Self Defense In The Civil Rights Movement

African Americans fought in many different ways for their freedoms, many of these are characterized by the either two acts, one would be through peace and the other would be through violence and defense of oneself. Two figures come to mind when asserting the differences in actions taken during the Civil rights movement, these actions are defined by characters such as Martin Luther King Jr, and actions taken by the great Malcolm X. Both sides to the Civil Rights movement helped each other in granting the legislation that brought about the freedom from Jim Crow Laws. Without an equilibrium of both self defence, black pride, and peace many transpiring actions like legislation overriding Jim Crow would not be alive today. African Americans had

As stated in The Long History of Black Americans Arming Themselves In Self-Defense - and Why We forget it, “After each episode of violence, the NAACP took new legal initiative in prosecuting white rioters and representing black people who had acted to defend themselves. Sometimes, as in the aftermath of the violence in Longview, Texas, NAACP lawyers were able to get prisoners who had been found with weapons released by arguing that their actions were taken in self-defense. These legal victories—though somewhat diminished by the difficulty lawyers had in landing convictions of white rioters—were nonetheless significant.” Violence was inevitable, but what violence did was it allowed for actions of the peaceful to take refuge and to fight through processes established by the white racist population. This allowed for the arguments to take shape, and actions to then instil that this concept of separate but equal was in fact completely

As stated in the article titled “The Civil Rights Movement”, they stated, “public transportation was a vital site of struggle over racial justice. Black paying customers were relegated to the back of city buses, and black women in particular endured assault, humiliation, and even gunplay at the hands of white bus drivers and customers. But blacks found ways to respond to the shoving and pushing of white passengers: they boldly sat next to white women, refused to pay fares, and rang the bell for every stop with no one getting off. These subversive acts provided the infrastructure for more formal kinds of political action. As early as 1953, black church and social organizations had organized a bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.”. The action taken by blacks to organize amongst their communities was essential because it struck down some of the most important businesses hurting them financially and thus forcing them to reorganize their businesses. Blacks realized that corporations were strong because of their buyers, and by restraining from utilizing these sources it would truly help make wave for legislation to be passed. The concept of strength through numbers also gave way to a reinvention of blacks and the truly dignified importance of their