Sociological Inquiry 38 (Winter): 65-76 Nonviolence and Differentiation in the Equal Rights Movement PAUL E. WEHR Haverford College The larger movement for racial equality in the United States has experienced considerable structural and ideological differentiation in the past decade, largely as a consequence of disagreement over tactics to be employed. Two direct-action sub-movements, the southern sit-ins and the urban riots, best illustrate the divergence with the former committed to tactical nonviolence and the latter to violent means of effecting social change. To regain the momentum lost through this differentiation, certain leaders must reorganize a major part of the black population around a tactical approach that acknowledges both the peculiar needs and temper of the potential protestors, and the nature and tolerance level of the system it seeks to change. Responding to these crileria, the approach may develop in the form of an extremely militant but basically nonviolent tactic of social disruption, combining all but the most violent techniques used to date by equal rights activists. An astute observer of the movement for Negro civil rights in the United States has suggested that the movement, as it has developed in the past century, might be characterized in terms of four successive stages. a period of established but rather hazy order [before 19191; a period of violence as that order is challenged [1919-1960]; a period of disorder without much violence [1960 onward]; and finally a period in which a new and more carefully defined system of order is agreed upon and established, incorporating as new liberties the forms of disorder used to challenge the old order and incorporating (at least in part) the social group that has been carrying on the challenge.(1) In the wake of widespread rioting in America's inner-city ghettos during the summers of 1964-1967, this theory of successive developmental stages must be drawn into question. Indeed, it would perhaps be more valid to conceptualize the movement, not as a single social phenomenon evolving through successive phases, but as a cluster of sub-movements, each developing out of a peculiar set of conditions with its own leadership, ideological orientation and tactical approach to goal-attainment. The basic process occurring within the larger movement, then, has been one of progressive structural differentiation rather than one of linear transformation, with a particular submovement using a different basic tactic gaining ascendancy in a certain period. Both the demand and leadership factors that Parsons cites as instrumental in the differentiation process have been operative.(2) Thus did litigation and other intra-system action on the part of Negro leadership characterize the period of civil rights activism before 1956. Once the legal bases for racial equality had been established, however, it was likely that a new direction would emerge within the movement to force the -------------------- 1 Arthur Waskow, From Race Riot to Sit-In, New York: Doubleday, 1966, p 299. 2 Talcott Parsons, "Some Considerations on the Theorv of Social Change." Rural Sociology, 26, p 235. -------------------- system into line with the official norms of the larger polity. This sub-movement, termed "creative disorder" by certain leaders, centered around new leadership and the tactic of nonviolent direct action, rapidly captured the imagination and commitment of a major part of the total movement. A further differentiation has recently occurred, with a sub-movement espousing violent direct action, alienated from, but to some degree emerging from the creative disorder movement. Three sub-movements, then, presently coexist, each with a different tactical approach. The NAACP and the Urban League continue to work within the established political framework, organizations such as the Southem Christian Leadership Conference and CORE use nonviolent action outside of this framework, and such groups as SNCC and RAM seek increasingly to change the system through violent means. We are concerned here primarily , with nonviolence as a tactic for inducing desired change, and the important role it plays in determining the nature of the total minority rights movement. The relationship of nonviolence to the differentiation that has occurred within the movement is of special import since it is about this point of contention, what means are appropriate and effective given the ends defined, that the submovements differ most. One of the most striking developments in the movement's most recent career has been the ascendancy of a new group of radical leaders convinced of the ultimate success of a strategy built around selective violence, and the corresponding decline of both the concept and leadership of nonviolent creative disorder. Leaders committed to nonviolent direct action are both fewer in number and less influential at present than they were earlier in the 1960s and find it increasingly difficult to command the popular following they once had. While the differentiation has involved the appearance of new, radical organizations largely small and local in orientation, it concerns two of the established national organizations as well. Both the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality reflect the shift from the nonviolent focus as they have lost or forced out leaders committed to nonviolence.(3) The leadership of CORE, the originator of the sit-in and other techniques of creative disorder, currently threatens to make the "quantum jump" from its present assertion of the "natural right of self defense" for Negroes, to the encouragement of selective violence in the pursuit of racial equality and justice. Even those groups retaining their nonviolent posture, such as King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, have been forced to regroup to give their nonviolence a new militancy more relevant to the demands and temper of the urban ghettos. King's current proposal for a massive Washington camp-in to pressure national legislators exemplifies his increasingly militant stance. No organization better reflects the current differentiation in the movement, however, than SNCC which more-than any other national equal rights group has been linked with the urban insurrections of the past several summers through both fiery speeches of certain of its leaders and grass roots activism among the urban poor. Its career provides an instructive frame of reference in which to examine three salient aspects of the changing role of nonviolence in civil rights activity: 1) The role of nonviolence in the creative disorder movement; 2) The nature and chronology of the eclipse of nonviolence; and 3) The future of nonviolent action as an acceptable and effective technique in the movement. NONVIOLENCE AND CREATIVE DLSORDER The activist-confrontation phase of the equal rights movement had its origin in the philosophy and techniques of nonviolence. Its initial event, the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956, was based on an ethical commitment to nonviolent action. Martin Luther King's ideology was solidly grounded both in the principles of Christian ------------- (3)Former SNCC leaders John Lewis and Robert Moses are presently working respectively with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a Harlem action program. -------------- nonviolence and the Gandhian principle of satyagraha. The technique of nonviolent protest, however, was not really tested in the South until the February, 1960 sit-in demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina. SNCC was formed less than three months later in Raleigh, as the student leaders of rapidly proliferating sit-in groups throughout the upper South met to seek coordination of activity. While participants in that April meeting expressed varying degrees of militancy, there was general agreement that nonviolent action would be the only acceptable and effective approach to changing the segregated system. SNCC leadership, closely related as it initially was to King's SCLC, seemed convinced that nonviolence was morally as well as tactically appropriate and necessary. The organization's original statement of purpose was quite deliberately built around the concept of nonviolence and this commitment set the moral tone for civil rights action in the South for several years. "We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our belief and the manner of our action. Nonviolence, as it grows from Judaic Christian tradition seeks a social order of justice permeated by love. Integration of human endeavor represents the crucial first step toward such a society. Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear. Love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice-. hope ends despair. Faith reconciles doubt. Peace dominates war. Mutual regards cancel enmity. Justice for all overthrows injustice. The redemptive community supercedes immoral social systems. By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence, nonviolence nurtures the atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities." (4) This early commitment to nonviolence was reflected to some degree in the larger body of protest leaders, many of whom, in interviews with the author, expressed a concern that the demonstrations should and must retain their nonviolent spirit. (5) Phrases -------------- (4) From the official statement of purpose adopted by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, April 17, 1960. (5) Paul Wehr, "The Sit-in Protests," Unpublished MA thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1960. ----- such as "loving'our opponents," "reaching out to our enemies," and "helping our, white neighbors to realize American ideals" were commonly used. The tradition of Gandhian nonviolence was even cited as a motivating factor by one of the four Greensboro protesters, who had watched a television documentary on the life and techniques of Gandhi shortly before he and his colleagues decided to sit in. This initial spiritual orientation of the movement was reinforced by the leadership initiative assumed by certain members of the younger Negro clergy. In many southern cities, these men were the most progressive leaders in the Negro community and were the first non-students to become involved in the demonstrations. Businessmen, educators, and other elements Of the Negro establishment tended to withhold their support of the protesters, fearing. that the demonstrations would jeopardize both progress already made in southern race relations and personal vested interests in the status quo. While a number of protest leaders were genuinely committed, as was King, to nonviolence as an ethical principle others, including most of the rank-and-file participants, were committed to it only as a tactical device whose use was dictated by circumstance and practicality. Here the Gandhian distinction between salyagraha and duragraha is a useful one. Gandhi's satyagraha movement was built upon a moral commitment to nonviolence as the only means leading to truth, reconciliation of antagonists, and justice precisely because means and ends in a struggle were seen as identical. Duragraha, by contrast, is an approach to social and political change having a purely tactical commitment to nonviolent action as the most effective means to certain ends. The means are applied militantly, with an uncompromising spirit quite alien to Gandhian nonviolence. Duragraha rather than satyagraha, then, has characterized the nonviolence of the eoual rights movement. Bondurant ob- serves that it has been "rarely understood [in the equal rights movement] that Gandhi's technique of satyagraha cannot be equated with civil disobedience, and that it goes well beyond the pressure tactics familiar in forms of demonstration and strike," (6) ----- (6) Joan Bondurant, Conquest of violence, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965, p v. ----- That positive values of Christian nonviolence such as conciliation of antagonists, brotherhood, love of one's enemy and the like were not primary motivations for most sit-in participants was suggested in a survey made by the author and colleagues in April of 1960. A stratified sample of 807 students representing the four academic class groups at Negro colleges in several North Carolina cities was asked a number of questions conceming participation in sit-ins.' Ninety-four percent of the respondents had participated in some direct way in the movement. In one question, respondents were asked to rank several items they felt were most important in motivating their participation. The distribution of responses presented in Table I suggests that the influence of Christian values, the moral framework within which King set his nonviolent action, was not the major motivating factor although it was apparently somewhat influential. As reflected in both the number of respondents ranking each of the four most commonly cited motivations, and the comparative ranking within each motivation, the predominant moral commitment to the Christian nonviolence and conciliation operative in King's Montgomery movement so explicitly expressed in the SNCC statement ranked only third. "Resentment against everyday injustices" and "democratic ideals" were the responses given by the majority. Nonviolence as a tactical device, however, was strongly endorsed in responses to another question, "What tactics should be used in the protest demonstrations?" Only 4 % of 803 respondents thought that "using violence if need be" was an acceptable means of attaining movement objectives of racial equality and social justice. Eightythree percent felt that such nonviolent tactics as sitting in, picketing and leaflet distribution were appropriate, 75 % endorsed negotiations with business proprietors, 28 % endorsed "breaking a trespass law and going to jail," and 14 % supported "breaking a trespass law and paying a fine." Adherence to tactical nonviolence in the demonstrations seems to have depended to a considerable extent on the prestige and leadership of Martin Luther King. Eightythree percent of the respondents expressed strong agreement with King's views on "what Negroes should do about segregation and discrimination" and techniques for securing civil rights, and 14 % agreed with most of his views. Adherence to nonviolent techniques was remarkably consistent. With the exception of a few incidents in such cities as Portsmouth, Virginia, the sit-ins throughout their duration were examples of well-organized and disciplined nonviolent action on the part of protesters who were usually subjected to heckling, physical intimidation and often, bodily injury. The movement, through persistent application of nonviolent action, was able to achieve certain specific objectives such as the desegregation of such public and quasi-public facilities as lunch counters, theaters, bus terminals, hotels and the like. In the light of this particular study done near the beginning of the creative disorder movement, then, one might describe the role of nonviolence in creative disorder as important but somewhat ambiguous. Some leaders were committed to nonviolence as a moral imperative with the means of protest viewed as a vital part of the ends to be achieved.(8) If one can generalize from the sample surveyed, the majority of participants were not dominated primarily by a desire for reconciliation through nonviolent means but did reject violence as an unacceptable means of attacking the most hated and accessible symbols of the segregated southern sub-culture. The participants' view of the larger sociopolitical system, one might say, was based on an order-consensus model within which the concepts of racial and ethnic integration are set. The southern subsystem had to be brought into line with the whole. This view led them to be reformers rather than rebels, integrationists rather than chauvinists. There was little racial exclusivism in the early creative disorder movement. Indeed, more of the participant-respondents surveyed (35 %) ranked southern white students as first preference among potential fellow participants in demonstrations than any other group, including northern Negro students.(9) Racial integration and social justice were the objectives and nonviolence and inter-racial cooperation were appropriate means to those ends. ------ (8) King's moral commitment to nonviolence is best expressed in his book Stride Toward Freedom, New York: Harper and Row, 1958, Chapter 6. ------------ DIFFERENTIATION AND THE ECLIPSE OF NONVIOLENCE The ideological and tactical differentiation that has occurred within the equal rights movement since the sit-in protests were terminated is best defined by a comparison of the participants, the goals and the means for goal attainment of the creative disorder and destructive disorder sub-movements represented by the sit-ins on one hand, and the riots on the other. Several important determinants of the differentiation can be cited, and each has special relevance for an explanation of why the focus has tended to shift from nonviolent to violent techniques. Contrasting Social Profiles. - To begin with, the participant-types involved in the two quite separate movements are dissimilar. In terms of social background, the differences are striking. The sit-in participants, judging from the sample described earlier, were largely froin the middle and upperclass elements of the southern Negro community. A review of the socioeconomic status of the respondents reflects this. Of 807 respondents, only 8 % came from families with less than a $2,000 annual income, a level which, in the Negro community of the South in 1960, could reasonably be taken as the upper limit of poverty status.(10) Twenty-eight percent came from families earning between $2,000 and $3,500; 27 % from the $3,500-$5,000 range; 20 % from the $5,000-$7,500 category; and 16 % from families earning from $7,500 to $15,000 yearly. As a group, then, with only 8 % from impoverished families, and 63 % from middle and upper income levels, these sit-in participants had little in common with the urban rioters who are generally at or near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.(11) ------- 10 E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, New York: Collier, 1962, p. 49, set the income limits of the southern Negro middle class in 1950 at $2,000 and $3,000, basing them on the 1949 U.S. census figures. The limits had undoubtedly been raised somewhat by 1960 but probably not a great deal. -------- In terms of perceived social futures as well as backgrounds, the sit-in participants were a privileged minority. They were, on the whole, rather hopeful of a reasonable chance for personal fulfillment in terms of occupational advancement and upward mobility in the larger society. Only 33 % of 713 respondents were seriously pessimistic about their being able to adequately use their training after graduation. With regard to a related item in the questionnaire, 60 % of 714 respondents were very optimistic, and 20 % somewhat optimistic about achieving higher social status within American society. There is good reason, then, why the desperation that has fed the abandon of the urban riots was not motivating the sit-ins. The social backgrounds and potential for upward mobility of these students gave them a vested interest in a selective modification, not the destruction of the system, an interest that undoubtedly influenced their selection of protest techniques. Concerned with altering a part of the total social system and perceiving considerable support from the remainder, these protesters were aware that their tactics had to be moderate (i.e., nonviolent) if popular support in both North and South were to be retained. That sit-in participants at the time still had considerable faith in the larger system and in legitimate methods of achieving racial equality was clearly shown by responses to a question asking them to rank, in order of potential effectiveness, methods by which Negroes might better their positions in American society. "Better and more education" and "more Negro participation in voting" were the reasons most often ranked first with "Federal civil rights legislation" and "mass demonstrations" in third and fourth place. While there was hope for an improvement in status within the established system, there was nevertheless resentment, rooted partly in the status they already held in the southern Negro community. This resentment, cited by many as the primary motivation for their involvement in the demonstrations, seems to have represented a reaction to an intolerable status inconsistency. Not only was there a substantial distance between national ideals and actual practice, but this permitted a frustrating situation in which these students simultaneously enjoyed the highest social status in the Negro community and suffered the lowest in the larger community. The actions of the rioters, however, emerge less from indignation than from a hopelessness and disillusionment born of the urban ghetto.(12) They perceive themselves as fighting not a sub-system encouraged by the whole as did the sit-in participants, but the system itself, represented in covert discrimination, endemic unemployment, police agencies protecting the status quo in whatever form it may take, a system whose sym- -------- 12 While middle and working class participation in urban looting such as that in Detroit is an established fact and leaders often drawn from the middle class encourage violence, actual violence seems largely to have been the action of the unemployed lower-class elements. -------- bols and mechanisms of racial discrimination are as real, but more subtle and therefore more frustrating than were those of the South of the sit-ins. Civil rights have been largely achieved but equal social and economic rights seem as remote for the black masses as ever. It is interesting to note that a disproportionate number of recent in-migrants from the South seem to have been involved in at least the Boston area rioting. One observer has explained this in terms of the sharp disillusionment that awaits the Negro moving north to seek a more secure existence, and his new freedom to respond with violence when his expectations are not realized.(13) Then too, the distance between societal values expressed and social reality is much greater in the North with a probable consequent increase in status ambiguity. The difference in basic motivation of the sit-in demonstrators and the urban rioter might be compared to that observed by Kuper between the South African black bourgeoisie and the masses. (14) The response of the elites, who have a vested interest in changing but not destroying the system, tends to be one of controlled indignation. The black "proletariat" has much less status to gain by a mere modification and their desperation renders nonviolence a much less attractive approach to forcing desired change. The middle and upper class backgrounds of the sit-in participant-respondents, 90 % of whom were from the South, implied, as well, a value system that tended to restrict them to nonviolent techniques of protest. Political conservatism and traditional middle class values had been to some degree maintained in the southern Negro community despite their transformation among the northern Negro middle class." These have emphasized proper and law-abiding behavior," avoidance of violence, politeness, -------- 13 Robert Coles, "When The Southern Negro Moves North." New York Times Magazine, September 17, 1967. 14 Leo Kuper, An African Bourgeoisie, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964, pp. 7-8. -------- and other modes of social behavior that would have led demonstrators to eschew violent techniques in spite of the apparent absence of a deep moral commitment to nonviolence. Violence was not compatible with the self-image of the southern Negro college student at the time. By contrast, the self-image of the young lower class urban Negro, developing within the violent context of the ghetto, can and does admit violence as an appropriate means of attacking an oppressive system and, indeed, may be incapable of admitting an alternative means at this point. The Protest Setting. - The sit-ins and the riots differed, as well, in the physical context in which action took place. There was little similarity in the restraints imposed on protest techniques in the two sub-movements. The sit-ins and much of the subsequent political and social activism in the Deep South were carried on within the white community. There, the threat of violent reprisal against the person of the protester was omnipresent. A monopoly of economic, political and police power continuously applied made violent protest an unfeasible tactic. In the metropolitan ghettos of both North and South, however, anonymity,a certain freedom from constant surveillance, a concentration of destructible property, and easy access to arms all encourage the use of violence as a means to both goal attainment and frustration release. Intervening Events and Changing Leadership. - Another salient distinction between the two direct-confrontation sub-movements concerns the differing role of leadership in each. In the creative disorder movement, leadership has been extremely important in providing both ideological motivation and tactical discipline. Successful nonviolence has always depended on the personal charisma and discipline of leadership. Both the Indian independence movement and the sit-ins remained nonviolent because of the commitment and authority of their leaders. The contrasting violence of the urban revolt cannot similarly be explained by the influence of leadership. What sketchy analyses of recent riots do exist suggest that most of the disturbances were spontaneous outbursts, touched off in rare instances perhaps by radicals such as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, but generally unorganized and uncontrollable. As Brown admits, the black movement is a leaderless movement ... no black person in America could have stopped Detroit from burning." (17) -------- 17 Quoted in the National Guardian, November 4, 1967. -------- The riots are becoming increasingly related, however, to a nascent leadership group that seeks to adapt itself to them through ideologizing what have been, to date, reactive and unorganized outbursts of frustration and hostility. What was initially a leaderless sub-movement is currently developing leaders, some of whom were formerly committed to tactical nonviolence. This alienation from nonviolence of such leaders as Carmichael can be largely explained by the intensification of equal rights activities since 1960 and the concurrent increase in both nonviolent and violent reaction of the white community. That resistance has done much to shape the differentiation presently occurring within the equal rights movement. From 1960 onward, the movement saw an inevitable increase in militancy and scope of objectives. In 1961, the Freedom Rides replaced the sit-ins. From 1962 through 1965, activism in the form of voter registration projects and regional economic cooperatives provided the foci for action. With roots now struck in Deep South soil, the movement held its ground on the principle of nonviolent action in the face of increasingly violent harassment. The year 1963 might be said to represent a turning point in the larger movement. It was in this period that the direct action movement began to experience differentiation similar to that occurring within the original phase of the movement in 1955 as the Montgomery bus boycott signalled a tactical reorientation and a redefinition of ends and means. In the Birmingham demonstrations of April-Mav 1963, resentment against police brutality and terror bombings erupted in violence despite attempts to train demonstrators in nonviolent techniques. The church bombings of the following September spurred open and violent reaction in the Negro community. In the North, dissatisfaction with the failure of the federal government to provide protection for civil rights workers and to enforce existing civil rights legislation led to more militant and forceful forms of creative disorder. The implementation of selective buying campaigns, school boycotts, rent strikes, and job blockades reflected the hardening attitudes of the more militant urban leaders and their constituencies. The blockades involved physical obstruction of construction work carried on by discriminatory labor unions and inevitably led to violent clashes. The national governing process, itself, was disrupted by protests staged in the midst of Congressional meetings. The principle of social disruption increasingly replaced that of disciplined nonviolent action. Political activism within the established system or on its periphery was discredited as a consequence of the experience of the Freedom Democratic Party in the 1964 presidential campaign, and in the face of increasing Negro apathy in voter registration campaigns in the Deep South.- The inception of the riots in the summer of 1964 signalled the beginning of the eclipse of nonviolent action. It was likely that they would attract an appropriate leadership, partly from former members of the creative disorder movement, whose attitudes had been changed by the sequence of events cited above. Angry young radicals, many of them embittered by their experience with the harshness of southern resistance and apathy among the southern Negro masses, became natural spokesmen for a shift from nonviolent to violent tactics. A psychiatrist who counseled SNCC activists during the Deep South campaigns, describes their repressed reactions to the violence and humiliation they were forced to experience without benefit of any direct and overt reprisal. (18) Another psychiatrist has recorded the feelings of frustration, rejection and anger expressed by activists whose efforts were ignored, even resented, by large numbers of apathetic or fearful southern Negroes.(19) The accumulated feelings of frustration, rage and disillusionment may well have helped to shape the conviction of this "new breed" of leaders that the system could hardly be changed peacefully, a conviction that provides the most recent differentiation within the total movement with an ideological as well as a tactical point of reference. There are certain objective factors which tend to support the argument presented by these new leaders that nonviolent action has made few if any gains for the Negro. Current school desegregation figures reveal proportionately more racial segregation in southern schools in 1967 than there was several years earlier. As regards the living level of the urban masses, recent statistics show that the lot of the impoverished Negro, while improving absolutely, has deteriorated in comparison with that of middle class Negroes, other minorities, and the general population. Even improvement in absolute terms seems to depend on city and district. (20) Relative deprivation seems to be a powerful force for violent reaction as evidenced in Detroit where the disparity of wealth was particularly visible and frustrating because of the spatial proximity of the various socioeconomic groupings. Finally, violence as a technique of revolutionary insurgency in the world has become increasingly prominent during the career of the direct confrontation movement. Sit-in protesters referred frequently to the acquisition of political independence of new Afro-Asian states as a strong motivation for their own movement toward racial equality and freedom.(21) Current militant leaders reject this idea of political evolution and identify increasingly with the wars of liberation and oppressed peoples of color in the world. Leaders of SNCC ------- 19 Robert Coles, Children of Crisis.- A Study of Courage and Fear. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964, Chapter 8. 20 "Social and Economic Conditions of Negroes in the United States" (Washington: U.S. Government Printing, November,. 1967) 21 Wehr, op cit, p 21. -------- and other radical groups, attracted by a modified Marxist model of both American society and the international system, see themselves not as winning a niche for the black man in the American system, but as disrupting an "imperialistic" nation that is militarily and economically oppressing the Third World. Thus, they contend, should "Afro-Americans" join forces with the remainder of the world's have-nots. While this ideology is as yet poorly articulated and emerges from a partially distorted perception, its importance in the present differentiation within the equal rights movement is considerable. OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE The equal rights movement has reached a critical point in its development. Differentiation has produced several tactical options. While structural differentiation within a social movement may be functional for the achievement of its objectives as was the case with the emergence of the creative disorder phase, the thrust of a movement tends to diminish unless the active majority in it unite around a common ideology, tactic and leadership. This would seem especially true for the equal rights movement, which, given the nature of the system it seeks to modify, needs sustained momentum. The pressure must be maintained. There seems to be no built-in integrator factor operating with respect to the Negro as it has with various ethnic groups in the past and even the latter broke into the system initially through group solidarity and organization. The underemployed and undereducated colored masses of urban America and its rural southern regions must organize and to some degree unite if they are to have any effective capacity for forcing rapid change. About which of the ideological-tactical approaches reflected in the movement's progressive differentiation will the Negro masses organize? The movement's concern in the past for tactics and payoffs over doctrinal considerations suggests that the tactical approach most effective in obtaining, for the Negro a just "share of the national pie" will in the long run be most attractive to both the majority of leaders and the rank-and-file. Effectiveness of means might be defined in terms of capacity to effect rapid and positive change and acceptability to both the system and the protesters. What are the alternative tactical approaches, then, available to the equal rights movement, how profitable does each seem to have been in helping the Negro poor, and what potential does each have for future success? Intra-System Action. - Efforts at working within the established political and social framework, an approach taken by the NAACP, the Urban League and other veteran organizations, have not been particularly successful in inducing the radical and rapid change demanded by the conditions of mass poverty. The poor, and especially the Negro poor, seem not to be "plugged into" the national system of countervailing interest groups, all of which have some authority within the political system. The poor have no lobbyists and no real power beyond their potential for disrupting or "worrying" the system. While the recent election of Negroes to mayoralties in two major cities signifies some advance, their action depends largely on federal grants and the cooperation of local power figures. Were Negroes another ethnic minority, one could be more sanguine about goal attainment within the established institutional framework. Violence. - Violent protest seems not to have been productive in bringing the desired response of massive employment, housing and education programs. The federal appropriation for the War on Poverty for the fiscal year 1968-1969 is barely more substantial than it was for the preceding year, before the massive disturbances of 1967. In fact, the most decisive action taken by authorities at all levels has been to improve techniques for controlling ghetto insurrections. Violence on the part of the equal rights movement is unlikely to improve the popular stereotype of the Negro. While it might tend to break down the image of submissiveness held in certain regions, it almost certainly reinforces the threat-producing images that are a more serious obstacle. While violence may be functional in providing temporary psychological release for ghetto frustration and in stimulating an occasional crash program, a movement built around sustained and organized violence can only antagonize the larger society. It is doubtful, indeed, whether the majority of Negroes would support such an approach although large numbers probably gain vicarious satisfaction from that minority willing to engage in violence. Benevolent Nonviolence. - A third option would be that practiced in the original Montgomery boycott and a few of the earliest sit-ins. Gandhian and Christian nonviolence imply a compromising, nonmilitant, benevolent,,, and completely disciplined confrontation with the adversary. If this was impossible for sit-in participants to understand and practice, how feasible a technique would it be where potential demonstrators are lower-class urbanites? Benevolent nonviolence is impossible without complete commitment, discipline, and the projection of a subordinate image to the adversary. Hare suggests that when nonviolent demonstrators shift from this to a dominant position, characterized by a perceptible change in attitude, appearance, and often behavior, the change pulls a more aggressive and often violent response from the opponent and interaction is likely to move away from nonviolence. (22) This would undoubtedly be the case where masses of young urban poor were involved in direct confrontation. The type of disciplined, benevolent behavior necessary for goalattainment in tense situations is not only incompatible with the self-image of the urban lower-class Negro male, but would frustrate, perhaps, those assertive aspects of personality that he must develop to compete successfully in the larger system. Social Disruption. - A fourth alternative is that tactic based on the potential of the Negro underprivileged for disruption of various parts of the social and economic systems. It might be described as militant nonviolent direct action (duragraha), to properly distinguish it from benevolent and disciplined nonviolence (satyagraha) in which ends and means are perceived as identical. The sit-ins were a form of social disruption but the tactic has not been used in any systematic way since that time although numerous instances more or less true to form have occurred in both the equal rights and the anti-war movements. The elements of this technique include tactical nonviolence, both spontaneous and organized action, civil disobedience, and willingness to accept the consequences of same. These four tactical alternatives suggest a four-fold table. The selection of a predominant tactical device for the main thrust More Acceptable Less Acceptable to Protestors to Protestors More Acceptable Intra-System Benevolent to Majority Action and Disciplined Nonviolence Less Acceptable Social Violence to Majority Disruption of the movement involves three evaluative criteria: 1) How quickly will it evoke a direct and positive response in the form of change; 2) How compatible is it with the nature of the potential participant ... what device will attract the commitment and involvement of the largest number from the various elements of the Negro population; and 3) How much resistance will it create on the part of the white majority? Violent action is least acceptable to the white majority and less acceptable to the majority of Negroes as a technique for forcing change. The assumption made here is that violence is perceived as a last resort, not a preferred technique, even among hardcore urban activists. As concerns efficacy, there is little indication to date that violence brings rapid positive response from the larger system. Intra-system action is probably the means most acceptable to both system and petitioner but potential for effecting rapid enough change through institutional processes is extremely limited. The two remaining alternatives have both established their capacities for effecting positive change within reasonable periods of time: social disruption, with the widespread desegregation of public and quasi-public facilities in the South; and benevolent nonviolence in Montgomery (and in South Africa and India). The latter tactic would be more acceptable to the white majority since it is less threatening and focusses on conciliation. Its ultimate effectiveness is probably greater since its approach is graduated, systematic, and highly disciplined. Social disruption would be more acceptable to the potential protesters as it would speak to their need for assertiveness and militancy. Its potential for "jolting" the system would seem to be an asset in a highly industrialized and economically integrated society. While none of the alternatives are a "good fit" as concerns the criteria of effectiveness mentioned earlier, it is conceivable that the most relevant elements of satyagraha and duragraha will be combined in a hybrid tactic that will satisfy these criteria. The militancy and dynamism of social disruption (duragraha) modified by the discipline and unified and graduated strategy of satyagraha would be powered with the nonviolent action both alternatives espouse. The consequences of such a tactical approach would be massive, disciplined, militant, nonviolent assaults on limited targets as part of a well-defined strategy for achieving equal rights. Such an approach would be one that most current movement leaders and their constituencies, including those of CORE, a large segment of SNCC, the SCLC, and a number of local activist groups could support. The success of such a program would depend largely on how well several vital imperatives were carried through. Imaginative selection of specific targets and techniques would be based on identification of points at which the system might be disrupted, but where legitimate grievances could be clearly defined and publicized and the general public alienated as little as possible. Such events as stall-ins, which are basically unrelated to specific and significant minority grievances yet which inconvenience and antagonize the public would be avoided. Not the least criterion for target and technique selection would be their appeal to "one specific and extremely important group: adolescent youths and younger men without jobs or education." (23) Thus would the movement respond to the need for involvement and aggressive assertiveness of the most violence-prone elements. Adherence to the principle of physical nonviolence would be difficult but essential. Strategic rules of satyagraha, such as following a well-defined set of progressive steps, a focus on one limited goal at a time, and obedience to leadership, would likewise be essential. Action in the form of boycotts, non-cooperation, and civil disobedience appeared later rather than earlier in Gandhi's procedural plan.(24) Too often, in the direct confrontation movement, important steps have been ignored or inadequately executed, thereby weakening the entire strategy and antagonizing opponents unnecessarily. Equally as essential for the success of nonviolent social disruption in forcing change would be a new attitude toward overt nonviolent protest on the part of the larger system. As Waskow suggests, government authorities must learn to accept and use "controlled disorder" as a safety-valve mechanism to permit coercion of necessary change without violence. Specially trained forces to deal with this kind of extra-legal but justified action would need to be created.(25) SUMMARY The larger movement for racial equality has experienced considerable differentiation since the mid-1950s largely as a consequence ------- 24 Bondurant, op. cit. pp. 40-41. 25 The importance of attitudes and behavior of law enforcement agents is underlined by the central role played by police brutality and rumors thereof, as a precipitant of race riots over the past several decades, and particularly in the most recent series of disturbances. See Stanley Lieberson and Arnold R. Silverman, "Precipitants and Conditions of Race Riots." American Sociological Review, 30 (December, 1965), pp. 887-898. ----------- of disagreement over tactics to be employed. Most recently, the Black Power movement, many of whose leaders counsel the use of violence for achievement of objectives, has emerged to challenge the creative disorder movement whose leaders currently seek to reinforce and redirect their commitment to nonviolence. These two direct-action movements, exemplified by the sit-ins and the urban riots, have differed primarily in their tactical commitment to or rejection of nonviolent techniques of protest. The difference in tactics employed seemed to reflect the dissimilar motives and backgrounds of the participants in each movement, the differing protest settings, and certain influential intervening events that altered the commitment to nonviolence of a number of leaders, turning them toward the tactics of destructive disorder. Recent differentiation has resulted in a considerable loss of momentum in the larger movement. To regain it, certain of its leaders need to reorganize a major part of the black population around a feasible and effective tactical device and a commonly recognized leadership. Of the four visible tactical alternatives, intra-system action, violence, satyagraha, and duragraha or social disruption, the latter two seem to have the most potential for success. The movement may ultimately combine the most relevant aspects of both in a viable strategy of disciplined, nonviolent social disruption. Nonviolence could become, once again, the vital tactical force in the equal rights movement that it was during the sit-ins. It will do so, however, only if it is fitted to the peculiar needs, characteristics, and tolerance of both the protesters and the system in which protest must take place, a system which itself must develop some quasi-institutionalized, extra-legal device for allowing necessary and rapid change.