The Nonviolent Resistance To The Civil Rights Movement

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“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” – Thomas Jefferson
While Jefferson spoke directly of a violent resistance, the idea of a peaceful, conscious resistance to the law as a means of protest, has probably existed as long as the concept of law itself. Civil disobedience is defined as “refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government” (Merriam-Webster), and is not only immensely beneficial to, but is a crucial tenet of a free society. There are few countries in history that came to be without some form of resistance, violent or otherwise, and this is especially true in the case of America. …show more content…
America owes two of its largest steps in social progress to peaceful resistance of the law, by way of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and the Women’s Suffrage movement of the 1980’s. It was through the nonviolent actions that characterized these movements that led to the enfranchisement of Black people and women. two groups that gained the freedoms they had been denied by a society that considered itself “free”, through peaceful resistance. Unless one considers the enfranchisement of Black people and women to be a bad thing, the Civil Rights and Women’s Suffrage movements are prime examples of peaceful resistance to unjust laws having a positive impact on a free society; and even go so far as to serve as proof for the need for civil disobedience in a practical society. A society without dissenting opinions is a society of suppression, and by default is not free. Freedom never has and never will be a product of complacency or submission. It is an ideal that must be ever-fought for and continuously earned, because there will always be those who seek to gain power through the subjugation of others. Thus, protest in any …show more content…
Martin Luther King Jr. said that the purpose of nonviolent action is to create so much of a “crisis” and foster so much “tension” in those who have repeatedly refused other attempts at negotiation, that they have no choice but to face the issue being raised (King Jr.). Peaceful disobedience of the law is a way to place direct pressure on those in power, but to do so without causing intentional harm to another member of society; something I find it quite hard to find any substantial drawbacks in. With that said, there are still those who see civil disobedience as a threat to the freedom in society, particularly Morris I. Leibman, a lawyer during the era of the Civil Rights movement. In his address to the ABA in 1964, Leibman argues among other things, that freedom is not “absolute” and can only exist within the confines of society, and that law is not only a protector of freedom, but an “affirmative agent” of it (Leibman), two arguments that show a fundamental misunderstanding of man and the construction of society. Leibman forgets that man is at his most free when unbound from the rules of society, and that law is almost always the loser in the race with
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