Elements of Resistance: Violence, Nonviolence, and the State by Jeriah Bowser

Author:Jeriah Bowser
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Violence, non-violence, nonviolence, social change, revolution, resistance
Published: 2015-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

King

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in the state of Georgia in the United States in 1929 to a middle class, deeply religious family, and had a quiet, sheltered childhood, save for his deep wrestling with questions of faith, philosophy, and religion at a precocious age. He was an outstanding student; he entered college at age 15, earned his Doctorate in Philosophy when he was only 23, and accepted the role of pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama by the time he was 25. King’s early life and rise through the educational system, although not entirely free from prejudice and discrimination, was very removed from the extreme racism and oppression that his fellow African-Americans faced everyday in the Jim Crow atmosphere of Alabama in the mid-19th century. Although initially shocked and horrified by the daily instances of oppressive violence that he saw around him, King turned his outrage into action and quickly became involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as his father was head of the Atlanta NAACP branch for many years and young King had chaired the NAACP youth membership committee in Atlanta, under his father.

King was thrust very quickly and very deeply into the civil rights struggle. Less than a year after he had arrived in Montgomery, Rosa Parks and several other activists made their courageous stand against the system of segregated busing in the city with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. King was instrumental in planning and organizing the year-long boycott, and due to his prominent role he was threatened, assaulted, had his home bombed, and was arrested several times. Throughout the long and incredibly difficult year, King showed himself to be a wise, bold, and competent leader, and by the end of the successful nonviolent boycott King was a national figure and a spokesman for civil rights.

In 1957 King, along with several other civil rights activists, formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization that aimed to unite Christian churches in the South with the purpose of conducting nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to end racial segregation. Under the leadership of King, the SCLC successfully carried out many nonviolent acts of civil disobedience such as boycotts, strikes, and marches, as well as pushing for legislative and legal reform alongside the NAACP and other civil rights groups.

Over the next ten years King continued to expound his theory of nonviolence, drawing heavily from the teachings of Yeshua (Jesus) in the Christian Bible, Gandhi's Satyagraha campaign in India, and the anti-authoritarian musings of American transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau. King actually visited India in 1959, wanting to learn more about Satyagraha and the incredible teachings of the Mahatma. He also tried to travel to South Africa to visit Mandela, but was denied a visa.

After more than a decade of intense struggle, King came to realize that true justice was about more than just racial segregation. He saw the deep roots of capitalism, imperialism, and racism running throughout the country’s

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