• Predict what might have happened in the struggle for civil rights if Jackson's "law and order" argument had prevailed, and create a scenario of possible events. If time permits, ask for volunteers to read their answers to this question to spark class discussion of their answers.

Photographs

The Civil Rights Movement was widely photographed by photojournalists, and these photos, printed in the media, in turn acted as a catalyst to propel the Movement forward and give it more favorable reception in the realm of public opinion. One such group of photographs is the Charles Moor Collection, located at " Powerful Days in Black and White ," linked from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Studies at the University of Virginia site. Students may view additional photographs capturing images of segregated public places at the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Photographers site, linked from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Memory site at the Library of Congress.

More Information on Birmingham and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Students may learn more about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the site of the 1963 Birmingham protest, by visiting the following EDSITEment-reviewed National Park Service sites:

• Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site , Georgia
• West Park (Kelly Ingram Park) , Birmingham, Alabama

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination —Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information
• American Studies at the University of Virginia
• Charles Moore Photographs
• Birmingham's Racial Segregation Ordinances
• Letter from Birmingham Jail
• Documents Related to Brown v. Board of Education
• Congress and the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Congress and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (description)
• Martin Luther King, Jr. , National Historic Site, Georgia
• West Park (Kelly Ingram Park), Birmingham, Alabama
• Joseph H. Jackson, Annual Address to the National Baptist Convention (September 10, 1964)
• Martin Luther King Jr., Commitment Card (1963)
• Letter to Martin Luther King (April 12, 1963)

Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project : This NEH supported project brings together speeches, letters, curriculum, and other resources about the life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Materials & Media

Martin luther king, jr. and nonviolent resistance: worksheet 1, related on edsitement, lesson 2: black separatism or the beloved community malcolm x and martin luther king, jr., dr. king's dream, i have a dream: the vision of martin luther king, jr., "sí, se puede": chávez, huerta, and the ufw.

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In her book, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict,” Harvard Professor Erica Chenoweth explains why civil resistance campaigns attract more absolute numbers of people.

Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy

Nonviolent resistance proves potent weapon

Michelle Nicholasen

Weatherhead Center Communications

Erica Chenoweth discovers it is more successful in effecting change than violent campaigns

Recent research suggests that nonviolent civil resistance is far more successful in creating broad-based change than violent campaigns are, a somewhat surprising finding with a story behind it.

When Erica Chenoweth  started her predoctoral fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 2006, she believed in the strategic logic of armed resistance. She had studied terrorism, civil war, and major revolutions — Russian, French, Algerian, and American — and suspected that only violent force had achieved major social and political change. But then a workshop led her to consider proving that violent resistance was more successful than the nonviolent kind. Since the question had never been addressed systematically, she and colleague Maria J. Stephan began a research project.

For the next two years, Chenoweth and Stephan collected data on all violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 that resulted in the overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation. They created a data set of 323 mass actions. Chenoweth analyzed nearly 160 variables related to success criteria, participant categories, state capacity, and more. The results turned her earlier paradigm on its head — in the aggregate, nonviolent civil resistance was far more effective in producing change.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA) sat down with Chenoweth, a new faculty associate who returned to the Harvard Kennedy School this year as professor of public policy, and asked her to explain her findings and share her goals for future research. Chenoweth is also the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Erica Chenoweth

WCFIA:  In your co-authored book, “ Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict ,” you explain clearly why civil resistance campaigns attract more absolute numbers of people — in part it’s because there’s a much lower barrier to participation compared with picking up a weapon. Based on the cases you have studied, what are the key elements necessary for a successful nonviolent campaign?

CHENOWETH:  I think it really boils down to four different things. The first is a large and diverse participation that’s sustained.

The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites. Security forces are important because they ultimately are the agents of repression, and their actions largely decide how violent the confrontation with — and reaction to — the nonviolent campaign is going to be in the end. But there are other security elites, economic and business elites, state media. There are lots of different pillars that support the status quo, and if they can be disrupted or coerced into noncooperation, then that’s a decisive factor.

The third thing is that the campaigns need to be able to have more than just protests; there needs to be a lot of variation in the methods they use.

The fourth thing is that when campaigns are repressed — which is basically inevitable for those calling for major changes — they don’t either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves. If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they’re essentially co-signing what the regime wants — for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they’re probably going to get totally crushed.

In 2006, Erica Chenoweth believed in the strategic logic of armed resistance. Then she was challenged to prove it.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

WCFIA:   Is there any way to resist or protest without making yourself more vulnerable?

CHENOWETH: People have done things like bang pots and pans or go on electricity strikes or something otherwise disruptive that imposes costs on the regime even while people aren’t outside. Staying inside for an extended period equates to a general strike. Even limited strikes are very effective. There were limited and general strikes in Tunisia and Egypt during their uprisings and they were critical.

WCFIA: A general strike seems like a personally costly way to protest, especially if you just stop working or stop buying things. Why are they effective?

CHENOWETH: This is why preparation is so essential. Where campaigns have used strikes or economic noncooperation successfully, they’ve often spent months preparing by stockpiling food, coming up with strike funds, or finding ways to engage in community mutual aid while the strike is underway. One good example of that comes from South Africa. The anti-apartheid movement organized a total boycott of white businesses, which meant that black community members were still going to work and getting a paycheck from white businesses but were not buying their products. Several months of that and the white business elites were in total crisis. They demanded that the apartheid government do something to alleviate the economic strain. With the rise of the reformist Frederik Willem de Klerk within the ruling party, South African leader P.W. Botha resigned. De Klerk was installed as president in 1989, leading to negotiations with the African National Congress [ANC] and then to free elections, where the ANC won overwhelmingly. The reason I bring the case up is because organizers in the black townships had to prepare for the long term by making sure that there were plenty of food and necessities internally to get people by, and that there were provisions for things like Christmas gifts and holidays.

WCFIA: How important is the overall number of participants in a nonviolent campaign?

CHENOWETH: One of the things that isn’t in our book, but that I analyzed later and presented in a TEDx Boulder talk in 2013 , is that a surprisingly small proportion of the population guarantees a successful campaign: just 3.5 percent. That sounds like a really small number, but in absolute terms it’s really an impressive number of people. In the U.S., it would be around 11.5 million people today. Could you imagine if 11.5 million people — that’s about three times the size of the 2017 Women’s March — were doing something like mass noncooperation in a sustained way for nine to 18 months? Things would be totally different in this country.

“Countries in which there were nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within a five-year period compared to countries in which there were violent campaigns — whether the campaigns succeeded or failed.” Erica Chenoweth

WCFIA:   Is there anything about our current time that dictates the need for a change in tactics?

CHENOWETH: Mobilizing without a long-term strategy or plan seems to be happening a lot right now, and that’s not what’s worked in the past. However, there’s nothing about the age we’re in that undermines the basic principles of success. I don’t think that the factors that influence success or failure are fundamentally different. Part of the reason I say that is because they’re basically the same things we observed when Gandhi was organizing in India as we do today. There are just some characteristics of our age that complicate things a bit.

WCFIA: You make the surprising claim that even when they fail, civil resistance campaigns often lead to longer-term reforms than violent campaigns do. How does that work?

CHENOWETH: The finding is that civil resistance campaigns often lead to longer-term reforms and changes that bring about democratization compared with violent campaigns. Countries in which there were nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within a five-year period compared to countries in which there were violent campaigns — whether the campaigns succeeded or failed. This is because even though they “failed” in the short term, the nonviolent campaigns tended to empower moderates or reformers within the ruling elites who gradually began to initiate changes and liberalize the polity.

One of the best examples of this is the Kefaya movement in the early 2000s in Egypt. Although it failed in the short term, the experiences of different activists during that movement surely informed the ability to effectively organize during the 2011 uprisings in Egypt. Another example is the 2007 Saffron Revolution in Myanmar, which was brutally suppressed at the time but which ultimately led to voluntary democratic reforms by the government by 2012. Of course, this doesn’t mean that nonviolent campaigns always lead to democracies — or even that democracy is a cure-all for political strife. As we know, in Myanmar, relative democratization in the country’s institutions has been accompanied by extreme violence against the Rohingya community there. But it’s important to note that such cases are the exceptions rather than the norm. And democratization processes tend to be much bumpier when they occur after large-scale armed conflict instead of civil resistance campaigns, as was the case in Myanmar.

WCFIA:  What are your current projects?

CHENOWETH: I’m still collecting data on nonviolent campaigns around the world. And I’m also collecting data on the nonviolent actions that are happening every day in the United States through a project called the Crowd Counting Consortium , with Jeremy Pressman of the University of Connecticut. It began in 2017, when Jeremy and I were collecting data during the Women’s March. Someone tweeted a link to our spreadsheet, and then we got tons of emails overnight from people writing in to say, “Oh, your number in Portland is too low; our protest hasn’t made the newspapers yet, but we had this many people.” There were the most incredible appeals. There was a nursing home in Encinitas, Calif., where 50 octogenarians organized an indoor women’s march with their granddaughters. Their local news had shot a video of them and they asked to be counted, and we put them in the sheet. People are very active and it’s not part of the broader public discourse about where we are as a country. I think it’s important to tell that story.

This originally appeared on the Weatherhead Center website . Part two of the series is now online.

The artwork, “Love and Revolution,”  revolutionary graffiti at Saleh Selim Street on the island of Zamalek, Cairo, was photographed by Hossam el-Hamalawy on Oct. 23, 2011.

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Science for Peace

A Peace Education NGO

Based in Toronto

• Richard Sandbrook
• Aug 2, 2022

10 Essential Things to Know about Nonviolent Resistance

Updated: Aug 15, 2022

Richard Sandbrook is professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto and President of Science for Peace

Contributed fact sheet for the Working Group on Nonviolent Resistance

Two traditions of thinking about nonviolence hold sway.

Principled nonviolence: Adherents decide to use nonviolent means on ethical grounds. In the Gandhian approach, nonviolence is a way of living a moral life.

Pragmatic nonviolence : Activists, seeking to win rights, freedom, or justice, choose to use nonviolent techniques because they are more effective than violent means in achieving these goals. Gene Sharp is a major proponent of this approach.

However, in practice, principled proponents, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, proved to be adept at pragmatically using nonviolent methods, Equally, some pragmatists, in their hearts, are pacifists as well as hard-headed realists.

2. Nonviolent resistance (NVR), from the pragmatic viewpoint, is a form of political struggle.

Unarmed civilians employ coordinated and unconventional methods to deter or defend against usurpers and foreign aggressors or to overturn injustices, though without causing or threatening bodily harm to their opponents. Examples of nonviolent methods include demonstrations, protests, strikes, stay-at-homes, boycotts, street theatre, derision of authorities, rebellious graffiti and other communications, shunning of collaborators, building alternative institutions, and many more.

3. NVR is not a doctrine of passive resistance or acceptance of weakness.

It is not passive, but active, demanding coordinated and unconventional struggle.

Far from evincing weakness, NVR demands immense courage of resisters, who are aware their resistance may lead to injury, imprisonment, torture, or even death. NVR is thus not for the weak-hearted. It is a strategy only for those with the determination to persist in the face of repression.

4. The aim of NVR is to build support and undermine the pillars of the opponent’s power.

NVR movements succeed by building up a large and diverse following of activists, winning over passive supporters, and precipitating demoralization and defections among the pillars of the established order (the police, army, bureaucrats, insiders).

5. NVR is stunningly effective in comparison to violent campaigns.

Erica Chenoworth, who has undertaken path-breaking research, discovers that, of the 627 revolutionary campaigns waged worldwide between 1900 and 2019, more than half of the nonviolent campaigns succeeded in achieving their goals, whereas only about a quarter of the violent ones succeeded. Nonviolent struggles are twice as effective as violent struggles. Yet the influence of the military-industrial complex, the widespread glorification of violence in popular culture and the equating of masculinity with domination obscure the superiority of nonviolence as a political stratagem.

6. The leverage of NVR stems from the dependence of rulers on the consent of significant sectors of the population (Gene Sharp).

Rulers cannot rule if bureaucrats obstruct, armed forces and police hold back, people shirk work and ignore laws and regulations, and foreign powers desert. Rulers do not need the support of entire populations; the Nazis could destroy Jews, Roma, the mentally and physically disabled, socialists and union leaders, so long as the ethnic Germans acquiesced to their rule. Hence, the task of nonviolent resisters is fourfold: -to build a large and diverse movement -to attract the loyalty of passive supporters -to encourage the defection of pillars of the regime -to build support in the international community.

7. The effectiveness of NVR depends on many factors.

Organization: to attract the support of a large and diverse group of supporters.

prior coalition building ensures a core of committed activists

as unity is critical, the coalition needs both clear, unifying goals, and processes to resolve internal disputes

leadership is needed, but it must be decentralized, to make it difficult for rulers to decapitate resistance by arresting its top leaders.

Training in nonviolent methods: an effective movement must be able to shift tactics as circumstances change. Noncooperation with the regime is one of the most effective set of methods in the playbook, but these methods require coordinated action.

Strategic and tactical agility : protests and demonstrations are only the public face of nonviolent action; effective movements employ the full panoply of strategies, depending on the degree of repression by the rulers. The resisters win when they attract the support of passive supporters and precipitate mass defections among the pillars of the established order.

Nonviolent discipline. Rulers respond to NVR by neutralizing the leaders of the opposition, undermining the movement’s unity, and fomenting a violent response on the part of protesters. If the last tactic works, the government can then justify violent repression. It can portray the resisters as a terrorist threat. The resisters can succeed only if it is clear to everyone who is the major threat, namely a ruthless and violent governing elite. Thus, destruction of property (such as the destruction of bridges as enemy forces advance) is permissible, so long as it entails no loss of life or injury. Collaborators of the regime can be shunned, but not assassinated. Such nonviolent discipline is difficult to maintain. It runs counter to one’s inclination to respond to violence with violence. The need for discipline underlines the importance of training.

8. NVR can be employed to deter and defeat foreign aggressors, as well as to prevent or overthrow dictatorships and establish rights and justice.

Civilian-based defence, in the words of Gene Sharp in his book of that name (1990) is “a policy [whereby] the whole population and the society’s institutions become the fighting forces. Their weaponry consists of a vast variety of forms of psychological, economic, social, and political resistance and counter-attack. This policy aims to deter attacks and to defend against them by preparations to make the society unrulable by would-be tyrants and aggressors. The trained population and the society’s institutions would be prepared to deny attackers their objectives and to make consolidation of political control impossible. These aims would be achieved by applying massive and selective noncooperation and defiance. In addition, where possible, the defending country would aim to create maximum international problems for the attackers and to subvert the reliability of their troops and functionaries.” History holds many examples of civilian defence, including in Denmark and Norway during Nazi occupation and in Czechoslovakia following the 1968 “Prague Spring,” when a Warsaw Pact army sought to reimpose rigid Soviet-style Communism.

9. NVR became less effective in the period since 2010.

Although nonviolent campaigns worldwide reached unprecedented numbers prior to the 2020 pandemic, their success rate fell. Erica Chenoworth in her 2021 book Civil Resistance provides the statistics. (However, nonviolent resistance remained more effective than violent campaigns.) Chenoworth also offers some tentative reasons for this comparative decline. She highlights “smart repression” by governments and strategic errors on the part of resistance movements. Each is a major subject, and each demands attention if NVR is not to repeat the errors of the past. Restrictions accompanying the pandemic (2020-2022) dampened NVR by rendering mass gatherings illegal and/or dangerous.

10. “Smart repression” needs to be better understood and counteracted.

Nonviolent movements’ strength depends on maintaining unity among a diverse following, sustaining nonviolent discipline, and demonstrating versatility in nonviolent methods. Determined rulers will undermine the movement’s unity, provoke violent responses, and neutralize the leadership. Digital means of communication have assisted NVR movements in mobilizing large numbers of protesters and in spreading their messages via social media. But there is a dark side to digital technology . It allows governments to enhance surveillance of dissidents, identify leaders, and sow discord through misinformation campaigns. The effectiveness of the next phase of NVR depends both on neutralizing smart resistance and returning to the fundamentals of nonviolence: organization, training, nonviolent discipline, and the versatile use of the full panoply of nonviolent techniques.

• Nonviolence and Civil Society
• General Commentary

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Campaign Nonviolence

These six global struggles show the power of nonviolence in action.

In today’s media world — especially if you live inside the U.S. media bubble — if you hear news about foreign countries, it tends to be about business, political leaders, wars or disasters. Overall, it presents a dismal view of our fellow citizens — not to mention a disempowering one. But here are six of the many stories of ongoing nonviolent campaigns for change in countries across the world. They show the agency and power of ordinary people working for justice, rights, peace and dignity. They show that people don’t have to hold wealth, weapons or traditional power to be powerful. Instead, they need community, connection and some tools of nonviolent action.

1. India’s women farmers reassert their place and presence in farmer protests : India’s farmer protests have captured headlines around the world — as well they should. They are the largest protests in human history. On Jan. 18, Mahila Kisan Diwas (Women Farmers’ Day), women farmers across India demonstrated to reassert their place in the ongoing farmers’ struggle against Modi’s neoliberal agricultural laws. This action was organized in part to redress gender imbalances, particularly around media coverage that cut women out of the struggle’s story.

Due to the impacts of global patriarchy, women in movements have often needed to correct the record, rebalance who’s in the room and invited to the table, and (re)assert their pivotal roles in creating change. Studies show that women play powerful roles in nonviolent movements. They were at the heart of Sudan’s 2019 nonviolent revolution against a 30-year dictatorship. They propelled Chile’s recent constitutional revision campaign so decisively that the slogan for the re-write is “never again without women.” And, in India, women and women farmers have been organizing mass demonstrations, general strikes and protest encampments in such large numbers that they’ve consistently broken world records over and over in the past two years. It’s important to get the story straight!

Due to the impacts of global patriarchy, women in movements have often needed to correct the record.

2. Striking Palestinian workers triumph : Much of the news about Palestine is heart wrenching and tragic. We hear of bombings, orchards being razed, houses bulldozed and more abuses of Israeli occupation. Yet, here is a nonviolent campaign that is significant because the Palestinian workers not only won human and labor rights, they also won an apology for the racist comments their Israeli employer made. During the 19 days of an open-ended strike, the workers lost all wages and were threatened with being fired and replaced with other workers. But they persevered, and they won. (A word of caution: the strike’s agreement must still be upheld by an Israeli court.)

Palestinian organizers are heartened by the news. The secretary of the trade unions in Palestine said, “We hope that this small victory is the beginning of other victories for our workers and our people that have been subjugated by Israel’s inhumane apartheid and settler colonial oppression.” They also credited international solidarity and words of encouragement from global workers with helping them persevere and succeed.

3. In Sri Lanka, hundreds of tea plantation workers strike to defend jobs and social rights : In Sri Lanka, workers on tea plantations are unionized, but due to lack of action by union leadership, Gartemore Estate workers have been on a wildcat strike (a strike without union approval) since the end of December. After the Gartemore Estate sold off a portion of its lands, the workers feared the erosion of their rights and the loss of their jobs under the new management. They are worried that the current owner plans to develop tourist facilities on the estate instead of tea, which would drastically reduce the workforce. Some workers also fear that important personal documents, including birth and death certificates, health and other family papers, currently in the estate office would not be protected under the new management. The strike organizers are demanding a written agreement — not a verbal promise — that outlines a set of demands to protect workers around these issues. 

4. Doctors in Peru launch hunger strike over lack of protections and equipment: Since the start of the pandemic, Peru’s healthcare workers have been using nonviolent action to push for improved protections and equipment. Now, at least four doctors began a hunger strike as a protest against the substandard working conditions. Medical personnel have been protesting for a week just as a second wave of coronavirus cases is hitting the country. They’re not alone. Medical worker strikes have been erupting around the world. Just two weeks ago, medical students in Ecuador won similar demands after walking off the job and withstanding police repression. Will the Peruvian doctors succeed? Time will tell.

These workers are up against the “fire and rehire” policies that the pandemic’s economic impacts have aggravated.

5. Oil workers strike in Kazakhstan : More than 60 oil workers have gone on strike in Kazakhstan’s northwestern region, seeking a salary increase. The workers walked out on Jan. 29 saying that their monthly salaries of about $160 should be doubled, as they currently fail to allow them to provide for their families. They could find solidarity with the office employees of a British gas company , who have held numerous strike actions over substandard wages. These workers — and those in many other industries — are up against the “fire and rehire” policies that the pandemic’s economic impacts have aggravated.

6. Canadians block weapons trucks going to the Yemen War : Serious about halting the Yemen War, Canadians blocked a caravan of trucks hauling armored vehicles and other weapons to shipping locations headed for Saudi Arabia. Sitting down in front of the wheels, stretching banners across the roads, and risking arrest were a few of the tactics used. The direct action in Hamilton, Ontario coincides with hundreds of events to pressure the Biden administration, and other governments, to stop arming Saudi Arabia. Their action is reminiscent of the ways Italian dock workers have repeatedly refused to load weapons onto ships headed to Saudi Arabia in opposition of the Yemen War. 

These six nonviolent campaigns are just a fraction of the stories Nonviolence News collects and circulates week after week, both in the United States and abroad. (You can read more in this week’s round-up here and sign-up to the newsletter to receive it in your inbox.) These stories reveal that nonviolent action is a global phenomenon — and that it’s being used for everything from peace to increased wages to human rights and health protections and more. Each struggle has unique lessons to offer all of us in our organizing work. At the same time, these stories also remind us of our common humanity — and that ordinary people everywhere are striving for justice, peace and fairness. 

Rivera Sun is the editor of Nonviolence News , the author of "The Dandelion Insurrection" and other novels, and a nationwide trainer in strategy for nonviolent movements. www.riverasun.com

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Walking for peace and nuclear abolition with the Kings Bay Plowshares

The catholic critique of war is hiding in plain sight, a nursery theory of social change, when tragedy hits close to home.

Campaign Nonviolence, a project of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service, is working for a new culture of nonviolence by connecting the issues to end war, poverty, racism and environmental destruction. We organize The Nonviolent Cities Project and the annual Campaign Nonviolence Week of Actions.

Waging Nonviolence partners with other organizations and publishes their work.

"Nonviolence and Racial Justice"

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date:  February 6, 1957

Location:  Chicago, Ill.

Genre:  Published Article

Topic:  Nonviolence

On 26 November 1956 King submitted an article on nonviolence to  Christian Century , a liberal weekly religious magazine. In his cover letter to editor Harold Fey, King noted that “it has just been within the last few days that I have been able to take a little time off to do some much needed writing. If you find it possible to publish this article, please feel free to make any suggestions concerning the content.” He added that the journal’s “sympathetic treatment” of the bus boycott had been of “inestimable value.” 1  On 31 January Fey thanked King for the “excellent” article, and he featured it as the main essay in an issue devoted to race relations. 2  Drawing from his many speeches on the topic, King provides here a concise summary of his views regarding nonviolent resistance to segregation. 3

It is commonly observed that the crisis in race relations dominates the arena of American life. This crisis has been precipitated by two factors: the determined resistance of reactionary elements in the south to the Supreme Court’s momentous decision outlawing segregation in the public schools, and the radical change in the Negro’s evaluation of himself. While southern legislative halls ring with open defiance through “interposition” and “nullification,” while a modern version of the Ku Klux KIan has arisen in the form of “respectable” white citizens’ councils, a revolutionary change has taken place in the Negro’s conception of his own nature and destiny. Once he thought of himself as an inferior and patiently accepted injustice and exploitation. Those days are gone.

The first Negroes landed on the shores of this nation in 1619, one year ahead of the Pilgrim Fathers. They were brought here from Africa and, unlike the Pilgrims, they were brought against their will, as slaves. Throughout the era of slavery the Negro was treated in inhuman fashion. He was considered a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. He was merely a depersonalized cog in a vast plantation machine. The famous Dred Scott decision of 1857 well illustrates his status during slavery. In this decision the Supreme Court of the United States said, in substance, that the Negro is not a citizen of the United States; he is merely property subject to the dictates of his owner.

After his emancipation in 1863, the Negro still confronted oppression and inequality. It is true that for a time, while the army of occupation remained in the south and Reconstruction ruled, he had a brief period of eminence and political power. But he was quickly overwhelmed by the white majority. Then in 1896, through the Plessy  v.  Ferguson decision, a new kind of slavery came into being. In this decision the Supreme Court of the nation established the doctrine of “separate but equal” as the law of the land. Very soon it was discovered that the concrete result of this doctrine was strict enforcement of the “separate,” without the slightest intention to abide by the “equal.” So the Plessy doctrine ended up plunging the Negro into the abyss of exploitation where he experienced the bleakness of nagging injustice.

A Peace That Was No Peace

Living under these conditions, many Negroes lost faith in themselves. They came to feel that perhaps they were less than human. So long as the Negro maintained this subservient attitude and accepted the “place” assigned him, a sort of racial peace existed. But it was an uneasy peace in which the Negro was forced patiently to submit to insult, injustice and exploitation. It was a negative peace. True peace is not merely the absence of some negative force—tension, confusion or war; it is the presence of some positive force—justice, good will and brotherhood.

Then circumstances made it necessary for the Negro to travel more. From the rural plantation he migrated to the urban industrial community. His economic life began gradually to rise, his crippling illiteracy gradually to decline. A myriad of factors came together to cause the Negro to take a new look at himself. Individually and as a group, he began to re-evaluate himself. And so he came to feel that he was somebody. His religion revealed to him that God loves all his children and that the important thing about a man is “not his specificity but his fundamentum,” not the texture of his hair or the color of his skin but the quality of his soul.

This new self-respect and sense of dignity on the part of the Negro undermined the south’s negative peace, since the white man refused to accept the change. The tension we are witnessing in race relations today can be explained in part by this revolutionary change in the Negro’s evaluation of himself and his determination to struggle and sacrifice until the walls of segregation have been finally crushed by the battering rams of justice.

Quest for Freedom Everywhere

The determination of Negro Americans to win freedom from every form of oppression springs from the same profound longing for freedom that motivates oppressed peoples all over the world. The rhythmic beat of deep discontent in Africa and Asia is at bottom a quest for freedom and human dignity on the part of people who have long been victims of colonialism. The struggle for freedom on the part of oppressed people in general and of the American Negro in particular has developed slowly and is not going to end suddenly. Privileged groups rarely give up their privileges without strong resistance. But when oppressed people rise up against oppression there is no stopping point short of full freedom. Realism compels us to admit that the struggle will continue until freedom is a reality for all the oppressed peoples of the world.

Hence the basic question which confronts the world’s oppressed is: How is the struggle against the forces of injustice to be waged? There are two possible answers. One is resort to the all too prevalent method of physical violence and corroding hatred. The danger of this method is its futility. Violence solves no social problems; it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Through the vistas of time a voice still cries to every potential Peter, “Put up your sword!" 4  The shores of history are white with the bleached bones of nations and communities that failed to follow this command. If the American Negro and other victims of oppression succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for justice, unborn generations will live in a desolate night of bitterness, and their chief legacy will be an endless reign of chaos.

Alternative to Violence

The alternative to violence is nonviolent resistance. This method was made famous in our generation by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used it to free India from the domination of the British empire. Five points can be made concerning nonviolence as a method in bringing about better racial conditions.

First, this is not a method for cowards; it  does  resist. The nonviolent resister is just as strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests as is the person who uses violence. His method is passive or nonaggressive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent. But his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade the opponent that he is mistaken. This method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually; it is nonaggressive physically but dynamically aggressive spiritually.

A second point is that nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.

A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces. It is evil we are seeking to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. Those of us who struggle against racial injustice must come to see that the basic tension is not between races. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery, Alabama: “The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is at bottom between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory it will be a victory not merely for 50,000 Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light. We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may happen to be injust.”

A fourth point that must be brought out concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.

The Meaning of ‘Love’

In speaking of love at this point, we are not referring to some sentimental emotion. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. “Love” in this connection means understanding good will. There are three words for love in the Greek New Testament. 5  First, there is  eros . In Platonic philosophy  eros  meant the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. It has come now to mean a sort of aesthetic or romantic love. Second, there is  philia . It meant intimate affectionateness between friends.  Philia  denotes a sort of reciprocal love: the person loves because he is loved. When we speak of loving those who oppose us we refer to neither  eros  nor  philia ; we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word  agape .  Agape  means nothing sentimental or basically affectionate; it means understanding, redeeming good will for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. It is the love of God working in the lives of men. When we love on the  agape  level we love men not because we like them, not because their attitudes and ways appeal to us, but because God loves them. Here we rise to the position of loving the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed he does. 6

Finally, the method of nonviolence is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. It is this deep faith in the future that causes the nonviolent resister to accept suffering without retaliation. He knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. This belief that God is on the side of truth and justice comes down to us from the long tradition of our Christian faith. There is something at the very center of our faith which reminds us that Good Friday may reign for a day, but ultimately it must give way to the triumphant beat of the Easter drums. Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but one day that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. So in Montgomery we can walk and never get weary, because we know that there will be a great camp meeting in the promised land of freedom and justice. 7

This, in brief, is the method of nonviolent resistance. It is a method that challenges all people struggling for justice and freedom. God grant that we wage the struggle with dignity and discipline. May all who suffer oppression in this world reject the self-defeating method of retaliatory violence and choose the method that seeks to redeem. Through using this method wisely and courageously we will emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright daybreak of freedom and justice.

1.  For  Christian Century  articles supportive of the boycott see Harold Fey, “Negro Ministers Arrested,” 7 March 1956, pp. 294-295; “National Council Commends Montgomery Ministers,” 14 March 1956, p. 325; and “Segregation on Intrastate Buses Ruled Illegal,” 28 November 1956, p. 1379.

2.  King’s draft of the article has not been located; the extent of Fey’s editing of it is therefore unknown. The previous September, Bayard Rustin had sent King a memorandum on the Christian duty to oppose segregation and urged him to send “something similar” to  Christian Century  (Rustin to King, 26 September 1956, in  Papers  3:381-382).

3.  In a 26 November 1957 letter to Dolores Gentile of King’s literary agency, Fey agreed to reassign the article’s copyright to allow King use of the material for his book on the bus boycott,  Stride Toward Freedom . Much of the article’s substance, especially King’s discussion of the “Alternative to Violence” appeared in the book (see  Stride , pp. 102-107). Note also the parallels between this article and King’s 27 June 1958 speech, “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” delivered at the AFSC general conference in Cape May, New Jersey; it was published in the 26 July 1958 issue of  Friends Journal .

4. John 18:11.

5.   While the Greek language has three words for love,  eros  does not appear in the Greek New Testament.

6. Cf. Fosdick,  On Being Fit to Live With: Sermons on Post-war Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946), pp. 16-17.

7.  In a similar discussion in  Stride Toward Freedom , King included an additional element of nonviolence: “The nonviolent resister is willing to accept violence if necessary, but never to inflict it. He does not seek to dodge jail. . . . Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities” (p. 103).

Source:  Christian Century  74 (6 February 1957): 165-167.

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Satyagraha Movement: Essay & Important Notes

The duties of satyagrahis.

In practicing satyagraha, the satyagrahis have to fulfill the following duties:

• Observe non-violence in mind.
• Observe the root cause of a situation.
• Seek truth.
• Undergo a process of self-scrutiny.
• Adhere to non-violence.

Gandhiji’s Idea of Satyagraha

When Mahatma Gandhi started the Satyagraha Movement in India in 1915, he had little idea of how popular the movement will become and eventually help India gain independence. Gandhiji’s idea of satyagraha included the following:

• Satyagraha was a mass agitation that did not use any violence and was based on facts.
• Gandhiji believed that if the cause of the issue was true and the fight was against injustice, the fight would definitely be won.
• Satyagraha involved winning the battle by appealing to the oppressors and avoid non-violent means.

Satyagraha emphasized the power of truth and the need to fight for the truth.

Movements where Satyagraha was used

Satyagraha became one of the most important and detrimental tools in India’s fight against the British and the national movements based on this idea shook the Britishers. The most prominent movements where satyagraha was used as the main weapon were:

• 1917 Champaran Satyagraha
• 1918 Ahmedabad Satyagraha
• 1918 Kheda Satyagraha

During this movement, Gandhiji teamed up with Sardar Vallabhbai Patel to fight for the peasants who were in distress because of low crop production. According to the revenue code, the peasants were entitled to a full concession, but the government did not want to let go of the revenue. Gandhiji asked the peasants to fight against injustice and also asked the rich farmers to not pay revenue. When the British government asked the rich farmers to pay revenue, they did not agree and the government had to let go of the revenue to help the peasants.

• 1919 Rowlatt Satyagraha

The Rowlatt Satyagraha was launched to protest an act that the British government had introduced. This law allowed the government to arrest any protesting Indian without a warrant and detain the person for two years. Gandhiji called for a nationwide strike by fasting and praying. However, there were many violent outbreaks and the movement was called off.

• 1930 Salt Satyagraha

The idea of Gandhiji’s Satyagraha in many ways helped India win its independence. Satyagraha was adopted as a tool by many to fight for their cause. The Norwegians, for example, adopted an effective non-violent resistance against the Germans during the Second World War. Even today, the idea of Satyagraha can be seen adopted by many people in different parts of the world to fight against injustice.

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