A History of the Civil Rights Movement

THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT

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Understanding Nonviolent Protest In February 1956, a New York civil rights group called the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sent one of its leading members, Bayard Rustin, to Montgomery. Rustin was a member of a religious group called the Quakers, who strongly opposed war and fighting. Rustin had been a pro ponent of nonviolent protest since the 1940s. He had spent time with Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, who had effectively used civil disobe dience to help India gain its freedom from Great Britain. Rustin had also studied the methods of 19th century American abolitionist Henry David Thoreau. In Montgomery, Rustin helped to trained Martin Luther King and others boycott leaders in how to use nonviolent tactics. Civil disobedience occurs when a person refuses to obey laws that the person feels are unfair. A key part of this tactic is that the person cannot fight back or resist the consequence of breaking the law, such as being thrown in jail. This is known as “nonviolent resistance,” or nonviolence. The idea behind nonviolent civil disobedience is that when large groups of people allow themselves to be punished for refusing to accept unjust laws, their action draws public attention to the unfair situation. As the govern ment realizes that people would rather go to prison than live under the existing laws and conditions, it is pressured to make changes. At first, it was hard for civil rights leaders to explain why nonviolent civil disobedience would be effective. “We had to make it clear that nonvi olent resistance is not a method of cowardice. It does resist,” explained King in 1957. “The nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding. This was always a cry that we had to set before people that our aim is not to defeat the white community . . . but to win the friendship of all of the persons who had perpetrated this system in the past. The end of violence or the after math of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconcilia tion and the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption.”