So, on to the United States, a place where moral smugness takes second seat to no one, not even the British. And low and behold, the Nonviolent activists parade out another Saint, one Martin Luther King. A good man, in my book, but not someone who ended Jim Crow through Nonviolence.
Jim Crow (racism) was itself a complex social phenomena, composed ultimately of social beliefs, customs, violent tactics, and laws that evolved over a long period of time. The end of Jim Crow (and it isn’t totally over yet) came about as a result of a complex set of individual decisions made by real human beings. Black Americans had fought back against various aspects of Jim Crow ever since the era of Reconstruction. Many had simply fled the southern version, …show more content…
But so did the Black Muslims and Black Panthers, the Communist Party USA and the proliferation of other Leninist, Anarchist and New Left groups. Individual acts of defiance, most of them forgotten by everyone but their actual participants, were probably even more important, as were the acts of communal self-defense we usually refer to as race riots. Black veterans had used their military skills after every war they had fought in to attempt to assert their rights; the large number of black veterans returning from Vietnam were a very real danger to the government, given the explosive social mixture of the times.
However much credit you may want to assign to various groups or types of action for their effectiveness of ending racial discrimination during the 1960’s, it is simply factually inaccurate to give the leading role to the ideology of Nonviolence. The leading role went to the National Guard, a group backed up by the Army, Navy, and Marines; if necessary by nuclear weapons. When Presidents of the United States decided to send in the National Guard to desegregate schools in southern states, the racists had little choice but to back
Jim Crow (racism) was itself a complex social phenomena, composed ultimately of social beliefs, customs, violent tactics, and laws that evolved over a long period of time. The end of Jim Crow (and it isn’t totally over yet) came about as a result of a complex set of individual decisions made by real human beings. Black Americans had fought back against various aspects of Jim Crow ever since the era of Reconstruction. Many had simply fled the southern version, …show more content…
But so did the Black Muslims and Black Panthers, the Communist Party USA and the proliferation of other Leninist, Anarchist and New Left groups. Individual acts of defiance, most of them forgotten by everyone but their actual participants, were probably even more important, as were the acts of communal self-defense we usually refer to as race riots. Black veterans had used their military skills after every war they had fought in to attempt to assert their rights; the large number of black veterans returning from Vietnam were a very real danger to the government, given the explosive social mixture of the times.
However much credit you may want to assign to various groups or types of action for their effectiveness of ending racial discrimination during the 1960’s, it is simply factually inaccurate to give the leading role to the ideology of Nonviolence. The leading role went to the National Guard, a group backed up by the Army, Navy, and Marines; if necessary by nuclear weapons. When Presidents of the United States decided to send in the National Guard to desegregate schools in southern states, the racists had little choice but to back