7d. Significant Direct Actions

The civil rights movement included many individual acts, as well as small and large group actions against segregation. In almost all cases, deliberate training and strategizing around nonviolent action preceded a protest. 

Here is an excerpt from a 1964 training handbook for “Freedom Army Recruits” issued by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), talking about the use of nonviolence as a weapon:

Training also included learning how to withstand abuse and assault without fighting back, as in the images to the right. Would you be able to do that? 

I think the nonviolent training undertaken by civil rights activists was essential to the success of the many protests, as it gave them tools of resilience in the face of violence. Their methods also undermined the authority of those who enacted violence against the protestors, and induced empathy on the part of bystanders.

Here are a few examples of where such tactics were used.

Journey of Reconciliation and Freedom Rides

On July 6, 1944, twenty-eight-year-old Irene Morgan refused to move to the back of the bus in the state of Virginia. This was eleven years before Rosa Parks. She was arrested and convicted of breaking the state law against integrated seating on buses. Her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court led to a decision barring segregation in interstate commerce, however many southern states refused to enforce the ruling. In response, several members of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) proposed a bus trip that would cross state boundaries and thus test the rules which said a state could not impose its segregation laws on another state.

In April 1947, eight white men and eight Black men began the Journey of Reconciliation in Washington, D.C., travelling through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. They did not travel into the ‘deep south’ because of the greater potential for violence. Because laws on segregated buses were state laws, the bus passengers were testing a statute that said one state could not impose its segregation laws on another state. They travelled on buses that crossed state lines and, because they travelled from northern states without segregation laws, the riders said they shouldn’t be put off of buses when entering southern states. During the two-week journey, white men sometimes sat in back, Black men sometimes sat in front, and occasionally Black and white men sat together on a seat – all prohibited by some state laws. There was a plan to include women in a future trip. A few of the participants were arrested and there was minor violence.

Some of the participants on the Journey of Reconciliation were men you learned about in the film The Good War in Module 5. The end of the film notes that some of the Conscientious Objectors of the Second World War became lifetime antiwar and social justice activists, including in the civil rights movement.

Songs became an important part of the civil rights movement and singing also became a strategy for protestors engaged in direct action, as it created solidarity and strength and reduced fear in the face of anger and hate from police and the public. Bayard Rustin’s words are used in the theme song for the Journey of Reconciliation titled, “You don’t have to ride Jim Crow.”

The Journey of Reconciliation was the precursor to the 1961 Freedom Rides that also protested segregation on interstate bus travel. For the Freedom Riders, singing was also a central part of their strategy: watch this brief excerpt from a documentary on the Freedom Rides, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Freedom Riders: The Music (~5 minutes), where the riders reflect on the role of music in the movement. 

The Freedom Rides, which were organized jointly by CORE and SNCC, ventured further into southern states where hatred and discrimination were strongest. Twelve interracial riders began the first Freedom Ride in May 1961. There were many arrests along the way and when they reached Alabama, violent mobs, including the Ku Klux Klan, attacked the riders and fire-bombed the bus. Because of the danger, the Ride officially ended at Birmingham, however there was not agreement amongst organizers about whether to continue or not. Some felt they needed to persist, even in the face of violence, while others felt the risk to lives was too great. The Freedom Rides resumed and continued for over seven months; in total 436 individuals participated in at least sixty separate Freedom Rides.

Lunch Counter Sit-ins

The ‘sit-in’ was a popular and effective peace movement tactic in the 1960s and 1970s. It was adopted by young people protesting the American war in Vietnam and also by the students in the civil rights movement. Sit-ins at lunch counters where Blacks were disallowed really tested the protesters’ commitment to nonviolence. 

On February 1, 1960, four young Black men, trained in nonviolent action, sat down at a whites-only lunch counter at a store in Greensboro, South Carolina. They refused to leave when asked, and remained on their stools until the store closed. The next day more students participated and what followed was a mass mobilization of young adult resisters; over the next month sit-ins were held at thirty locations in seven states and after three months, up to 50,000 students had participated.² The students were harassed, assaulted, and many arrests occurred. But they adhered to nonviolence and this helped to reinforce the ‘truth’ of their cause – for themselves and others. The sit-ins propelled the civil rights movement forward because it put youth at the centre of the struggle, and also highlighted nonviolent action as a powerful ‘weapon’ for change.

There were many other carefully planned and executed protests in the civil rights movement. The reading “Learning Lessons” by David Cortright compares two other protests – in Albany, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama – that had different results. What features of the Birmingham protest resulted in greater success? Cortright suggests these qualities:

• strategy needs to happen before action;
• know your facts;
• specific focus is required;
• organizational unity is needed;
• protestors must be resolute in their nonviolence and prepare for sacrifice;
• use the media;
• other?

Cortright goes on to analyze some later peace movements according to these features, including the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s and the anti-American war in Iraq movement of the early 2000s. Keep this in mind for later modules.