Non-violent direct action was a method of protest in the U.S.-American civil rights movement.
Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, used it to contest segregation. In this article, I suggest that
King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963) deliberately confronts white moderates and aims to
highlight the violence against African Americans in the United States. In the letter, King claims
that justice does not happen by itself and needs non-violent direct actions. In this respect, King’s
approach is not that different from Malcolm X’s, against which King is traditionally positioned. To
make this case, I examine King’s perception of civil rights history, engage with the ideology of
colorblindness and consider King’s non-violent philosophy. Subsequently, the article turns to the
radicalism of King’s letter and argues that he saw white moderates as problematic in the struggle
for racial justice. Finally, I address King’s understanding of direct action, which stems from the
concept of civil disobedience. In doing so, this article also discusses similarities between King and
other civil rights activists like Malcolm X and Mahatma Gandhi with regard to racial movement
tactics. I conclude with a discussion of King’s philosophy of nonviolence as an immediate action
against violence. Ultimately, this article not only discards the idea of King being best understood
as a proponent of passiveness but also shows how intellectually active he was in combating racial
injustice.
|