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50 3 “Can’t Give Up My Stuff” Nonviolent Organizations and Armed Resistance In 1961, activists of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were the first organizers to advocate the philosophy of nonviolence and to practice nonviolent direct action in Mississippi. Medgar Evers never publicly disavowed nonviolence. On the other hand, he would privately express his disagreement with the philosophy of nonviolence to SNCC organizers. SNCC activist MacArthur Cotton often traveled with Medgar in the early 1960s. Reflecting on his travels with Evers around the state, Cotton commented, “Medgar used to carry a gun. . . . He always talked about how crazy we was, talking about nonviolence.”1 The NAACP never overtly promoted armed resistance. The organization’s national leadership also never advocated nonviolent direct action as a primary method of struggle. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which began organizing in Mississippi in 1961, became the first activist organization to advocate nonviolence as a philosophy, strategy, or tactical approach in the Mississippi Black Freedom Struggle. Within two years, another nonviolent activist group, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), also became active in the state. A natural tension developed when nonviolent activists began to organize in communities where indigenous leadership and sympathizers believed in and practiced armed selfdefense on a normal basis. The interaction between nonviolent and armed activists would be at times tense and in other instances complementary. The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (December 1, 1955, to December 20, 1956) and the dynamic sit-in campaigns of 1960 propelled nonviolent direct action as a primary tactic in the struggle to dismantle U.S. apartheid. The philosophy of nonviolence ascended as the preeminent orientation of the organized movement, particularly on the national level. Indigenous activists and local people tended to continue the practice of armed self-defense as the struggle advanced in Mississippi and other southern communities. “Can’t Give Up My Stuff” 51 Origins of Nonviolence and the Black Freedom Struggle In the 1960s, nonviolence had recently emerged as an orientation, strategy, and practice. CORE was the first national organization to advocate and practice nonviolence as a primary philosophy and strategy in the Black liberation movement. CORE’s origins emanate from the legacy of U.S. pacifist activism . In 1941, the Christian pacifist organization Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), which began as a pacifist group during World War I, developed a special project at the University of Chicago aimed at challenging racism.2 Activist confrontation without the use of violent force was the exclusive tactic of CORE. The organization’s statement of purpose read, “CORE has one method . . . interracial nonviolent direct action.”3 By December 1942, CORE grew from a campus-based “peace team” at the University of Chicago to a small federation of local direct action groups committed to nonviolence. In 1943, the federation officially named itself the Congress of Racial Equality.4 The Montgomery Bus Boycott captured the attention and imagination of the Black Freedom Struggle. The momentum of the Montgomery Bus Boycott yielded another important player in the nonviolent movement in 1957. On January 10th and 11th, the first meeting of the Southern Leadership Conference (SLC) took place at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. The purpose of this meeting was to create a regional organization of local church-based desegregation movements, which had emerged in several southern urban centers. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as the popular leader of this new organization. The leadership of SLC emphasized the philosophy of nonviolent direct action as the central weapon necessary to desegregate institutions in the South. In their initial statement to the press, the SLC expressed the following message to the Black community to discourage any use of force in the freedom movement: “We call upon them to accept Christian Love in its full power to defy. . . . Nonviolence is not a symbol of weakness or cowardice, but, as Jesus and Gandhi demonstrated, resistance transforms weakness into strength and breeds courage in the face of danger.”5 While calling for Black people to confront segregation, “[E]ven in the face of death,” the SLC declared , “not one hair of one head of one white person shall be harmed.”6 Soon after its founding, the SLC announced that it would be identified as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The predominance of clerical leadership in its membership and the sensitivity to being labeled communist motivated the addition of “Christian” to the organization’s name. SCLC’s approach was to utilize confrontational, but [18.118.184.237] Project MUSE (2024...

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