souls in the Black Church liberation signed RARE sb 1980 Martin Luther King

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (807) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176278959947 souls in the Black Church liberation signed RARE sb 1980 Martin Luther King. Voting Rights Act of Virginia. 1.3 Britain. After dinner, we began. 1.2 South Africa. Unknown Binding ‏ : ‎ 103 pages. 1.1 United States. mood, except for one or two flickering. Though he spoke with heartfelt and. VERY RARE SOFTBACK BOOK SIGNED BY CARROL M. FELTON  The care of souls in the Black Church: A liberation perspective Unknown Binding – January 1, 1980 by Carroll M Felton (Author) Publisher ‏ : ‎ Martin Luther King Fellows Press (January 1, 1980) Language ‏ : ‎ English Unknown Binding ‏ : ‎ 103 pages IN FAIR SHAPE. BOLDLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR CARROLL M. FELTON JR. Methodist Clergyman Carroll M. Felton Jr., 63, a United Methodist clergyman who was a native Washingtonian and graduate of Dunbar High School, died March 22 at a hospital in Chicago after a heart attack. Mr. Felton was a graduate of Knoxville College. He received a master's degree at Grammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta and a doctorate in divinity at Colgate Rochester Seminary. Mr. Felton had been assigned at Kelly Miller United Methodist Church in Chicago. Earlier he had served in the ministry in Tennessee, North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Survivors include his wife, Catherine Melton Felton of Chicago; three children, Tawauna Felton of Chicago and Renee Felton Pullen and Reginald M. Felton, both of Silver Spring; his mother, Meldia E. Felton of Washington; and two grandchildren.
CARROLL M. FELTON JR. Methodist Clergyman Carroll M. Felton Jr., 63, a United Methodist clergyman who was a native Washingtonian and graduate of Dunbar High School, died March 22 at a hospital in Chicago after a heart attack. Mr. Felton was a graduate of Knoxville College. He received a master's degree at Grammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta and a doctorate in divinity at Colgate Rochester Seminary. Mr. Felton had been assigned at Kelly Miller United Methodist Church in Chicago. Earlier he had served in the ministry in Tennessee, North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Survivors include his wife, Catherine Melton Felton of Chicago; three children, Tawauna Felton of Chicago and Renee Felton Pullen and Reginald M. Felton, both of Silver Spring; his mother, Meldia E. Felton of Washington; and two grandchildren. The black church (sometimes termed Black Christianity or African-American Christianity) is the faith and body of Christian congregations and denominations in the United States that minister predominantly to African Americans, as well as their collective traditions and members. The term "black church" can also refer to individual congregations. While most black congregations belong to predominantly African-American Protestant denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) or Church of God in Christ (COGIC), many others are in predominantly white Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ (which developed from the Congregational Church of New England), or in integrated denominations such as the Church of God.[1][2] There are also many Black Catholic churches.[3] Most of the first black congregations and churches formed before 1800 were founded by freed blacks – for example, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Springfield Baptist Church (Augusta, Georgia); Petersburg, Virginia; and Savannah, Georgia.[4] The oldest black Baptist church in Kentucky, and third oldest in the United States, was founded about 1790 by the slave Peter Durrett.[5] The oldest black Catholic church, St Augustine in New Orleans, was founded by free blacks in 1841. After slavery in the United States was abolished, segregationist attitudes towards blacks and whites worshiping together were not as predominant in the North as compared to the South.[dubious – discuss] Many white Protestant ministers moved to the South after the Civil War to establish churches where black and white people worshiped together.[citation needed] In Wesleyan Holiness denominations such as the Church of God, the belief that "interracial worship was a sign of the true Church" was taught, with both whites and blacks ministering regularly in Church of God congregations, which invited people of all races to worship there.[1] In some parts of the country, such as New Orleans, black and white Catholics had worshiped together for almost 150 years before the Civil War—albeit without full equality and primarily under French and Spanish rule. Attacks by the Ku Klux Klan or other whites opposed to such efforts thwarted those attempts and even prevented Blacks from worshiping in the same buildings as whites. In communities where black and white people worshiped together in the South shortly after the Civil War, the persecution of African Americans was less severe. Yet, freed blacks most often established congregations and church facilities separate from their white neighbors, who were often their former owners. In the Catholic Church, the rising tide of segregation eventually resulted in segregated parishes across the South, even in places where segregation had not previously been the norm.[citation needed] These new black churches created communities and worship practices that were culturally distinct from other churches, including forms of Christian worship that derived from African spiritual traditions, such as call and response. These churches also became the centers of communities, serving as school sites, taking up social welfare functions such as providing for the indigent, and going on to establish orphanages and prison ministries. As a result, black churches were particularly important during the Civil Rights Movement.[citation needed] Contents 1 History 1.1 Slavery 1.2 Free blacks 1.3 Reconstruction 1.4 Civil Rights Movement 1.5 Black Power Movement 1.5.1 Black theology 1.5.2 Womanist theology 2 Politics and social issues 3 As neighborhood institutions 4 Traditions 5 Denominations 5.1 Methodism (inclusive of the holiness movement) 5.1.1 African Methodist Episcopal Church 5.1.2 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church 5.1.3 Other Methodist connexions 5.2 Baptists 5.2.1 National Baptist Convention 5.2.2 Other Baptist denominations 5.3 Pentecostalism 5.3.1 Church of God in Christ 5.3.2 Other Pentecostal denominations 5.4 Black Catholicism 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links History Slavery See also: Slavery in the United States African American Baptist Church, Silver Hill Plantation, Georgetown County, South Carolina Evangelical Baptist and Methodist preachers traveled throughout the South in the Great Awakening of the late 18th century. They appealed directly to slaves, and a few thousand slaves converted. Black individuals found opportunities to have active roles in new congregations, especially in the Baptist Church, where slaves were appointed as leaders and preachers. (They were excluded from such roles in the Anglican or Episcopal Church.) As they listened to readings, slaves developed their own interpretations of the Scriptures and found inspiration in stories of deliverance, such as the Exodus out of Egypt. Nat Turner, a Baptist preacher, was inspired to armed rebellion, in an uprising that killed about 50 white men, women, and children in Virginia.[6] Both free blacks and the more numerous slaves participated in the earliest black Baptist congregations founded near Petersburg, Virginia, Savannah, Georgia, and Lexington, Kentucky, before 1800. The slaves Peter Durrett and his wife founded the First African Church (now known as First African Baptist Church) in Lexington, Kentucky about 1790.[7] The church's trustees purchased its first property in 1815. The congregation numbered about 290 by the time of Durrett's death in 1823.[7] Following slave revolts in the early 19th century, including Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, Virginia passed a law requiring black congregations to meet only in the presence of a white minister. Other states similarly restricted exclusively black churches or the assembly of blacks in large groups unsupervised by whites. Nevertheless, the black Baptist congregations in the cities grew rapidly and their members numbered several hundred each before the Civil War. (See next section.) While mostly led by free blacks, most of their members were slaves. In plantation areas, slaves organized underground churches and hidden religious meetings, the "invisible church", where slaves were free to mix evangelical Christianity with African beliefs and African rhythms. With the time, many incorporated Wesleyan Methodist hymns, gospel songs, and spirituals.[8] The underground churches provided psychological refuge from the white world. The spirituals gave the church members a secret way to communicate and, in some cases, to plan a rebellion. Slaves also learned about Christianity by attending services led by a white preacher or supervised by a white person. Slaveholders often held prayer meetings at their plantations. In the South until the Great Awakening, most slaveholders were Anglican if they practiced any Christianity. Although in the early years of the First Great Awakening, Methodist and Baptist preachers argued for manumission of slaves and abolition, by the early decades of the 19th century, they often had found ways to support the institution. In settings where whites supervised worship and prayer, they used Bible stories that reinforced people's keeping to their places in society, urging slaves to be loyal and to obey their masters. In the 19th century, Methodist and Baptist chapels were founded among many of the smaller communities and common planters.[9] During the early decades of the 19th century, they used stories such as the Curse of Ham to justify slavery to themselves.[9] They promoted the idea that loyal and hard-working slaves would be rewarded in the afterlife. Sometimes slaves established their own Sabbath schools to talk about the Scriptures.[citation needed] Slaves who were literate tried to teach others to read, as Frederick Douglass did while still enslaved as a young man in Maryland. "Wade in the water." A postcard of a river baptism in New Bern, North Carolina, around 1900. Free blacks Free blacks in both northern and southern cities formed their own congregations and churches before the end of the 18th century. They organized independent black congregations and churches[10] to practice religion apart from white oversight.[11] Along with white churches opposed to slavery, free blacks in Philadelphia provided aid and comfort to slaves who escaped and helped all new arrivals adjust to city life.[12] In 1787 in Philadelphia, the black church was born out of protest and revolutionary reaction to racism. Resenting being relegated to a segregated gallery at St. George's Methodist Church, Methodist preachers Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and other black members, left the church and formed the Free African Society. It was at first non-denominational and provided mutual aid to the free black community. Over time, Jones began to lead Episcopal services there. He led most of its members to create the African Church, in the Episcopal tradition. (Butler 2000, DuBois 1866). In the fall of 1792, several black leaders attending services at St. George's Methodist Church and had recently helped to expand the church. The black churchgoers were told to sit upstairs in the new gallery. When they mistakenly sat in an area not designated for blacks, they were forcibly removed from the seats they had helped build. According to Allen, "...we all went out of the church in one body, and they were no longer plagued by us". While he and Jones led different denominations, they continued to work closely together and with the black community in Philadelphia.... It was accepted as a parish and on July 17, 1794 became the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. In 1804 Jones was the first black priest ordained in the Episcopal Church. (Butler 2000, DuBois 1866). Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, wanted to continue with the Methodist tradition. He built a congregation and founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). By July 29, 1794, they also had a building ready for their worship. The church adopted the slogan: "To Seek for Ourselves." In recognition of his leadership and preaching, in 1799 Bishop Francis Asbury ordained Allen as a Methodist minister. Allen and the AME Church were active in antislavery campaigns, fought racism in the North, and promoted education, starting schools for black children. Finding that other black congregations in the region were also seeking independence from white control, in 1816 Allen organized a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first fully independent black denomination. He was elected its first bishop in 1816. While he and Jones led different denominations, they continued to work closely together and with the black community in Philadelphia. Soon thereafter, Allen. Jones, and others began soliciting funds, again with the help of Rush. Their appeals met with resistance from white church leaders, many of whom had been supportive of the black community, but disapproved of a separate black church. Petersburg, Virginia had two of the oldest black congregations in the country, both organized before 1800 as a result of the Great Awakening: First Baptist Church (1774) and Gillfield Baptist Church (1797). Each congregation moved from rural areas into Petersburg into their own buildings in the early 19th century. Their two black Baptist congregations were the first of that denomination in the city and they grew rapidly.[4][13][14] In Savannah, Georgia, a black Baptist congregation was organized by 1777, by George Liele. A former slave, he had been converted by ordained Baptist minister Matthew Moore. His early preaching was encouraged by his master, Henry Sharp. Sharp, a Baptist deacon and Loyalist, freed Liele before the American Revolutionary War began. Liele had been preaching to slaves on plantations, but made his way to Savannah, where he organized a congregation.[15] After 1782, when Liele left the city with the British, Andrew Bryan led what became known as the First African Baptist Church. By 1800 the church had 700 members, and by 1830 it had grown to more than 2400 members. Soon it generated two new black congregations in the city.[16] Before 1850, First African Baptist in Lexington, Kentucky grew to 1,820 members, making it the largest congregation in that state. This was under its second pastor, Rev. London Ferrill, a free black,[5] and occurred as Lexington was expanding rapidly as a city. First African Baptist was admitted to the Elkhorn Baptist Association in 1824, where it came somewhat under oversight of white congregations. In 1841, Saint Augustine Catholic Church was established by the Creole community of New Orleans. This church is the oldest black Catholic parish in the United States. In 1856, First African Baptist built a large Italianate church, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.[17] By 1861 the congregation numbered 2,223 members.[18] Reconstruction See also: Reconstruction era Outside of a black church in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1935. Church goers in Heard County, Georgia, 1941. After emancipation, Northern churches founded by free blacks, as well as those of predominantly white denominations, sent missions to the South to minister to newly freed slaves, including to teach them to read and write. For instance, Bishop Daniel Payne of the AME Church returned to Charleston, South Carolina in April 1865 with nine missionaries. He organized committees, associations and teachers to reach freedmen throughout the countryside. In the first year after the war, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church gained 50,000 congregants.[19] By the end of Reconstruction, AME congregations existed from Florida to Texas. Their missioners and preachers had brought more than 250,000 new adherents into the church. While it had a northern base, the church was heavily influenced by this growth in the South and incorporation of many members who had different practices and traditions.[20] Similarly, within the first decade, the independent AME Zion church, founded in New York, also gained tens of thousands of Southern members. These two independent black denominations attracted the most new members in the South.[21] In 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee, with support from white colleagues of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, more than 40 black Southern ministers, all freedmen and former slaves, met to establish the Southern-based Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church (now Christian Methodist Episcopal Church), founded as an independent branch of Methodism. They took their mostly black congregations with them. They adopted the Methodist Doctrine and elected their first two bishops, William H. Miles of Kentucky and Richard H. Vanderhorst of South Carolina.[21][22] Within three years, from a base of about 40,000, they had grown to 67,000 members, and more than ten times that many in 50 years.[23] The Church of God, with its beginnings in 1881, held that "interracial worship was a sign of the true Church", with both whites and blacks ministering regularly in Church of God congregations, which invited people of all races to worship there.[1] Those who were entirely sanctified testified that they were "saved, sanctified, and prejudice removed."[1] When Church of God ministers, such as Lena Shoffner, visited the camp meetings of other denominations, the rope in the congregation that separated whites and blacks was untied "and worshipers of both races approached the altar to pray".[1] Though outsiders would sometimes attack Church of God services and camp meetings for their stand for racial equality, Church of God members were "undeterred even by violence" and "maintained their strong interracial position as the core of their message of the unity of all believers".[1] At the same time, black Baptist churches, well-established before the Civil War, continued to grow and add new congregations. With the rapid growth of black Baptist churches in the South, in 1895 church officials organized a new Baptist association, the National Baptist Convention. This was the unification of three national black conventions, organized in 1880 and the 1890s. It brought together the areas of mission, education and overall cooperation. Despite founding of new black conventions in the early and later 20th century, this is still the largest black religious organization in the United States.[6] These churches blended elements from underground churches with elements from freely established black churches.[10] The postwar years were marked by a separatist impulse as blacks exercised the right to move and gather beyond white supervision or control. They developed black churches, benevolent societies, fraternal orders and fire companies.[24] In some areas they moved from farms into towns, as in middle Tennessee, or to cities that needed rebuilding, such as Atlanta. Black churches were the focal points of black communities, and their members' quickly seceding from white churches demonstrated their desire to manage their own affairs independently of white supervision. It also showed the prior strength of the "invisible church" hidden from white eyes.[25] Black preachers provided leadership, encouraged education and economic growth, and were often the primary link between the black and white communities.[citation needed] The black church established and/or maintained the first black schools and encouraged community members to fund these schools and other public services.[10] For most black leaders, the churches always were connected to political goals of advancing the race. There grew to be a tension between black leaders from the North and people in the South who wanted to run their churches and worship in their own way.[26] Since the male hierarchy denied them opportunities for ordination, middle-class women in the black church asserted themselves in other ways: they organized missionary societies to address social issues. These societies provided job training and reading education, worked for better living conditions, raised money for African missions, wrote religious periodicals, and promoted Victorian ideals of womanhood, respectability, and racial uplift.[6] Civil Rights Movement Ralph David Abernathy was a Baptist minister involved in the American Civil Rights Movement. See also: Civil rights movement Black churches held a leadership role in the American Civil Rights Movement. Their history as a centers of strength for the black community made them natural leaders in this moral struggle. In addition they had often served as links between the black and white worlds. Notable minister-activists of the 1950s and 1960s included Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, Bernard Lee, Fred Shuttlesworth, Wyatt Tee Walker and C. T. Vivian.[27][28] Black Power Movement Main articles: Black Power movement and Black Catholic Movement After the assassination of Dr. King in 1968, Black Catholics began organizing en masse, beginning with the clergy that April. A Black Catholic revolution soon broke out, fostering the integration of the traditions of the larger (Protestant) Black Church into Black Catholic parishes. Soon there were organizations formed for Black religious sisters (1968), permanent deacons, seminarians, and a brand-new National Black Catholic Congress organization in 1987, reviving the late 19th-century iteration of the same. This era saw a massive increase in Black priests, and the first crop of Black bishops and archbishops. Black theology Main article: Black theology One formalization of theology based on themes of black liberation is the black theology movement. Its origins can be traced to July 31, 1966, when an ad hoc group of 51 black pastors, calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC), bought a full-page ad in The New York Times to publish their "Black Power Statement", which proposed a more aggressive approach to combating racism using the Bible for inspiration.[29] Black liberation theology was first systematized by James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. They are considered the leading theologians of this system of belief, although now there are many scholars who have contributed a great deal to the field. In 1969, Cone published the seminal work that laid the basis for black liberation theology, Black Theology and Black Power. In the book, Cone asserted that not only was black power not alien to the Gospel, it was, in fact, the Gospel message for all of 20th century America.[30][31] In 2008, approximately one quarter of African-American churches followed a liberation theology.[32] The theology was thrust into the national spotlight after a controversy arose related to preaching by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor to then-Senator Barack Obama at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago. Wright had built Trinity into a successful megachurch following the theology developed by Cone, who has said that he would "point to [Trinity] first" as an example of a church's embodying his message.[33] Scholars have seen parallels between the Black church and the 21st Century Black Girl Magic movement, with social media interactions involving the Black Girl Magic hashtag seen as a modern extension of "[t]he Black church traditions of testimony, exhortation, improvisation, call and response, and song," which Black women can use to form a "cyber congregation."[34] Womanist theology Main article: Womanist theology From the Black theology movement also came a more feminine form, in reaction to both the male-dominated nature of the field and the White-dominated nature of Feminist theology. Major figures in this reaction included Afro-Latino thinkers as well as Black women. Black Catholic womanists also played a major role, including Sr Jamie Phelps, OP, M. Shawn Copeland, and Diana L. Hayes. Politics and social issues The black church continues to be a source of support for members of the African-American community. When compared to American churches as a whole, black churches tend to focus more on social issues such as poverty, gang violence, drug use, prison ministries and racism. A study in 1996 found that black Christians were more likely to have heard about health care reform from their pastors than were white Christians.[35] Most surveys indicate that while blacks tend to vote Democratic in elections, members of traditionally African-American churches are generally more socially conservative than white Protestants as a whole.[36] Same-sex marriage and other LGBT issues have been among the leading causes for activism in some black churches,[37] though a majority of black Protestants remain opposed to this stance.[38] Nevertheless, some denominations have been discussing this issue. For example, the African Methodist Episcopal Church prohibits its ministers from officiating same-sex weddings, but it does not have a clear policy on ordination.[39] Some members of the black clergy have not accepted same-sex marriage. A group known as the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), maintains their disdain for gay marriage. The CAAP president, Reverend William Owens, claims that the marriage equality act will cause corruption within the United States. The organization insists that a real union is between a man and a woman. They also believe that the law prohibiting gay marriage should have been upheld. The CAAP members agree that the Supreme Court had no right to overturn the constitutional ruling.[40] As neighborhood institutions Although black urban neighborhoods in cities that have deindustrialized may have suffered from civic disinvestment,[41] with lower quality schools, less effective policing[42] and fire protection, there are institutions that help to improve the physical and social capital of black neighborhoods. In black neighborhoods the churches may be important sources of social cohesion.[43] For some African Americans the kind of spirituality learned through these churches works as a protective factor against the corrosive forces of poverty and racism.[44][45] Churches may also do work to improve the physical infrastructure of the neighborhood. Churches in Harlem have undertaken real estate ventures and renovated burnt-out and abandoned brownstones to create new housing for residents.[46] Churches have fought for the right to operate their own schools in place of the often inadequate public schools found in many black neighborhoods.[47] Traditions Like many Christians, African-American Christians sometimes participate in or attend a Christmas play. Black Nativity by Langston Hughes is a re-telling of the classic Nativity story with gospel music. Productions can be found at black theaters and churches all over the country.[48][49] The Three Wise Men are typically played by prominent members of the black community. The watchnight service held on New Year's Eve in many Christian denominations, especially those of the Methodist and Moravian traditions, is widely attended by African American Christians.[50] Denominations Throughout U.S. history, religious preferences and racial segregation have fostered development of separate black church denominations, as well as black churches within white denominations. Methodism (inclusive of the holiness movement) African Americans were drawn to Methodism due to the father of Methodism, John Wesley's "opposition to the whole system of slavery, his commitment to Jesus Christ, and the evangelical appeal to the suffering and the oppressed."[51] African Methodist Episcopal Church Main article: African Methodist Episcopal Church Richard Allen The first of these churches was the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). In the late 18th century, former slave Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, was an influential deacon and elder at the integrated and affluent St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia. The charismatic Allen had attracted numerous new black members to St. George's. White members had become so uncomfortable that they relegated black worshipers to a segregated gallery. After white members of St. George's started to treat his people as second-class citizens, in 1787 Allen, Absalom Jones, also a preacher; and other black members left St. George's. They first established the non-denominational Free African Society, which acted as a mutual aid society. Religious differences caused Jones to take numerous followers to create an Episcopal congregation. They established the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, which opened its doors in 1794. Absalom Jones was later ordained by the bishop of the Philadelphia diocese as the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church. Allen continued for some years within the Methodist denomination but organized a black congregation. By 1794 he and his followers opened the doors of the all-black Mother Bethel AME Church. Over time, Allen and others sought more independence from white supervision within the Methodist Church. In 1816 Allen gathered four other black congregations together in the mid-Atlantic region to establish the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church as an independent denomination, the first fully independent black denomination. The ministers consecrated Allen as their first bishop.[11] African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Main article: African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church The African Methodist Episcopal Zion or AME Zion Church, like the AME Church, is an offshoot of the ME Church. black members of the John Street Methodist Church of New York City left to form their own church after several acts of overt discrimination by white members. In 1796, black Methodists asked the permission of the bishop of the ME Church to meet independently, though still to be part of the ME Church and led by white preachers. This AME Church group built Zion chapel in 1800 and became incorporated in 1801, still subordinate to the ME Church.[52] In 1820, AME Zion Church members began further separation from the ME Church. By seeking to install black preachers and elders, they created a debate over whether blacks could be ministers. This debate ended in 1822 with the ordination of Abraham Thompson, Leven Smith, and James Varick, the first superintendent (bishop) of the AME Zion church. After the Civil War, the denomination sent missionaries to the South and attracted thousands of new members, who shaped the church.[52] Other Methodist connexions African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. Lumber River Conference of the Holiness Methodist Church Baptists National Baptist Convention Christian denominations in the United States American interchurch Anabaptist Anglican Baptist Catholic Eastern Christian Lutheran Methodist and Holiness Pentecostal Presbyterian and Reformed Radical Pietist Stone-Campbell Other vte Main article: National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. The National Baptist Convention was first organized in 1880 as the Foreign Mission Baptist Convention in Montgomery, Alabama. Its founders, including Elias Camp Morris, stressed the preaching of the gospel as an answer to the shortcomings of a segregated church. In 1895, Morris moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and founded the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., as a merger of the Foreign Mission Convention, the American National Baptist Convention, and the Baptist National Education Convention.[53] The National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. reports to have 7.5 million members around the globe from 31,000 congregations, thus making it the largest black religious organization in the United States.[citation needed] Other Baptist denominations Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. National Missionary Baptist Convention of America Progressive National Baptist Convention Pentecostalism Church of God in Christ Main article: Church of God in Christ In 1907, Charles Harrison Mason formed the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) after his Baptist church expelled him. Mason was a member of the Holiness movement of the late 19th century. In 1906, he attended the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. Upon his return to Tennessee, he began teaching the Holiness Pentecostal message. However, Charles Price Jones and J. A. Jeter of the Wesleyan Holiness movement disagreed with Mason's teachings on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Jones changed the name of his COGIC church to the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA in 1915. At a conference in Memphis, Tennessee, Mason reorganized the Church of God in Christ as a Holiness Pentecostal body.[54] The headquarters of COGIC is Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. It is the site of Martin Luther King's final sermon, "I've Been to the Mountaintop", delivered the day before he was assassinated.[55] Other Pentecostal denominations Worshippers at Holy Angel Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, by John H. White, 1973. United Holy Church of America Apostolic Faith Mission Apostolic Faith Mission Church of God Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas Mount Sinai Holy Church of America Pentecostal Assemblies of the World United House of Prayer for All People United Pentecostal Council of the Assemblies of God, Incorporated Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith Black Catholicism Main article: Black Catholicism Birthed from the pre-US communities in New Orleans, the DC area, Florida, and California, the presence of African-American Catholics in the United States territories constitute some of the earliest Black communities on the entire continent. Beginning in the early 19th century, Black Catholic religious sisters began forming congregations to serve their communities, beginning with Mary Elizabeth Lange and Henriette DeLille, who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence and Sisters of the Holy Family, respectively. They were soon followed by the emergence of openly Black priests, the first being Fr Augustus Tolton in 1886. The Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (aka the Josephites), a group of priests tasked with serving African-Americans specifically, were formed in 1893 and began ordaining Black men immediately—though in small numbers. They staffed and formed Black parishes throughout the country, and today continue to serve in the same way (as do the two aforementioned sisterhoods, as well as the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary). After the Civil Rights Movement, various new Black Catholic organizations were founded for Black priests, sisters, deacons, and seminarians, and the National Black Catholic Congress arrived in 1987. African-American Catholic priests greatly increased in number and African-American bishops began being appointed, including archbishops. The first African-American cardinal was named in 2020. See also flag United States portal icon Christianity portal icon Religion portal Traditional Black gospel Black sermonic tradition Black theology Louisiana Black church fires Our Lady of Ferguson Our Mother of Africa Chapel General: Religion in Black America[56] Racial segregation of churches in the United States Black theology, or black liberation theology, refers to a theological perspective which originated among African-American seminarians and scholars, and in some black churches in the United States and later in other parts of the world. It contextualizes Christianity in an attempt to help those of African descent overcome oppression. It especially focuses on the injustices committed against African Americans and black South Africans during American segregation and apartheid, respectively. Black theology seeks to liberate non-white people from multiple forms of political, social, economic, and religious subjugation and views Christian theology as a theology of liberation: "a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the Gospel, which is Jesus Christ", writes James H. Cone, one of the original advocates of the perspective.[1] Black theology mixes Christianity with questions of civil rights, particularly raised by the Black Power movement and the Black Consciousness Movement. Contents 1 History 1.1 United States 1.2 South Africa 1.3 Britain 2 Criticism 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 Further reading History Modern American origins of contemporary black theology can be traced to July 31, 1966, when an ad hoc group of 51 concerned clergy, calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchmen, bought a full page ad in The New York Times to publish their "Black Power Statement", which proposed a more aggressive approach to combating racism using the Bible for inspiration.[2] In American history, ideas of race and slavery were supported by many Christians from particular readings of the Bible.[3] The Southern Baptist Convention supported slavery and slaveholders; it was not until June 20, 1995, that the formal Declaration of Repentance was adopted. This non-binding resolution declared that racism, in all its forms, is deplorable" and "lamented on a national scale and is also repudiated in history as an act of evil from which a continued bitter harvest unfortunately is reaped." The convention offered an apology for "condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime" and repentance for "racism of which many have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously.[4] These historic events are used to associate Christianity with racism but the Bible stresses that race is irrelevant: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). Cone relates that, once upon a time it was acceptable to lynch a black man by hanging him from the tree; but today's economics destroy him by crowding many into a ghetto and letting filth and despair (created by themselves) put final touch on a coveted death. Black theology deals primarily with the African-American community to make Christianity real for black people. It explains Christianity as a matter of liberation here and now, rather than in an afterlife. The goal of black theology is not for special treatment. Instead, "All Black theologians are asking for is for freedom and justice. No more, and no less. In asking for this, the black theologians, turn to scripture as the sanction for their demand. The Psalmist writes for instance, "If God is going to see righteousness established in the land, he himself must be particularly active as "the helper of the fatherless" (Psalm 10:14) to "deliver the needy when he crieth; and the poor that hath no helper" (Psalm 72:12).[3] Black theology would eventually develop outside of the United States to the United Kingdom and parts of Africa, especially addressing apartheid in South Africa.[citation needed] United States James H. Cone first addressed this theology after Malcolm X's proclamation in the 1950s against Christianity being taught as "a white man's religion".[5] According to black religion expert Jonathan L. Walton: James Cone believed that the New Testament revealed Jesus as one who identified with those suffering under oppression, the socially marginalized and the cultural outcasts. And since the socially constructed categories of race in America (i.e., whiteness and blackness) had come to culturally signify dominance (whiteness) and oppression (blackness), from a theological perspective, Cone argued that Jesus reveals himself as black in order to disrupt and dismantle white oppression.[6] Black theology contends that dominant cultures have corrupted Christianity, and the result is a mainstream faith-based empire that serves its own interests, not God's. Black theology asks whose side should God be on – the side of the oppressed or the side of the oppressors. If God values justice over victimization, then God desires that all oppressed people should be liberated. According to Cone, if God is not just, if God does not desire justice, then God needs to be done away with. Liberation from a false god who privileges whites, and the realization of an alternative and true God who desires the empowerment of the oppressed through self-definition, self-affirmation, and self-determination is the core of black theology.[7] Black theology largely foregoes intricate, philosophical views of God, focusing instead on God as "God in action", delivering the oppressed because of his righteousness.[8] The central theme of African-American popular religion, as well as abolitionists like Harriet Tubman, was the Old Testament God of Moses freeing the ancient Hebrews from Egyptian rulers.[9] Likewise, Cone based much of his liberationist theology on God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt in the Book of Exodus. He compared the United States to Egypt, predicting that oppressed people will soon be led to a promised land. For Cone, the theme of Yahweh's concern was for "the lack of social, economic, and political justice for those who are poor and unwanted in society."[10] Cone argued that the same God is working for the deliverance of oppressed black Americans.[8] Cone agreed with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, affirming that Jesus is "truly God and truly man".[8] Cone argued that Jesus' role was to liberate the oppressed,[8] using the Gospel of Luke to illustrate this point: "the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them" (Luke 7:22). Cone also argued that, "We cannot solve ethical questions of the twentieth century by looking at what Jesus did in the first. Our choices are not the same as his. Being Christians does not mean following 'in his steps.'"[11] Cone objected to the persistent portrayal of Jesus as white: It's very important because you've got a lot of white images of Christ. In reality, Christ was not white, not European. That's important to the psychic and to the spiritual consciousness of Black people who live in a ghetto and in a white society in which their lord and savior looks just like people who victimize them. God is whatever color God needs to be in order to let people know they're not nobodies, they're somebodies.[12] South Africa Black theology was popularized in southern Africa in the early 1970s by Basil Moore, a Methodist theologian in South Africa. It helped to give rise to, and developed in parallel with, the Black Consciousness Movement. Black theology was particularly influential in South Africa and Namibia for motivating resistance to apartheid.[13] This movement would also be closely related to the South African Kairos Document.[14] Southern African black theologians include Barney Pityana, Allan Boesak, Itumeleng Mosala, Zephania Kameeta, Wesley Mabuza, and Maake Jonathan Masango.[citation needed] On the African continent, black theology is often distinguished from African theology.[citation needed] Britain In the United Kingdom, Robert Beckford is a prominent black theology practitioner. He was the first in the UK to develop and teach a course on black theology at an academic level.[15] Although it is not limited to the British context, an academic journal which has been a key outlet for the discourse around black theology in Britain has been Black Theology, edited by Anthony G. Reddie.[16][17] Criticism Anthony Bradley of The Christian Post interprets that the language of "economic parity" and references to "mal-distribution" as nothing more than channeling the views of Karl Marx. He believes James H. Cone and Cornel West have worked to incorporate Marxist thought into the black church, forming an ethical framework predicated on a system of oppressor class versus a victim much like Marxism.[18] Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago, has been cited in the press and by Cone as the best example of a church formally founded on the vision of black theology. The 2008 Jeremiah Wright controversy, over alleged racism and anti-Americanism in Wright's sermons and statements, caused then-Senator Barack Obama to distance himself from his former pastor.[6][19] Stanley Kurtz of the National Review wrote about the perceived differences with "conventional American Christianity". He quoted the black theologian Obery M. Hendricks Jr.: "According to Hendricks, 'many good church-going folk have been deluded into behaving like modern-day Pharisees and Sadducees when they think they're really being good Christians.' Unwittingly, Hendricks says, these apparent Christians have actually become 'like the false prophets of Ba'al.'" Kurtz also quotes Jeremiah Wright: "How do I tell my children about the African Jesus who is not the guy they see in the picture of the blond-haired, blue-eyed guy in their Bible or the figment of white supremacists [sic] imagination that they see in Mel Gibson's movies?"[20] See also icon Christianity portal Wikiquote has quotations related to: Black theology Bibliography of Black theology Albert Cleage W. E. B. Du Bois Dwight Hopkins Martin Luther King Jr. Liberation theology Womanist theology Christian Identity Notes Traditional black gospel[1] is music that is written to express either personal or a communal belief regarding African American Christian life, as well as (in terms of the varying music styles) to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music. It is a form of Christian music and a subgenre of Black gospel music. Like other forms of music, the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. It is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. However, a common theme as with most Christian music is praise, worship or thanks to God and Christ.[1] Traditional gospel music was popular in the mid-20th century. It is the primary source for urban contemporary gospel and Christian hip hop, which rose in popularity during the late 20th century and early 21st century. Contents 1 Origins and development 1.1 Original music (1920s–1940s) 1.2 Golden age (1940s–1950s) 1.3 The 1960s–1980s 2 Influence 3 See also 4 References 5 Relevant literature 6 External links Origins and development The origins of gospel music are during American slavery, when enslaved Africans were introduced to the Christian religion and converted in large numbers. Remnants of different African cultures were combined with Western Christianity, with one result being the emergence of the spiritual. Jubilee songs and sorrow songs were two type of spirituals that emerged during the 18th and 19th centuries. Some spirituals were also used to pass on hidden messages; for example, when Harriet Tubman was nearby, slaves would sing "Go Down, Moses" to signify that a 'deliverer' was nearby. At this time, the term "gospel songs" referred to evangelical hymns sung by Protestant (Congregational and Methodist) Christians, especially those with a missionary theme. Gospel composers included writers like Ira D. Sankey and Mason Lowry, and Charles B. Tindell. Hymns, Protestant gospel songs, and spirituals make up the basic source of modern black gospel. The Library of Congress has recordings of Negro Spirituals 1. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-11026/ Song - Go down Moses 2. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-68748/ Song - Deep river 3. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-67451/ Song - Golden slippers 4. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-187640/ Song - Steal away The Library of Congress has recordings of African Americans singing Black Gospel 1. https://www.loc.gov/item/ftvbib000061/ Song - Oh Jonah 2. https://www.loc.gov/item/ftvbib000059/ Song - We Are Americans, Praise the Lord 3. https://www.loc.gov/item/ftvbib000114/ Song - Lead Me to That Rock 4. https://www.loc.gov/item/ftvbib000050/ Song - Death Come a-Knockin Original music (1920s–1940s) What most African Americans would identify today as "gospel" began in the early 20th century. The gospel music that Thomas A. Dorsey, Sallie Martin, Willie Mae Ford Smith and other pioneers popularized had its roots in the blues as well as in the more freewheeling forms of religious devotion of "Sanctified" or "Holiness" churches — sometimes called "holy rollers" by other denominations — who encouraged individual church members to "testify," speaking or singing spontaneously about their faith and experience of the Holy Ghost and "Getting Happy," sometimes while dancing in celebration.[2] In the 1920s Sanctified artists, such as Arizona Dranes, many of whom were also traveling preachers, started making records in a style that melded traditional religious themes with barrelhouse, blues and boogie-woogie techniques and brought jazz instruments, such as drums and horns, into the church. Thomas Dorsey stretched the boundaries in his day to create great gospel music, choirs, and quartets. Talented vocalists have been singing these songs far beyond Dorsey's expectations. Dorsey, who had once composed for and played piano behind blues giants Tampa Red, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, worked hard to develop this new music, organizing an annual convention for gospel artists, touring with Martin to sell sheet music and gradually overcoming the resistance of more conservative churches to what many of them considered sinful, worldly music. Combining the sixteen bar structure and blues modes and rhythms with religious lyrics, Dorsey's compositions opened up possibilities for innovative singers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe to apply their very individual talents to his songs, while inspiring church members to "shout" — either to call out catch phrases or to add musical lines of their own in response to the singers. This looser style affected other black religious musical styles as well. The most popular groups in the 1930s were male quartets or small groups such as The Golden Gate Quartet, who sang, usually unaccompanied, in jubilee style, mixing careful harmonies, melodious singing, playful syncopation and sophisticated arrangements to produce a fresh, experimental style far removed from the more somber hymn-singing. These groups also absorbed popular sounds from pop groups such as The Mills Brothers and produced songs that mixed conventional religious themes, humor and social and political commentary. They began to show more and more influence from gospel as they incorporated the new music into their repertoire. In the 1930s gospel music of the civil rights movement was referred to as the black gospel period because this was the most prosperous era for gospel music. The message of many of the civil rights activists was supported by the message gospel music was putting forth. Golden age (1940s–1950s) The new gospel music composed by Dorsey and others proved very important among quartets, who began turning in a new direction. Groups such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, Pilgrim Travelers, Soul Stirrers, Swan Silvertones, Sensational Nightingales and Five Blind Boys of Mississippi introduced even more stylistic freedom to the close harmonies of jubilee style, adding ad libs and using repeated short phrases in the background to maintain a rhythmic base for the innovations of the lead singers. Melodically, gospel songs from this era were more diatonic and conjunct. As "the spirit leads the vocalist" the melodies would become more chromatic and disjunct, evoking pure spiritual emotion that was congruent with the accompanying body or musicians.[3] Individual singers also stood out more as jubilee turned to "hard gospel" and as soloists began to shout more and more, often in falsettos anchored by a prominent bass. Quartet singers combined both individual virtuoso performances and innovative harmonic and rhythmic invention — what Ira Tucker Sr. and Paul Owens of the Hummingbirds called "trickeration" — that amplified both the emotional and musical intensity of their songs. By the 1940s, gospel music had expanded to members of all denominations prompting black gospel artists to begin tours and becoming full-time musicians. In this venture Sister Rosetta Tharpe became a pioneer, initially selling millions of records with her ability to drive audiences into hysteria by sliding and bending her pitch as well as accompanying herself on steel guitar.[4] In contrast, Mahalia Jackson used her dusky contralto voice to develop her gospel ballads as well as favouring a more joyful approach to singing the gospel. W. Herbert Brewster wrote "Move on Up a Little Higher" Jackson's first hit. At the same time that quartet groups were reaching their zenith in the 1940s and 1950s, a number of women singers were achieving stardom. Some, such as Mahalia Jackson and Bessie Griffin, were primarily soloists, while others, such as Clara Ward, Albertina Walker, The Caravans, The Davis Sisters and Dorothy Love Coates, sang in small groups. While some groups, such as The Ward Singers, employed the sort of theatrics and daring group dynamics that male quartet groups used, for the most part women gospel singers relied instead on overpowering technique and dramatic personal witness to establish themselves. Roberta Martin in Chicago stood apart from other women gospel singers in many respects. She led groups that featured both men and women singers, employed an understated style that did not stress individual virtuosity, and sponsored a number of individual artists, such as James Cleveland, who went on to change the face of gospel in the decades that followed. The 1960s–1980s Gospel started to break way from the traditional church setting, choirs, and just singing hymns. There were more solo artists that emerged during these decades, and during this period marked the end of the heyday of traditional gospel, making way for contemporary gospel. Influence Gospel artists, who had been influenced by pop music trends for years, had a major influence on early rhythm and blues artists, particularly the "bird groups" such as the Orioles, the Ravens and the Flamingos, who applied gospel quartets' a cappella techniques to pop songs in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. These groups based their music on sounds they had been singing in church and were now releasing gospel-styled reworking of songs for a secular audience.[5] The influence of gospel was apparent in new versions of pop standards or new songs in a pop style.[6] Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard were rock 'n' roll pioneers with a religious background. Like other artists, these pioneers were stylistically influenced by gospel and it contributed to their music. Elvis was successful in performing his gospel favorites, "Why me Lord," How Great Thou Art, and "You'll never walk alone." For all of his success as a rock 'n' roll singer, he only received awards for his gospel recordings.[7] Individual gospel artists, such as Sam Cooke, a former member of the Soul Stirrers, and secular artists who borrowed heavily from gospel, such as Ray Charles, James Brown, James Booker and Jackie Wilson, had an even greater impact later in the 1950s, helping to create soul music by bringing even more gospel inspired harmonies and traditions from rhythm and blues.[8][9] Many of the most prominent soul artists, such as Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Wilson Pickett and Al Green, had roots in the church and gospel music and brought with them much of the vocal styles of artists such as Clara Ward and Julius Cheeks. The underlying virtues of soul/R&B music taken from gospel, is the direct emotional delivery, truth to a spirit and the feeling within a song transmitted to the listener.[10] During the 1970s, artists like Edwin Hawkins with the 1969 hit "Oh Happy Day", and Andraé Crouch's hit "Take me Back" were big inspirations on gospel music and crossover successes. Both Hawkins and Crouch incorporated secular music styles into gospel, shaping modern contemporary christian music today.[11] Secular songwriters often appropriated gospel songs, such as the Pilgrim Travelers' song "I've Got A New Home," or the Doc Pomus song Ray Charles turned into a hit "Lonely Avenue," or "Stand By Me," which Ben E. King and Leiber and Stoller adapted from a well-known gospel song, or Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get a Witness," which reworks traditional gospel catchphrases. In other cases secular musicians did the opposite, attaching phrases and titles from the gospel tradition to secular songs to create soul hits such as "Come See About Me" for The Supremes and "99½ Won't Do" for Wilson Pickett. When roots music (which including spirituals) became popular in the 1960s and 1970s, a combination of the powerful rhythm and timbres found in spirituals and "hard gospel" combined with the instrumentation and lyrical content of R&B and country contributed to various forms of rock music. See also This article is a part in a series on Gospel music ChristianitySymbolWhite.PNG Roots and beginnings Genres and subgenres Related music genres Associations and groups Awards CategoryMusicians See also: Christianity: PortalCategory Category vte List of gospel musicians General: Black church Soul music R&B rock 'n' roll
Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered for his achievements in civil rights and for the methods he used to get there — namely, nonviolence. More than just a catchphrase, more than just the “absence of violence,” and more than just a tactic, nonviolence was a philosophy that King honed over the course of his adult life. It has had a profound, lasting influence on social justice movements at home and abroad. In September 1962, King convened a meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the main organizational force behind his civil rights activism, in Birmingham, Alabama. King was giving a talk on the need for nonviolent action in the face of violent white racism when a white man jumped on stage and, without a word, punched him in the face repeatedly. King naturally put up his hands to deflect the blows. But after a few punches, he let his hands fall to his side. The man, who turned out to be an American Nazi Party member, continued to flail. The integrated audience at first thought the whole thing was staged, a mock demonstration of King’s nonviolent philosophy in action. But as King reeled, and real blood spurted from his face, they began to realize it was no act. Finally, several SCLC members rushed the stage to stop the attack. But they stopped short when King shouted, “Don’t touch him! Don’t touch him! We have to pray for him.” The SCLC men pulled the Nazi off King, who was beaten so badly he couldn’t continue the speech. Precisely because the attack wasn’t staged, it left an immense impression on the convention attendees, and anyone else who heard about it in the coming days. King © 2017, Constitutional Rights Foundation, Los Angeles. All Constitutional Rights Foundation materials and publications, including Bill of Rights in Action, are protected by copyright. However, we hereby grant to all recipients a license to reproduce all material contained herein for distribution to students, other school site personnel, and district administrators. (ISSN: 1534-9799) SUMMER 2017 Volume 32 No4 CHALLENGING IDEAS This edition of Bill of Rights in Action focuses on ideas that provoke change. The first article traces the development of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent philosophy in the civil rights movement. The second article reviews political and economic changes in Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War. The third article analyzes conflicts over free speech on today’s college campuses. U.S. History: Martin Luther King and the Philosophy of Nonviolence by guest writer and New York Times deputy op-ed editor Clay Risen World History: Vietnam Today by longtime contributor Carlton Martz U.S. Government/Current Issues: Free Speech on Campus: Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces, and Controversial Speech at U.S. Colleges by guest writer Aimée Koeplin, Ph.D. Constitutional Rights Foundation Wikimedia Commons Bill of Rights in Action MARTIN LUTHER KINGAND THE PHILOSOPHY OF NONVIOLENCE Martin Luther King, Jr. addressing the crowd of about 250,000 people at the March on Washington in August 1963. BRIA 32:4 (Summer 2017) U.S. HISTORY 2 hadn’t been just preaching nonviolence; confronted, without warning, by racist violence, he lived it, even at great risk to himself. King did not invent nonviolence as a doctrine for achieving social justice. But he adapted it for an American context, and showed how compelling yet flexible it could be. Influences on King’s Nonviolence King’s earliest exposure to the ideas that would coalesce in his nonviolent philosophy occurred when he was an undergraduate at Morehouse College, in Atlanta. He read Henry David Thoreau’s “Essay on Civil Disobedience,” which outlined the idea of resisting an unjust government through nonviolent resistance, several times. And yet he had a hard time seeing how Thoreau’s highly intellectual New England mentality could provide much of a model for the problem of blacks in the American South, where lynching and plain murder were common fates for African Americans who challenged white supremacy. King continued his academic studies, and his personal research into nonviolence, at Pennsylvania’s Crozier Theological Seminary, where he began his graduate studies in 1948. There he read deeply the growing literature around Christianity as a social movement, which placed the demands of political and economic justice at the heart of a Christian’s religious calling. But it was not until he began to study the life and works of Mahatma Gandhi that he began to see the possibility of applying nonviolence to the specific problems of African Americans, especially in the South. As he later told it, in Philadelphia he listened to a sermon by the president of Howard University, Mordecai Johnson, who spoke at length about the teachings and actions of Gandhi, and in particular his use of nonviolent mass protest to challenge British control over India. King left the sermon transfixed. Though Gandhi was Hindu, King saw immediately the similarity with the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the possibility of applying Gandhian nonviolence in an American and Christian context. King had struggled to see how the lessons of the New Testament could be useful in the struggle for racial justice. “Prior to reading Gandhi, I had about concluded that the ethics of Jesus were only effective in individual relationship,” he wrote. “But after reading Gandhi, I saw how utterly mistaken I was.” Would Nonviolence Work? For King, the heart of Gandhi’s nonviolence was love, in the spiritual, transcendent form of the word. In the face of coercive, racist British rule, Gandhi so loved his oppressors that he refused to take up arms against them. But Gandhi was not without his critics. Some observers said he was lucky that the British were the ones doing the oppressing and questioned whether the Nazis – or racist American whites – would have allowed similar flouting of the law, however nonviolent. King was willing to take a chance that, at least in America, the answer was yes. King also had to deal with another criticism. Some, like the theologian Reinhold Neibuhr, said that nonviolence too often became a way of sealing off one’s moral superiority, of accepting suffering at the hands of one’s oppressors as a form of soul-cleansing, while losing sight of the goal of social justice. “All too many had an unwarranted optimism concerning man and leaned unconsciously toward self-righteousness,” King wrote. It was a point he took to heart – and it was one reason, he said, “why I never joined a pacifist organization.” But nonviolence, he argued, was anything but passive. “Nonviolent resistance is not a method of cowardice,” he said. “It does resist. It is not a method of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil that he is standing against as the violent resister but he resists without violence.” What did King mean by nonviolence? It was not merely the refusal to hit back, an insistence on turning the other cheek. It was, in its own way, aggressive. It meant putting oneself in the face of violence, of actively confronting it and, responding with love to the jabs and punches. It also meant organizing thousands across the South in specific mass actions that would force face-to-face encounters with white, racist power. Doing so, King taught, would demonstrate both the impotence of white violence and show the country that the black community was not afraid to insist on its rights. For King, responding to violence in kind would show the weakness of the black community, not its strength. Nonviolence would also strengthen the activist community through shared suffering and struggle. Wikimedia Commons Mahatma Gandhi was a major leader of the movement for Indian independence from Great Britain from 1915 until 1947, when Britain granted independence. His nonviolent philosophy was a central influence on Martin Luther King. This experience would expand outward to encompass the black community broadly and, King hoped, all Americans in what he called “the beloved community.” Of course, King also understood the practical reasons for nonviolence. Given that blacks were a minority, and that Southern whites often had the power of the local and state police behind them, violence was a dead end. Even demonstrating the possibility of a violent response would elicit a massive backlash, potentially destroying the civil rights movement. And it would negate whatever good will the movement was building in the national community, and especially in Washington, where King and other leaders hoped to see federal civil rights legislation. Testing Nonviolence King’s first foray into nonviolent protest was with the Montgomery bus boycott, which began in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person while riding home from work. She was arrested, leading to an organized effort by Montgomery blacks to avoid riding the bus system, relying instead on carpools. The boycott was a classic Gandhian move: a demonstration of economic independence as a way of eliciting concessions from the white establishment. It was also classic King: intricately organized, well-publicized, and while noble in itself, also leading in a lengthy negotiation with the local white political establishment to desegregate the bus service. And it worked. It would be several years before King’s next major action, but already others followed his model. The 1961 Freedom Riders, who traveled across the Deep South on desegregated interstate buses, demonstrated King’s highest ideal when they reached Montgomery, Alabama, where a mob of angry whites attacked and beat them savagely. Not a single rider, black or white, hit back. Meanwhile, King was leading seminars and workshops on nonviolence. While King was trying to build a mass movement, he also was preparing a vanguard of experts in nonviolence who could walk in the front of marches and absorb the brunt of any assault. They also could do their own training in seminars across the South. Perhaps the most noteworthy trainee to come out of King’s workshops was John Lewis. Lewis was a young seminarian who became a leading activist in Nashville, participated in the Freedom Rides, spoke at the 1963 March on Washington and, most famously, was beaten severely in the so-called Bloody Sunday incident in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. From Birmingham to D.C. As the ranks of the Southern civil rights movement grew, King began to set his sights higher. Nonviolent protest on a large enough scale would overwhelm any possible response. Police could arrest several dozen marchers, but not several thousand. In late spring 1963, King decided to focus on organizing a boycott by black shoppers of the downtown retailers in Birmingham, Alabama, calling for integration of the city’s shops and restaurants. When talks between King’s SCLC, the city government, and local business leaders faltered, King organized hundreds of school children to march through downtown Birmingham, despite not having a permit. The city police and fire departments, under the command of Theophilus “Bull” Connor, met them with dogs and fire hoses. The water pressure was so high it stripped the clothes off the children’s backs. Those who didn’t turn around were arrested. King and his associates had trained the students in nonviolence, however, and not a single one struck out. Images from Birmingham appeared in newspapers and on evening news programs around the world. Not only did the protests force the city’s leaders to reach a compromise with King and the SCLC, but the fear of more incidents such as the one in Birmingham spurred President Kennedy (and later President Lyndon Johnson) to push for the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, ending segregation across the South. King followed up on his success in Birmingham with the August 1963 March on Washington. Despite widespread fears of violence, the march of a quarter of a million people who came to the city to hear King, Lewis, and other civil rights leaders speak was entirely peaceful, a demonstration that Birmingham was no fluke and that nonviolence could indeed become a mass movement. From Selma to Chicago Perhaps the most powerful moment in the civil rights movement came a little over a year later, in early 1965, when King and Lewis joined local leaders James Bevel and Amelia Boynton in organizing a march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. The march would protest the lack of voting rights protections in the South. King was unable to join the protesters when they first set off on Sunday, March 7, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, headed east out of town. As they reached the far side, they were met by dozens of state troopers. They pressed on and the officers set on them, raining down billy clubs and boot kicks. Lewis had his head split open. Eventually the marchers fled back over the bridge. This incident became known as “Bloody Sunday.” King arrived to lead a second march three days later but turned back at the last minute, fearing a trap. Finally, with federal protection, the peaceful march set off on March 21 and reached Montgomery three days later. That BRIA 32:4 (Summer 2017) U.S. HISTORY 3 Nonviolence,King argued,was anything but passive. 4 U.S. HISTORY BRIA 32:4 (Summer 2017) summer, with images of Bloody Sunday still fresh in the nation’s mind, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. As a philosophy, nonviolence was unassailable. As a tactic, it worked well in the context of an embattled South, where national attention focused on the shrinking hard core of white racists who refused to give ground to the civil rights movement. But nonviolence proved less effective as King tried to take his movement national. In 1966, he launched the Chicago campaign, a combination of marches and education intended to highlight the entrenched, but complex, racial disparities in the Windy City. The marchers again encountered white racists who shouted epithets at them, but many Northern whites saw racial disparities as merely the unfortunate outcome of economic disparities. Markets, not men, were to blame, and they refused to see the moral appeal behind King’s nonviolent activism. At the same time, while King dominated the civil rights story in the media during the late 1950s and early 1960s, other leaders and other factions of the movement were often just as active in demanding change but significantly less committed to nonviolence. As the 1960s progressed, these groups, especially the next generation emerging from college, began to gain prominence by taking a more aggressive, even violent stance, embracing armed self-defense complete with automatic weapons. King disparaged these activists, like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, as immature and unsophisticated. But he could see as well as anyone the diminishing appeal of nonviolence in a country where violence was spreading both at home and in the Vietnam War. Indeed, Brown memorably argued that “violence is necessary. It’s as American as cherry pie.” From Memphis to Today King’s last attempt at a nonviolent movement came in Memphis in 1968, where a garbage workers’ strike was dragging on. In late March, King arrived in the city to lead a protest march, but he couldn’t control it. Hoodlums on the edges of the march began shattering windows, and the police moved in. Dozens were injured, and one boy was killed. King returned to the city a few days later to try again, hoping that success in Memphis could illustrate the continued power of nonviolence. Instead, on the early evening of April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed by James Earl Ray, a white drifter, while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. In the days that followed, riots broke out in more than 100 cities across America; scores were killed and thousands injured; and active-duty military forces occupied Washington, Baltimore, and Chicago. As skeptics noted, it was a very violent end to the life of a proponent of nonviolence. Despite his violent end, nonviolent protest did not die with King. In fact, protest movements have adopted it time and again in America and around the world – the gay rights movement, the Solidarity trade union in Poland, the Green Revolution in Iran, and recent demonstrations throughout the U.S. (such as Occupy Wall Street and the Women’s March on Washington). Not all of them have referenced King specifically. But that’s all the more to his credit: Their reliance on the philosophy of nonviolence as the cornerstone of protest politics is the greatest tribute that the world could give to Martin Luther King, Jr. WRITING & DISCUSSION 1. What did the violent incident with the American Nazi in 1962 reveal about Martin Luther King’s philosophy? What did it reveal about his character? 2. Describe the influences on Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolence. How did he interpret those influences in an American context? 3. How was King’s philosophy of nonviolence more than just an “absence of violence”? Use examples from the article. 4. What do you think was the greatest success of the civil rights movement described in the article. How did King’s philosophy of nonviolence play a part in its success? The class is a group of civil rights protesters planning an action in a Southern town in 1962 calling for desegregation of a local lunch counter. Divide students into groups of four. Each group will discuss and then answer the following questions: A. What is the best method to protest? (Choices include: sitting at the lunch counter without moving (a sit-in), marching down the center of the town, boycotting the lunch counter, starting a petition to deliver to the owner of the lunch counter, etc.) B. What sort of response do they expect from the owners and authorities? C. Who are some local allies they can engage with? D. What is the best way to publicize the action? E. What sort of training is necessary? After answering the questions, each group’s spokesperson will share: • The method of protest his or her group chose, and • Reasons for the choice (incorporating answers to the questions as part of the rationale).MARTIN LUTHER KING FJ ® PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: a candid conversation with the nobel prize-winning leader of the civil rights movement On December 5, 1955, to the amused annoyance of the white citizens of Montgornery, Alabama, an obscure young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, ]1-., called a city-wide Negro boycolt of its segregated bus system. To thei1· constemation, however, it was almost 100 pe1·cent successful; it lasted for 381 days and nearly bankrupted the bus line. When King's home was bombed dming the siege, thousands of enraged Negroes wae ready to riot, but the soft-spoken clergyman prevailed on them to channel their anger into nonviolent protest-and became world· 1·enowned as a champion of Gandhi's philosophy of passive resistance. Within a year the Supreme Court had ruled jim Crow seating unlawful on JVI.on tgomery's buses, and King found himself, at 27, on the front lines of a nonviolent Negro revolution against mcial injustice. Moving to Atlanta, he formed the Southern ChTistian Leadership Conference, an alliance of chuTCh-affiliated civil rights oTganizations which joined such activist gToups as CORE and SNCC in a widening campaign of sit-in demonstrations and freedom rides throughout the South. Dissatisfied with the slow pace of the protest movement, King decided to create a c1·isis in 1963 that would " dramatize the Negro plight and galvanize the national conscience." He was abundantly successful, for his mass nonviolent demonstmtion in arch-segregationist Bi1·mingham resulted in · the arrest of moTe than 3300 Negroes, including King "Measures must be taken at the· Federal level to wrb the reign of terror in the South. It's getting so anybody can kill a Negro and get away with it, as long as they go through the motions of a trial." himself; and millions were outraged by front-page pictures of Negro demonstrators being brutalized by the billy sticks, police dogs and fire hoses of police chief Bull Connor. In the months that followed, mass sitins and demonstrations erupted in 800 Southern cities; Presiden t Kennedy proposed a Civil Rights Bill aimed at the enforcement of voting rights, equal employment opportunities, and the desegregation of public facilities; and the now-famous march on Washington, 200,- 000 strong, was eloquently addressed by King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. By the end of that "long hot summer," Ame1·ica's Negroes had won more tangible gains than in any year since 1865-and Mm·tin Luther King had become their aclmowledged leader and most respected spokesman. He earned it the hard way: In the course of his civil rights work he has been jailed 14 times and stabbed once in the chest; his home has been bombed three times; and his daily mail brings a steady flow of death threats and obscenities. Undeterred, he works 20 hours a day, travels 325,000 miles anrl'makes 450 speeches a year throughout the country on behalf of the Negro cause. 1mmdated by calls, callers and correspondence at his S.C. L. C. office in Atlanta, he also finds time somehow to preach, visit the sick and help th e poor among his congregation at the city's Ebeneza Baptist Church, of which he and his father are the pastors. "I'm getting sicli and tired of people saying that this movement has been infiltrated by Communists. There are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida." Reprinted from the January 1965 issue of PLAYBOY @1 965 HM H Publishing Co., Inc. So heavy, in fact, were his commitments when we called him last summer for an interview, that two months elapsed before he was able to accept Ottr request for an appointment. We kept it -only to spend a week in Atlanta waiting vainly for him to find a moment for more than an apology and a hun·ied handshal<e: A bit less pressed when we 1·etumed for a second visit, King was finally able to sandwich in a series of hour and half-hour conversations with us among the other demands of a grueling week. The resultant interview is the longest he has ever granted to any publication. Though he spoke with heartfelt and often eloqu ent sincerity, his tone was one of bwinesslike detachment. And his mood, except for one or two flickering smiles of irony, was gravely se1·ious-never more so than the moment, during a rare evening with his family on our first night in town, when his four children chided him affectionately for "not being home enough." After dinner, we began the interview on this per-sonal note. PLAYBOY: Dr. King, are your children old enough to be aware of the issues at stake in the civil rights movement, and of your role in it? KING: Yes, they are-especially my oldest child, Yolanda. Two years ago, I remember, I returned home after serving one of my terms in the Albany, Georgia, jail, and she asked me, "Daddy, why do "The Nobel award Tecognizes the amazing discipline of the Negro. Though we have had 1·iots, the bloodshed we would have lin own without the discipline of nonviolence would have been frightening." you have to go to jail so much?" I told her that I was involved in a struggle to make conditions better for the colored people, and thus for all people. I explained that because things are as they are, someone has to take a stand, that it is necessary for someone to go to jail, because many Southern officials seek to maintain the barriers that have historically been erected to exclude the colored people. I tried to make her understand that someone had to do this to make the world better-for all children. She was only six at that time, but she was already aware of segregation because of an experience that we had had. PLAYBOY: Would you mind telling us about it? KING: Not at all. The family often used to ride with me to the Atlanta airport, and on our way, we always passed Funtown, a sort of miniature Disneyland with mechanical rides and that sort of thing. Yolanda would inevitably say, "I want to go to Funtown," and I would always evade a direct reply. I really didn't know how to explain to her why she couldn't go. Then one day at home, she ran downstairs exclaiming that a TV commercial was urging people to come to Funtown. Then my wife and I had to sit down with her between us and try to explain it. I have won some applause as a speaker, but my tongue twisted a'nd my speech stammered seeking to explain to my six-year-old daughter why the public invitation on television didn't include her, and others like her. Dne of the most painful experiences I have ever faced was to see her tears when I told her that Funtown was closed to colored children, for I realized that at that moment the first dark cloud of inferiority had floated into her little mental sky, that at that moment her personality had begun to warp with that-first unconscious bitterness toward white people. It was the first time that prejudice based upon skin color had been explained to her. But it was of paramount importance to me that she not grow up bitter. So I told her that although many white people were against her going to Funtown, there were many others who did want colored children to go. It helped somewhat. Pleasantly, word came to me later that Funtown had quietly desegregated, so I took Yolanda. A number of white persons there asked, "Aren't. you Dr. King, and isn't this your daughter?" I said we were, and she heard them say how glad they were to see us there. PLAYBOY: As one who grew up in the economically comfortable, socially insulated environment of a middle-income home in Atlanta, can you recall when it was that you yourself first became painfully and personally aware of racial prejudice? KING: Very clearly. When I was 14, I had traveled from Atlanta to Dublin, Georgia, with a dear teacher of mine, Mrs. Bradley; she's dead now. I had participated there in an oratorical contest sponsored by the Negro Elks. It turned out to be a memorable day, for I had succeeded in winning the contest. My subject, I recall, ironically enough, was "The Negro and the Constitution." Anyway, that night, Mrs. Bradley and I were on a bus returning to Atlanta, and at a small town along the way, some white passengers boarded the bus, and the white driver ordered us to get up and. give the whites our seats. We didn't move quickly enough to suit him, so he began cursing us, calling us "black sons of bitches." I intended to stay right in that scat, but Mrs. Bradley finally urged me up, saying we had to obey the law. And so we stood up in the aisle for the 90 miles to Atlanta. That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life. PLAYBOY: Wasn't it another such incident on a bus, years later, that thrust you into your present role as a civil rights leader? KING: Yes, it was-in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. E. D. Nixon, a Pullman porter long identified with the NAACP, telephoned me late one night to tell me that Mrs. Rosa Parks had been arrested around seven-thirty that evening when a bus driver demanded that she give up her seat, and she refused-because her feet hurt. Nixon had already bonded Mrs. Parks out of prison. He said, "It's time this stops; we ought to boycott the buses." I agreed and said, "Now." The next night we called a meeting of Negro community leaders to discuss it, and on Saturday and Sunday we appealed to the Negro community, with leaflets and from the pulpits, to boycott the buses on Monday. We had in mind a one-day boycott, and we were banking on 60-percent success. But the boycott saw instantaneous 99-percent success. We were so pleasantly surprised and impressed that we continued, and for the next 381 days the boycott of Montgomery's buses by Negroes was 991 YJ 0 successful. PLAYBOY: Were you sure you'd win? KING: There was one dark moment when we doubted it. We had been struggling to make the boycott a success when the city of Montgomery successfully obtained an injunction from the court to stop our car pool. I didn't know what to say to our people. They had backed us up, and we had let them down. It was a desolate moment. I saw, all of us saw, that the court was leaning against us. I remember telling a group of those working closest with me to spread in the Negro community the message, "We must have the faith that things will work out somehow, that God will make a way for us when there seems no way." It was about noontime, I remember, when Rex Thomas of the Associated Press rushed over to where I was sitting and told me of the news flash that the U. S. Supreme Court had declared that bus segregation in Montgomery was unconstitutional. It had literally been the darkest hour before the dawn. PLAYBOY: You and your followers were criticized, after your arrest for participating in the boycott, for accepting bail and leaving jail. Do you feel, in retrospect, that you did the right thing? KING: No; I think it was a mistake, a tactical error for me to have left jail, by accepting bail, after being indicted along with 125 others, mainly drivers of our car pool, under an old law of doubtful constitutionality, an "antiboycott" ordinance. I should have stayed in prison. It would have nationally dramatized and deepened our movement even earlier, and it would have more quickly aroused and keened America's conscience. PLAYBOY: Do you feel you've been guilty of any comparable errors in judgment since then? KING: Yes, I do-in Albany, Georgia, in 1962. If I had that to do again, I would guide that community's Negro leadership differently than I did. The mistake I made there was to protest against segregation generally rather than against a single and distinct facet of it. Our protest was so vague that we got nothing, and the people were left very depressed and in despair. It would have been much better to have concentrated upon integrating the buses or the lunch counters. One victory of this kind would have been symbolic, would have galvanized support and boosted morale. But I don't mean that our work in Albany ended in failure. The Negro people there straightened up their bent backs; you can't ride a man's back unless it's bent. Also, thousands of Negroes registered to vote who never had voted before, and because of the expanded Negro vote in the next election lor governor of Georgia-which pitted a moderate candidate against a rabid segregationist-Georgia elected its first governor who had pledged to respect and enforce the law impartially. And what we learned from our mistakes in Albany helped our later campaigns in other cities to be more effective. We have never since scattered our efforts in a general attack on segregation, but have focused upon specific, symbolic objectives. PLAYBOY: Can you recall any other mistakes you've made in leading the movement? KING: Well, the most pervasive mistake I have made was in believing that because our cause was just, we could be sure that the white ministers of the South, once their Christian consciences were challenged, would rise to our aid. I felt that white ministers would take our cause to the white power structures. I ended up, of course, chastened and disillusioned. As our movement unfolded, ami cl:rect appeals were made to white ministers, most folded their hands--and some even took stands against us. PLAYBOY: Their stated reason for refusing to help was that it was not the proper role of the church to "intervene in secular affairs." Do you disagree with this view? KING: Most emphatically. The essence of the Epistles of Paul is that Christians should rejoice at being deemed worthy to suffer for: what they believe. The projection of a soci al gospel, in my opinion, is the true witness of a Christian life. This is the meaning of the true ekklesia-the inner, spiritual church. The church once changed society. It was then a thermostat of society. But today I feel that too much of the church is merely a thermometer, which measures rather than molds popular opinion. PLAYBOY: Are you speaking of the church in general-or the white church in particular? KING: The white church, I'm sorry to say. Its leadership has greatly disappointed me. Let me h asten to say there are some outstanding exceptions. As one whose Christian roots go back through three generations of ministers-my father, grandfather and great-grandfather -I will remain true to the church as long as I live. But the laxity of the white church collectively has caused me to weep tears of love. There cannot be deep disappointment without deep love. Time and again in my travels, as I have seen the outward beauty of white churches, I have had to ask myself, "What kind of people worship there? Who is their God? Is their God the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and is their Savior the Savior who hung on the cross a t Golgotha? Where were their voices when a black race took upon itself the cross of protest against man's injustice to man? Where were their voices when defiance and hatred were called for by white men who sat in these very churches?" As the Negro struggles against grave injustice, most white churchmen offer pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. As you say, they claim that the gospel of Christ should have no concern with social issues. Yet white churchgoers, who insist that they are Christians, practice segregation as rigidly in the house of God as they do in moviehouses. Too much of the white church is timid and ineffectual, and some of it is shrill in its defense of bigotry and prejudice. In most communities, the spirit of status quo is endorsed by the churches. i\ly personal disillusionment with the church began when I was thrust into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery. I was confident that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would prove strong allies in our just cause. But some became open adversaries, some cautiously shrank from the issue, and others hid behind silence. My optimism about help from the white church was shattered; and on too many occasions since, my hopes for the white church have been dashed. There are many signs th at the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. Unless the early sacrificial spirit is recaptured, I am very much afraid that today's Christian church will lose its authenticity, for· feit t-he loyalty of millions, and we will see the Christian church dismissed as a social club with no meaning or effectiveness for our time, as a form without substance, as salt without savor. The real tragedy, though, is not Martin Luther King's disillusionment with the churchfor I am sustained by its spiritual blessings as a minister of the gospel with a lifelong commitment; the tragedy is that in my travels, I meet young people of all races whose disenchantment with the church has soured into outright disgust. PLAYBOY: Do you feel that the Negro church has come any closer to "the projection of a social gospel" in its commitment to the cause? KING: I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro ministers were among other Negro leaders who felt they were being pulled into something that they had not helped to organize. This is almost always a problem. Negro community unity was the first requisite if our goals were to be realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while ignoring social conditions in his own community that cause men an earthly hell. I stressed that the Negro minister had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership, and I asked how the Negro would ever gain freedom without his minister's guidance, support and inspiration. These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support, and as a result, the role of the Negro church today, by and large, is a glorious example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history, within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end of such naked brutality and violence as we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians in the catacombs has God's house, as a symbol, weathered such attack as the Negro churches. I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window. It was symbolic of how sin and evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I can remember thinking that if men were this bestial, was it all worth it? \Vas there any hope? Was there any way out? PLAYBOY: Do you still feel this way? KING: No, time has healed the wounds -and buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over 3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting-ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor's police dogs, clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn back, he whirled and shouted to his men to turn on the hoses. It was one of the most fantastic events of the Birmingham story that these Negroes, many of them on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the Negroes stood up and advanced, and Connor's lilen fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past to hold their prayer meeting. I saw there, I felt there, for the first time, the pride and the power of nonviolence. Another time I will never forget was one Saturday night, late, when my brother telephoned me in Atlanta from Birmingham-that city which some call "Bombingham"-which I had just left. He told me that a bomb had wrecked his home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force · upon the motel room in which I had been staying, had injured several people. l\fy brother described the terror in the streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, . behind his voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome." Tears came into my eyes that at such a tragic moment, my race still could sing .its hope and faith . PLAYBOY: We Shall Overcome has become the unofficial song and slogan of the civil rights movement. Do you consider such inspirational anthems important to morale? KING: In a sense, songs are the soul of a movement. Consider, in World War Two, Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, and in World War One, Over There and Tipperary, and during the Civil War, Battle Hymn of the Republic and john Brown's Body . A Negro song anthology would include sorrow songs, shouts for joy, battle hymns, anthems. Since slavery, the Negro has sung throughout his struggle in America. Steal Away and Go Down, 1\1.oses were the songs of faith and inspiration which were sung on the plantations. For the same reasons the slaves sang, Negroes today sing freedom songs, for we, too, are in bondage. We sing out our determination that "We shall overcome, black and white together, we shalt overcome someday." I should also mention a song parody that I enjoyed very much which the Negroes sang during our campaign in Albany, Georgia. It goes: ''I'm comin', I'm comin'/ And my head ain't bendin' low /I'm walkin' tall, I'm talkin' strong/I'm America's N ew Black Joe." PLAYBOY: Your detractors in the Negro community often refer to you snidely as "De Lawd" and "Booker T. King." What's your reaction to this sort of Uncle Tom label? KING: I hear some of those names, but my reaction to them is never emotional. I don't think you can be in public life without being called bad names. As Lincoln said, "If 1 answered all criticism, I'd have time for nothing else." But with regard to both of the names you mentioned, I've always tried to be what I call militantly nonviolent. 1 don't believe that anyone could seriously accuse me of not being totally committed to the breakdown of segregation. PLAYBOY: What do you mean by "militantly nonviolent"? KING: I mean to say that a strong man must be militant as well as moderate. He must be a realist as well as an idealist. If I am to merit the trust invested in me by some of my race, I must be both of these things. This is why nonviolence is a powerful as well as a just weapon. If you confront a man who has long been cruelly misusing yp u, and say, "Punish me, if you will; I do not deserve it, but I will accept it, so that the world will know I am right and you are wrong," then you wield a powerful and a just weapon. This man, your oppressor, is automatically morally defeated, and if he has any conscience, he is ashamed. Wherever i:his weapon is used in a manner that stirs a community's, or a nation's, anguished conscience, then the pressure of public opinion becomes an ally in your just cause. Another of the major strengths of the nonviolent weapon is its strange power to transform and transmute the individuals who subordinate themselves to its disciplines, investing them with a cause that is larger than themselves. They become, for the first time, somebody, and they have, for the first time, the courage to be free. When the Negro finds the courage to be free, he faces dogs and guns and clubs and fire hoses totally unafraid, and the white men with those dogs, guns, clubs and fire hoses see that the Negro they have traditionally called "boy" has become a man. We should not forget that, although nonviolent direct action did not originate in America, it found a na tural home where it has been a revered tradition to rebel against injustice. This great weapon, which we first tried out in Montgomery during the bus boycott, has been further developed throughout the South over the past decade, until by today it has become instrumental in the greatest mass-action crusade for freedom that has occurred in America since the Revolutionary War. The effectiveness of this weapon's ability to dramatize, in the world's eyes, an oppressed peoples' struggle for justice is evident in the fact that of 1963's top ten news stories after the assassination of President Kennedy and the events immediately connected with it, nine stories dealt with one aspect or another of the Negro struggle. PLAYBOY: Several of those stories dealt with your own nonviolent campaigns against segregation in various Southern cities, where you and your followers have been branded "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators." Do you feel you've earned these labels? KING: Wherever the early Christians appeared, spreading Christ's doctrine of love, the resident power structure accused them of being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But the small Christian band continued to teach and exemplify love, convinced that they were "a colony of heaven" on this earth who were missioned to obey not man but God. If those of us who employ nonviolent direct action today are dismissed by our white brothers as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators," if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts and goals, we can be assured that the summer of 1965 will be no less long and hot than the summer of 1964. Our white brothers must be made to understand that nonviolence is a weapon fabricated of love. It is a sword that heals. Our nonviolent direct-action program has as its objective not the creation of tensions, but the surfacing of tensions already present. We set out to precipitate a crisis situation that must open the door to negotiation. I am not afraid of the words "crisis" and "tension." I deeply oppose violence, but constructive crisis and tension are necessary for growth. Innate in all life, and all growth, is tension. Only in death is there an absence of tension. To cure injustices, you must expose them before the light of human conscience and the bar of public opinion, regardless of whatever tensions that exposure generates. Injustices to the Negro must be brought out into the open where they cannot be evaded. PLAYBOY: Is this the sole aim of your Southern Christian Leadership Conference? KING: We have five aims: first, to stimulate nonviolent, direct, mass action to expose and remove the barriers of segregation and discrimina tion; second, to disseminate the creative philosophy and techniques of nonviolence through local and area workshops; third, to secure the right and unhampered use of the ballot for every citizen; fourth, to achieve full citizenship rights, and the total integration of the Negro into American life; and fifth, to reduce the cultural lag through our citizenship training program. PLAYBOY: How does S. C. L. C. select the cities where nonviolent campaigns and demonstrations are to be staged? KING: The operational area of S. C. L. C. is the entire South, where we have affiliated organizations in some 85 cities. Our major campaigns have been conducted only in cities where a request for our help comes from one of these affiliate organizations, and only when we feel that intolerable conditions in that community might be ameliorated with our help. I will give you an example. In Birmingham, one of our affiliate organizations is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which was organized by the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a most energetic and indomitable man. It was he who set out to end Birmingham's racism, challenging the terrorist reign of Bull Connor. S. C. L. C. watched admiringly as the small Shuttlesworth-led organization fought in the Birmingham courts and with boycotts. Shuttlesworth was jailed several times, his home and church were bombed, and still he did not back down. His defiance of Birmingham's racism inspired and encouraged Negroes throughout the South. Then, at a May 1962 board meeting of the S. C. L. C. in Chattanooga, the first discussions began that later led to our joining Shuttlesworth's organization m a massive direct-action campaign to attack Birmingham's segregation. PLAYBOY: One of the highlights of that campaign was your celebrated "Letter from a Birmingham Jail''-written during one of your jail terms for civil disobedience-an eloquent reply to eight Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergymen who had criticized your activities in Birmingham. Do you feel that subsequent events have justified the sentiments expressed in your letter? KING: I would say yes. Two or three important and constructive things have happened which can be at least partially attnbuted to that letter. By now, nearly a million copies of the letter have been widely circulated in churches of most of the major denominations. It helped to focus greater international attention upon what was happening in Birmingham. And I am sure that without Birmingham, the march on Washington wouldn't have been called-which in my mind was one of the most creative steps the Negro struggle has taken. The march on Washington spurred and galvanized the consciences of millions. It gave the American Negro a new national and international stature. The press of the world recorded the story as nearly a quarter of a million Americans, white and black, assembled in grandeur as a testimonial to the Negro's determination to achieve freedom in this generation. It was also the image of Birmingham which, to a great extent, helped to bring the Civil Rights Bill into being in 1963. Previously, President Kennedy had decided not to propose it that year, feeling that it would so arouse the South that it would meet a bottleneck. But Birmingham, and subsequent developments, caused him to reorder his legislative priorities. One of these decisive developments was our last major campaign before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act-in St .. Augustine, Florida. We received a plea for help from Dr. Robert Hayling, the leader of the St. Augustine movement. St. Augustine, America's oldest city, and one of the most segregated cities in America, was a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. Such things had happened as Klansmen abducting four Negroes and beating them unconscious with clubs, brass knuckles, ax handles and· pistol butts. Dr. Hayling's home had been shot up with buckshot, three Negro homes had been bombed and several Negro night clubs shotgunned. A Negro's car had been destroyed by fire because his child was one of the six Negro children permitted to attend white schools. And the homes of two of the Negro children in the white schools had been burned down. Many Negroes had been fired from jobs that some had worked on for 28 years because they were somehow connected with the demonstrations. Police had beaten and arrested Negroes for picketing, marching and singing freedom songs. Many Negroes had served up to 90 days in jail for demonstrating against segregation, and four teenagers had spent six months in jail for picketing. Then, on 'February seventh of last year, Dr. Hay}ing's home was shotgunned a second time, with his pregnant wife and two children barely escaping death; the family dog was killed while standing behind the living-room door. So S. C. L. C. decided to join in last year's celebration of St. Augustine's gala 400th birthday as America's oldest city-by converting it into a nonviolent battleground. This is just what we did. PLAYBOY: But isn't it true, Dr. King, that during this and other "nonviolent" demonstrations, violence has occurredsometimes resulting in hundreds of casualties on both sides? KING: Yes, in part that is true. But what is always overlooked is how few people, in ratio to the numbers involved, have been casualties. An army on maneuvers, against no enemy, suffers casualties, even fatalities. A minimum of whites have been casualties in demonstrations solely because our teaching of nonviolence disciplines our followers not to fight even if attacked. A minimum of Negroes are casualties for two reasons: Their white oppressors know tha t the world watches their actions, and for the first time they are being faced by Negroes who display no fear. PLAYBOY: It was shortly after your St. Augustine campaign last summer, as you mentioned, that the Civil Rights Bill was passed-outlawing many of the injustices against which you had been demonstrating. Throughout the South, predictably, it was promptly anathematized as unconstitutional and excessive h:~ its concessions to Negro demands. How do you feel about it? KING: I don't feel that the Civil Rights Act has gone far enough in some of its coverage. In the first place, it needs a stronger voting section. You will never have a true democracy until you can eliminate all restrictions. We need to do away with restrictive literacy tests. I've seen too much of native intelligence to accept the validity of these tests as a ~riterion for voting qualifications. Our nation needs a universal method of voter registration-one man, one vote, literally. Second, there is a pressing, urgent need to give the attorney general the right to initi ate Federal suits in any area of civil rights denial. Third, we need a strong and strongly enforced fair-housing section such as many states already have. President Kennedy initiated the present housing law, but it is not broad enough. Fourth, we need an extension of FEPC to grapple more effectively with the problems of poverty. Not only are millions of Negroes caught in the clutches of poverty, but millions of poor whites as well. And fifth, conclusive and effective measures must be taken immediately at the Federal level to curb the worsening reign of terror in the South-which is aided and abetted, as everyone knows, by state and local lawenforcement agencies. It's getting so that anybody can kill a Negro and get away with it in the South, as long as they go through the motions of a jury ".rial. There is very little chance of conviction from lily-white Southern jurors. It must be fixed so that in the case of interracial murder, the Federal Government can prosecute. PLAYBOY: Your dissatisfaction with the Civil Rights Act reflects that of most other Negro spokesmen. According to recent polls, however, many whites resent this attitude, calling the Negro "ungrateful" and "unrealistic" to press his demands for more. KING: This is a litany to those of us in this field. "What more will the Negro want?" "What will it take to make thest demonstrations end?" Well, I would likt tu reply with another rhetorical question : Why do white people seem to find it so difficult to understand that the Negro is sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to him those rights and privileges which all others receive upon birth or entry in America? I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the Negro for his freedom. This continued arrogant ladling out of pieces of the rights of citizenship has begun to generate a fury in the Negro. Even so, he is not pressing for revenge, or for conquest, or to gain spoils, or to ensla,·e, or even to marry the sisters of those who have injured him. What the Negro wants-and will not stop until he getsis absolute and unqualified freedom and equality here in this land of his birth, and not in Africa or in some imaginary state. The Negro no longer will be tolerant of anything less than his due right ;md heritage. He is pursuing only that which he knows is honorably his. He knows that he is right. But every Negro leader since the turn of the century has been saying this in one form or another. It is because we haYe been so long and so conscientiously ignored by the dominant white society that the situation has now reached such crisis proportions. Few white people, even today, will face the clear fact that the very future and destiny of this country are tied up in what answer will be given to the Negro. And that answer must be gi,·en soon. PLAYBOY: Relatively few dispute the justness of the struggle to eradicate racial injustice, but many whites feel that the Negro should be more patient, th;tt only the passage of time-perhaps generations -will bring about the sweeping changes he demands in traditional attitudes and customs. Do you think this is true? KING: No, I do not. I feel that the time is always right to do what is right. Where progress for the Negro in America is concerned, there is a tragic misconception of time among whites. They seem to cherish a strange, irrational notion that something in the ,·ery How of time will cure all ills. In truth, time itself is only neutral. Increasingly, 1 feel that time has been used destructively by people of ill will much more than it has been used constructively by those of good will. If I were to select a timetable for the equalization of human rights, it would be the intent of the "all deliberate speed" specified in the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision. But what has happened? A Supreme Court decision was met, and balked, with utter defiance. Ten years later, in most areas of the South, less than one percent of the Negro children ha,·e been integrated in schools, and in · some of the deepest South, not e\·en one tenth of one percent. Approximately 25 percent of employable Negro youth, for another example, are presently unemployed. Though many would prefer not to, we must face the fact that progress for the Negro--to which white "moderates" like to point in justifying gradualism-has been relatively insignificant, particularly in terms of the Negro masses. What little progress has been made-and that includes the Civil Rights Act-has applied primarily to the middle-class Negro. Among the masses, especially in the Northern ghettos, the situation remains about the same, and for some it is worse. PLAYBOY: It would seem that much could be done at the local, state and Federal levels to remedy these inequities. In your own contact with them, have you found Government officials--in the North, if not in the South-to be generally sympathetic, understanding, and receptive to appeals for reform? KING: On the contrary, I have been dismayed at the degree to which abysmal ignorance seems to prevail among many state, city and even Federal officials on the whole question of racial justice and injustice. Particularly, I have found that these men seriously-and dangerouslyunderestimate the explosive mood of the Negro and the gravity of the crisis. Even among those whom I would consider to be both sympathetic and sincerely intellectually committed, there is a lamentable lack of understanding. But this white failure to comprehend the depth and dimension of the · Negro problem is far from being peculiar to Government officials. Apart from bigots and backlashers, it seems to be a malady even among those whites who like to regard themselves as "enlightened." I would especially refer to those who counsel, "Wait!" and to those who say that they sympathize with our goals but cannot condone our methods of direct-action pursuit of those goals. I wonder at men who dare to feel that they have some paternalistic right to set the timetable for another man's liberation. Over the past several years, I must s<;ty. I have been gravely disappointed with such white "moderates." I am often inclined to think that they are more of a stumbling block to the Negro's progress than the White Citizen's Counc::iler or the Ku Klux Klanner. PLAYBOY: Haven't both of these segregationist societies been implicated in connection with plots against your life? KING: It's difficult to trace the authorship of these death threats. I seldom go through a day without one. Some are telephoned anonymously to my office; others are sent-unsigned, of coursethrough the mails. Drew Pearson wrote not long ago about one group of unknown affiliation that was committed to assassinate not only me but also Chief Justice Warren and President Johnson. And not long ago, when I was about to visit in Mississippi, I received some very urgent calls from Negro leaders in Mobile, who had been told by a very reliable source that a sort of guerrilla group led by a retired major in the area of Lucyville, Mississippi, was plotting to take my life during the visit. I was strongly urged to cancel the trip, but when I thought about it, I decided that I had no alternative but to go on into Mississippi. PLAYBOY: Why? KING: Because I have a job to do. If I were constantly worried about death, I couldn't function. After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility philosophically. I must face the fact, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that America today is an extremely sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause. PLAYBOY: That statement exemplifies the total dedication to the civil rights movement for which you are so widely admired-but also denounced as an "extremist" by such segregationist spokesmen as Alabama's Governor Wallace. Do you accept this identification? KING: It disturbed me when I first heard it. But when I began to consider the true meaning of the word, I decided that perhaps I would like to think of myself as an extremist-in the light of the spirit which made Jesus an extremist for love. If it sounds as though I am comparing myself to the Savior, let me remind you that all who honor themselves with the claim of being "Christians" should compare themselves to Jesus. Thus I consider myself an extremist for that brotherhood of man which Paul so nobly expressed: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Love is the only force on earth that can be dispensed or received in an extreme manner, without any qualifications, without any harm to the giver or to the receiver. PLAYBOY: Perhaps. But the kind of extremism for which you've been criticized has to do not with love, but with your advocacy of willful disobedience of what you consider to be "unjust laws." Do you feel you have the right to pass judgment on and defy the law-nonviolently or otherwise? KING: Yes-morally, if not legally. For there are two kinds of laws: man's and God's. A man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God, is a just law. But a man-made code that is inharmonious with the moral law is an unjust law. And an unjust law, as St. Augustine said, is no law at all. Thus a law that is unjust is morally null and void, and must be defied until it is legally null and void as well. Let us not forget, in the memories of 6,000,000 who died, that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal," and that everything the Freedom Fighters in Hungary did was "illegal." In spite of that, I am sure that I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers if I had Jived in Germany during Hitler's reign, as some Christian priests and ministers did do, often at the cost of their lives. And if I lived now in a Communist country where principles dear to the Christian's faith are suppressed, I know that I would openly advocate defiance of that country's antireligious laws--again, just as some Christian priests and ministers are doing today behind the .Iron Curtain. Right here in America today there are white ministers, priests and rabbis who have shed blood in the support of our struggle against a web of human injustice, much of which is supported by immoral man-made laws. PLAYBOY: Segregation laws? KING: Specifically, court mJunctions. Though the rights of the First Amendment guarantee that any citizen or group of citizens may engage in peaceable assembly, the South has seized upon the device of invoking injunctions to block our direct-action civil rights demonstrations. \Vhen you get set to stage a nonviolent demonstration, the city simply secures an injunction to cease and desist. Southern courts are well known for "sitting on" this type of case; conceivably a two- or three-year delay could be incurred. At first we found this to be a highly effective subterfuge against us. \Ve first experienced it in Montgomery when, during the bus boycott, our car pool was outlawed by an injunction. An injunction also destroyed the protest movement in Talladega, Alabama. Another injunction outlawed the oldest t:ivil rights organization, the NAACP, from the whole state of Alabama. Still another injunction thwarted our organization's efforts in Albany, Georgia. Then in Birmingham, we felt that we had to take a stand and disobey a court injunction against demonstrations, knowing the consequences and being prepared to meet them-or the unjust law would break our movement. We did not take this step hastily or rashly. We gave the matter intense thought and prayer before deciding that the right thing was being done. And when we made our decision, I announced our plan to the press, making it clear that we were not anarchists advocating lawlessness, but that in good conscience we could not comply with a misuse of the judicial process in order to perpetuate injustice and segregation. When our plan was made known, it bewildered and immobilized our segregationist opponents. We felt that our decision had been morally as well as tactically right-in keeping with God's law as well as with the spirit of our nonviolent direct-action program. PLAYBOY: If it's morally right for supporters of civil rights to violate segregation laws which they consider unjust, why is it wrong for segregationists to resist the enforcement of integration laws which they consider unjust? KING: Because segregation, as even the segregationists know in their hearts, is morally wrong and sinful. If it weren't, the white South would not be haunted as it is by a deep sense of guilt for what it has done to the Negro-guilt for patronizing him, degrading him, brutalizing him, depersonalizing him, thingifying him; guilt for lying to itself. This is the source of the schizophrenia that the South will suffer until it goes through its crisis of conscience. PLAYBOY: Is this crisis imminent? KING: It may not come next week or next year, but it is certainly more imminent in the South than in the North. If the South is honest with itself, it may well outdistance the North in the improvement of race relations. PLAYBOY: Why? KING: Well, the Northern white, having had little actual contact with the Negro, is devoted to an abstract principle of cordial interracial relations. The North has long considered, in a theoretical way, that it supported brotherhood and the equality of man, but the truth is that deep prejudices and discriminations exist in hidden and subtle and covert disguises. The South's prejudice and discrimination, on the other hand, has been applied against the Negro in obvious, open, overt and glaring forms-which make the problem easier to get at. The Southern white man has the advantage of far more actual contact with Negroes than the Northerner. A major problem is that this contact has been paternalistic and poisoned by the myth of racial superiority. PLAYBOY: Many Southern whites, supported by the "research" of several Southern anthropologists, vow that white racial superiority-and Negro infe. riority-are a biological fact. KING: You may remember that during the rise of Nazi Germany, a rash of books by respected, German scientists appeared, supporting the master-race theory. This utterly ignorant fallacy has been so thoroughly refuted by the social scientists, as well as by medical science, that any individual who goes on believing it is standing in an absolutely misguided and diminishing circle. The American Anthropological Association has unanimously adopted a resolution repudiating statements that Negroes are biologically, in innate mental ability or in any other way inferior to whites. The collective weight and authority of world scientists are embodied in a Unesco report on races which flatly refutes the theory of innate superiority among any ethnic group. And as far as Negro "blood" is concerned, medical science finds the same four blood types in all race groups. When the Southern white finally accepts this simple fact-as he eventually must-beautiful results will follow, for we will have come a long way toward transforming his master-servant perspective into a person-to-person perspective. The Southern white man, discovering the "nonmyth" Negro, exhibits all the passion of the new convert, seeing the black man as a man among men for the first time. The South, if it is to survive economically, must make dramatic changes, and these must include the Negro. People of good will in the South, who are the vast majority, have the challenge to be open and honest, and to turn a deaf ear to the shrill cries of the irresponsible few on the lunatic fringe. I think and pray they will. PLAYBOY: Whom do you include among "the irresponsible few"? KING: I include those who preach racism and commit violence; and those who, in various cities where we have sought to peacefully demonstrate, have sought to goad Negroes into violence as an excuse for violent mass reprisal. In Birmingham, for example, on the day it was flashed about the world that a "peace pact" had been signed between the moderate whites and the Negroes, Birmingham's segregationist forces reacted with fury, swearing vengeance against the white businessmen who had "betrayed" them by negotiating with Negroes. On Saturday night, just outside of Birmingham, a Ku Klux Klan meeting was held, and that same night, as I mentioned earlier, a bomb ripped the home of my brother, the Reverend A. D. King, and another bomb was planted where it would have killed or seriously wounded anyone in the· motel room which I had been occupying. Both bombings had been timed just as Birmingham's bars closed on Saturday midnight, as the streets filled with thousands of Negroes who were not trained in nonviolence, and who had been drinking. Just as whoever planted the bombs had wanted to happen, fighting began, policemen were stoned by Negroes, cars were overturned and fires started. PLAYBOY: Were none of your S, C. L. C. workers involved? KING: If they had been, there would have been no riot, for we believe that only just means may be used in seeking a just end. We believe that lasting gains can be made-and they have been made -only by practicing what we preach: a policy of nonviolent, peaceful protest. The riots, North and South, have involved mobs-not the disciplined, nonviolent, direct-action demonstrators with whom I identify. We do not condone lawlessness, looting and violence committed by the racist or the reckless of any color. I must say, however, that riots such as have occurred do achieve at least one partially positive effect: They dramatically focus national attention upon the Negro's discontent. Unfortunately, they also give the white majority an excuse, a provocation, to look away from the cause of the riots-the poverty and the deprivation and the degradation of the Negro, especially in the slums and ghettos where the riots occur-and to talk instead of looting, and of the breakdown of law and order. It is never circulated that some of the looters have been white people, similarly motivated by their own poverty. In one riot in a Northern city, aside from the Negroes and Puerto Ricans who were arrested, there were also 158 white people-including mothers stealing food, children's shoes and other necessity items. The poor, white and black, were rebelling together against the establishment. PLAYBOY: Whom do you mean by "the establishment"? KING: I mean the white leadershipwhich I hold as responsible as anyone for the riots, for not removing the conditions that cause them. The deep frustration, the seething desperation of the Negro today is a product of slum housing, chronic poverty, woefully inadequate education and substandard schools. The Negro is trapped in a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign, caught in a vicious socioeconomic vise. And he is ostracized as is no other minority group in America by the evil of oppressive and constricting prejudice based solely upon his color. A righteous man has no alternative but to resist such an evil system. If he does not have the courage to resist nonviolently, then he runs the risk of a violent emotional explosion. As much as I deplore violence, there is one evil that is worse than violence, and that's cowardice. It is still my basic article of faith that social justice can be achieved and democracy advanced only to the degree that there is firm adherence to nonviolent action and resistance in the pursuit of social justice. But America will be faced with the ever-present threat of violence, rioting and senseless crime as long as Negroes by the hundreds of thousands are packed into malodorous, rat-plagued ghettos; as long as Negroes remain smothered by poverty in the midst of an affluent society; as long as Negroes are made to feel like exiles in their own land; as long as Negroes continue to be dehumanized; as long as Negroes see their freedom endlessly delayed and diminished by the head winds of tokenism and small handouts from the white power structure. No nation can suffer any greater tragedy than to cause millions of its citizens to feel that they have no stake in their own society. Understand that I am trying only to explain the reasons for violence and the threat of violence. Let me say again. that by no means and under no circumstance do I condone outbreaks of looting and lawlessness. I feel that every responsible Negro leader must point out, with all possible vigor, that anyone who perpetrates and participates in a riot is immoral as well as impractical-that the use of immoral means will not achieve the moral · end of racial justice. PLAYBOY: Whom do you consider the most responsible Negro leaders? KING: Well, I would say that Roy Wilkins of the NAACP has proved time and again to be a very articulate spokesman for the rights of Negroes. He is a most able administrator and a dedicated organization man wi1h personal resources that have helped the whole struggle. Another outstanding man is Whitney Young Jr. of the National Urban League, an extremely able social scientist. He has developed a meaningful balance between militancy and moderation. James Farmer of CORE is another courageous, dedicated and thoughtful civil rights spokesman. I have always been impressed by how he maintains a freshness in his awareness of the meaning of the whole quest for freedom. And John Lewis of SNCC symbolizes the kind of strong militancy, courage and creativity that our youth have brought to the civil rights struggle. But I feel that the greatest leader of these times that the Negro has produced is A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, whose total integrity, depth of dedication and caliber of statesmanship set an example for us all. PLAYBOY: Many whites feel that last summer's riots occurred because leadership is no longer being offered by the men you named. KING: The riots we h ave h ad are minute compared to what would h ave happened without their effective and restraining leadership. I am convinced that unless the nonviolent philosophy had emerged and taken hold among N egroes, North and South, by today the streets of dozens of American communities would have flowed with blood. Hundreds of <;ities might now be mourning countless dead, of both races, were it not for the nonviolent influence which has given political surg~ons the time and opportunity to boldly and safely excise some aspects of the peril of violence that faced this nation in the summers of 1963 and 1964. The whole world has seen what happened in communities such as Harlem, Brooklyn, Rochester, Philadelphia, Newark, St. Petersburg and Birmingham, where this emergency operation was either botched or not performed at all. PLAYBOY: Still, doesn 't the very fact that riots have occurred tend to indicate that many .Negroes are no longer heeding the counsels of nonviolence? KING: Not the majority, by any means. But it is true that some Negroes subscribe to a deep feeling that the tactic of nonviolence is not producing enough concrete victories. We have seen, in our experience, that nonviolence thrives best in a climate of justice. Violence grows to the degree that injustice prevails; the more injustice in a given community, the more violence, or potential violence, smolders in that community. I can give you a clear example. If you will notice, there have been fewer riots in the South. The :reason for this is that the Negro in the South can see some visible, concrete victories in civil rights. Last year, the police would have been called if he sat down at a community lunch counter. This year, if he chooses to sit at that counter, he is served. More riots have occurred in the North because the fellow in Harlem, to name one Northern ghetto, can't see any victories. He remains throttled, as he has always been, by vague, intangible economic and social deprivations. Until the concerned power structures begin to grapple creatively with these fundamental inequities, it will be difficult for violence to be eliminated. The longer our people see no progress, or halting progress, the easier it will be for them to yield to the counsels of hatred and demagoguery. PLAYBOY: The literature of the John Birch Society, accusing you of just such counsels, has branded you "a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy." KING: As you know, they have sought to link many people with communism, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and a former President of the United States. So I'm in good company, at least. The Birchers thrive on sneer and smear, on the dissemination of half-truths and outright lies. It would be comfortable to dismiss them as the lunatic fringe-which, by and large, they are; but some priests and ministers have also shown themselves to be among them. They are a very dangerous group--and they could become even more dangerous if the public doesn't reject the un-American travesty of patriotism that they espouse. PLAYBOY: \.Vas there any basis in fact for the rumors, still circulating in some quarters, that last summer's riots were fomented and stage-directed by Communist agitators? KING: I'm getting sick and tired of people saying that this movement has been infiltrated by Communists. There are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida. The FBI provided the best answer to this absurd rumor in its report to the President after a special investigation which he had requested. It stated that the riots were not caused or directed by any such groups, although they did try to capitalize upon and prolong the riots. All Negro leaders, including myself, were most happy with the publication of these findings, for the public whisperings had troubled us. We knew that it could prove vitally harmful to the Negro struggle if the riots had been catalyzed or manipulated by the Communists or some other extremist group. It would h ave sown the seed of doubt in the public's mind that the Negro revolution is a genuine revolution, born from the same womb that produces all massive social upheavals-the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations. PLAYBOY: Is it destined to be a violent revolution? KING: God willing, no. But white Americans must be made to understand the basic motives underlying Negro demonstrations. Many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations are boiling inside the Negro, and he must release them. It is not a threat but a fact of history that if an oppressed people's pent-up emotions are not nonviolently released, they will be violently released. So let the Negro march. Let him make pilgrimages to city hall. Let him go on freedom rides. And above all, make an effort to understand why he must do this. For if his frustration and despair are allowed to continue piling up, millions of Negroes will seek solace and security in blackna tionalist ideologies. And this, inevitably, would lead to a frightening racial nightmare. PLAYBOY: Among whites, the best-known and most feared of these militantly racist Negro sects is the Black Muslims. What is your estimation of its power and influence among the Negro masses? KING: Except in a few metropolitan ghettos, my experience has been that few Negroes have any interest a t all in this organization, much less give any allegiance to its pessimistic doctrines. The Black Muslims are a quasi-religious, sociopolitical movement tha t has appealed to some Negroes who formerly were Christians. For the first time, the Negro was presented with a choice of a religion other than Christianity. What this appeal actually represented was an indictment of Christian failures to live up to Christianity's precepts; for there is nothing in Christianity, nor in the Bible, that justifies racial segregation. But when the Negroes' genuine fighting spirit rose during 1963, the appeal of the Muslims began to diminish. PLAYBOY: One of the basic precepts of black nationalism has been the attempt to engender a sense of communion between the American Negro and his African "brother," a sense of identity between the emergence of black Africa and the Negro's struggle for freedom in America. Do you feel that this is a constructive effort? KING: Yes, I do, in many ways. There is a distinct, significant and inevitable correlation. The Negro across America, looking at his television set, sees black statesmen voting in the United Nations on vital world issues, knowing that in many of America's cities, he himself is not yet permitted to place his ballot. The Negro hears of black kings and · potentates ruling in palaces, while he remains ghettoized in urban slums. It is only natural that Negroes would react to this extreme irony. Consciously or unconsciously, the American Negro has been caught up by the black Zeitgeist. He feels a deepening sense of iden- tification with his black African brothers, and with his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean. With them he is moving with a sense of increasing urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. PLAYBOY: Do you feel that the African nations, in turn, should involve themselves more actively in American Negro affairs? KING: I do indeed. The world is now so small in terms of geographic proximity and mutual problems that no nation should stand idly by and watch another's plight. I think that in every possible instance Africans should use the influence of their governments to make it clear that the struggle of their brothers in the U.S. is part of a world-wide struggle. In short, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, for we are tied together in a garment of mutuality. What happens in Johannesburg affects Birmingham, however indirectly. We are descendants of the Africans. Our heritage is Africa. We should never seek to break the ties, nor should the Africans. PLAYBOY: One of the most articulate champions of black Afro-American brotherhood has been Malcolm X, the former Black Muslim leader who recently renounced his racist past and converted to orthodox Mohammedanism. What is your opinion of him and his career? KING: I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn't enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. He is very articulate, as you say, but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views-at least insofar as I understand where he now stands. I don't want to seem to sound self-righteous, or absolutist, or that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. I don't know how he feels now, but I know that I have often wished tha t he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief. PLAYBOY: For them or for whites? KING: For everyone, but mostly for them. Even the extremist leaders who preach revolution are invariably unwilling to lead what they know would certainly end in bloody, chaotic and total defeat; for in the event of a violent revolution, we would be sorely outnumbered. And when it was all over, the Negro would face the same unchanged conditions, the same squalor and deprivation-the only difference being that his bitterness would be even more intense, his disenchantment even more abject. Thus, in purely practical as well as moral terms, the American Negro has no rational alternative to nonviolence. PLAYBOY: You categorically reject violence as a tactical technique for social change. Can it not be argued, however, that violence, historically, has effected massive and sometimes constructive social change in some countries? KING: I'd be the first to say that some historical victories have been won by violence; the U. S. Revolution is certainly one of the foremost. But the Negro rev:olution is seeking integration, not independence. Those fighting for independence have the purpose to drive out the oppressors. But here in America, we've got to live toget!ter. We've got to find a way to reconcile ourselves to living in community, one group with the other. The struggle of the Negro in America, to be successful, must be waged with resolute efforts, but efforts that are kept strictly within the framework of our democratic society. This means reaching, educating and moving large enough groups of people of both races to stir the conscience of the nation. PLAYBOY: How do you propose to go about it? KING: Before we can make any progress, we must avoid retrogression-by doing everything in our power to avert further racial violence. To this end, there are three immediate steps that I would recommend. Firstly, it is mandatory that people of good will across America, particularly those who are in positions to wield influence and power, conduct honest, soul-searching analyses and evaluations of the environmental causes that spawn riots. All major industrial and ghetto areas should establish serious biracial discussions of community problems, and of ways to begin solving them. Instead of ambulance service, municipal leaders need to provide preventive medicine. Secondly, these communities should make serious efforts to provide work and training for unemployed youth, through job-and-training programs such as the HARYOU-ACT program in New York City. Thirdly, all cities concerned should make first-priority efforts to provide immediate quality education for Negro youth-instead of conducting studies for the next five years. Young boys and girls now in the ghettos must be enabled to feel that they count, that somebody cares about them; they must be able to feel hope. And on a longer-range basis, the physical ghetto itself must be eliminated, because these are the environmental conditions that germinate riots. It is both socially and morally suicidal to continue a pattern of deploring effects while failing to come to grips with the causes. Ultimately, law and order will be maintained only when justice and dignity are accorded impartially to all. PLAYBOY: Along with the other civil rights leaders, you have often proposed a massive program of economic aid, financed by the Federal Government, to improve the lot of the nation's 20,000,- 000 Negroes. Just one of the projects you've mentioned, however-the HARYOU-ACT program to provide jobs for Negro youths-is expected to cost $141,- 000,000 over the next ten years, and that includes only Harlem. A nationwide program such as you propose would undoubtedly run into the billions. KING: About 50 billion, actually-which is less than one year of our present defense spending. It is my belief that with the expenditure of this amount, over a ten-year period, a genuine and dramatic transformation could be achieved in the conditions of Negro life in America. I am positive, moreover, that the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils. PLAYBOY: Do you think it's realistic to hope that the Government would consider an appropriation of such magnitude other than for national defense? KING: I certainly do. This country has the resources to solve any problem once that problem is accepted as national policy. An example is aid to Appalachia, which has been made a policy of the Federal Government's mud1-touted war on poverty; one billion was proposed for its relief-without making the slightest dent in the defense budget. Another example is the fact that after World War Two, during the years when it became policy to build and maintain the largest military machine the world has ever known, America also took upon itself, through the Marshall Plan and other measures, the financial relief and rehabilitation of millions of European people. If America can afford to underwrite its allies and ex-enemies, it can certainly afford-and has a much greater obligation, as I see it-to do at least as well by its own no-less-needy countrymen. PLAYBOY: Do you feel it's fair to request a multibillion-dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro, or for any other minority group? KING: I do indeed. Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been deprived? Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved, and robbed of any wages-potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America's wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. It is an economic fact that a program such as I propose would certainly cost far less than any computation of two centuries of unpaid wages plus accumulated inter- est. In any case, I do not intend that this program of economic aid should apply only to the Negro; it should benefit the disadvantaged of all races. Within common law, we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs, which are regarded as settlements. American Indians are still being paid for land in a settlement manner. Is not two centuries of labor, which helped to build this country, as real a commodity? Many other easily appl icable precedents are readily at hand: our child labor laws, social security, unemployment compensation, man-power retraining programs. And you will remember that America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of Yeterans after the War-a program which cost far more than a policy of preferential treatment to rehabilitate the traditionally disadvantaged Negro would cost today. The closest analogy is the GI Bill of Rights. Negro rehabilitation in America would require approximately the same breadth of program-which would not place an undue burden on our economy. Just as was the case with the returning soldier, such a bill for the disadvantaged and impoYerished could enable them to buy homes without cash, at lower and easier repayment terms. They could negotiate loans from banks to launch businesses. They could receive, as did ex-Gis, special points to place them ahead in competition for civil service jobs. Under certain circumstances of physical disability, medical care and long-term financial grants could be made available. And together with these rights, a favorable social climate could be created to encourage the preferential employment of the disadvantaged, as was the case for so many years with veterans. During those years, it might- be noted, there was no appreciable resentment of the preferential treatment being giYen to the special group. America was only -compensating her veterans for their time lost from school or from business. PLAYBOY: If a nationwide program of preferential employment for Negroes were to be adopted, how wou:d you propose to assuage the resentment of whites who already feel that their jobs are being jeopardized by the influx of Negroes resulting from desegregation? KING: 'Ve must develop a Federal program of puhlic works, retraining and jobs for all-so that none, white or black, will have cause to feel threatened. At the present time, thousands of jobs a week are disappearing in the wake of automation and other production efficiency techniques. Black and white, we will all be harmed unless something grand and imaginative is done. The unemployed, poverty-stricken white man must be made to realize that he is in the very same boat with the Negro. Together, they could exert massive pressure on the Government to get jobs for all. Together, they could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for the good of all. PLAYBOY: If Negroes are also granted preferential treatment in housing, as you propose, how would you allay the alarm with which many white homeowners, fearing property devaluation, greet the arrival of Negroes in hitherto allwhite neighborhoods? KING: We must expunge from our society the myths and half-truths that engender such groundless fears as these. In the first place, there is no truth to the myth that Negroes depreciate property. The fact is that most Negroes are kept out of residential neighborhoods so long that when one of us is finally sold a home, it's already depreciated. In the second place, we must dispel the negative and harmful atmosphere that has been created by avaricious and unprincipled realtors who engage in ".blockbusting." If we had in America really serious efforts to break down discrimination in housing, and at the same time a concerted program of Government aid to improve housing for Negroes, I think that many white people would be surprised at how many Negroes would choose to live among themselves, exactly as Poles and Jews and other ethnic groups do. PLAYBOY: The B'nai B'rith, a prominent social-action organization which undertakes on behalf of the Jewish people many of the activities that you ask the Government to perform for Negroes, is generously financed by Jewish charities and private donations. All of the Negro civil rights groups, on the other hand-including your own-are perennially in financial straits and must rely heavily on white philanthropy in order to remain solvent. Why do they receive so little support from Negroes? KING: We have to face and live with the fact that the Negro has not developed a sense of stewardship. Slavery was so divisive and brutal, so molded to break up unity, that we never developed a sense oL oneness, as in Judaism. Starting with the individual family unit, the Jewish people are closely knit into what is, in effect, one big family. But with the Negro, slavery separated families from families, and the pattern of disunity that we see among Negroes today derives directly from this cruel fact of history. It is also a cruel fact that the Negro, generally speaking, has not developed a responsible sense of financial values. The best economists say that your automobile shouldn't cost more than half of your annual income, but we see many Negroes earning $7000 a year paying $5000 for a car. The home, it is said, should not cost more than twice the annual income, but we see many Negroes earning, say, $8000 a year living in a $30,000 home. Negroes, who amount to about II percent of the America population, are reported to consume over 40 percent of the Scotch whisky imported into the U.S., and to spend over $72,000,000 a year in jewelry stores. So when we come asking for civil rights donations, or help for the United Negro College Fund, most Negroes are trying to make ends meet. PLAYBOY: The widespread looting that took place during last summer's riots would seem to prove your point. Do you agree with those who feel that this looting-much of which was directed against Jewish-owned stores-was anti-Semitic in motivation? KING: No, I do not believe that the riots could in any way be considered expressions of anti-Semitism. It's true, as I was particularly pained to learn, that a large percentage of the looted stores were owned by our Jewish friends, but I do not feel that anti-Semitism was involved. A high percentage of the merchants serving most Negro communities simply happen to be Jewish. How could there be anti-Semitism among Negroes when our Jewish friends have demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways, and often at great personal sacrifice? Can we ever express our appreciation to the rabbis who chose to give moral witness with us in St. Augustine during our recent protest against segregation in tha t unhappy city? Need I remind anyone of the awful beating suffered by Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland when he joined the civil rights workers there in Hattiesburg, Mississippi? And who can ever forget the sacrifice of two Jewish lives, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, in the swamps of Mississippi? It would be impossible to record the contribution that the Jewish people have made toward the Negro's struggle for freedom-it has been so great. PLAYBOY: In conspicuous contrast, according to a recent poll conducted by Ebony, only one Negro in ten has ever participated physically in any form of social protest. vVhy? KING: It is not always sheer numbers that are the measure of public support. As I see it, every Negro who does participate represents the sympathy and the moral backing of thousands of others. Let us never forget how one photograph, of those Birmingham policemen with th eir knees on that Negro woman on the ground, touched something emotionally deep in most Negroes in America, no matter who they were. In city after city, where S.C. L. C. has helped to achieve sweeping social changes, it has been not only because of the quality of its members' dedication and discipline, but because of the moral support of many Negroes who never took an active part. It's significant, I think, that during each of our city struggles, the usual aver- age of crimes committed by Negroes has dropped to almost nothing. But it is true, undeniably, that there are many Negroes who will never fight for freedom-yet who will be eager enough to accept it when it comes. And there are millions of Negroes who have never known anything but oppression, who are so devoid of pride and selfrespect that they have resigned themselves to segregation. Other Negroes, comfortable and complacent, consider that they are above the struggle of the masses. And still others seek personal profit from segregation. PLAYBOY: Many Southern whites have accused you of being among those who exploit the race problem for private gain. You are widely believed throughout the South, in fact, to have amassed a vast personal fortune in the course of your civil rights activities. KING: Me wealthy? This is so utterly fallacious and erroneous that I often wonder where it got started. For the sixth straight year since I have been S.C. L. C.'s president, I have rejected our board's insistent recommendation that I accept some salary beyond the one dollar a year which I receive, which entitles me to participate in our employees' group insurance plan. I have rejected also our board's offer of financial gifts as a measure and expression of appreciation. My only salary is from my church, $4000 a year, plus $2000 more a year for what is known as "pastoral care." To earn a grand total of about $.10,000 a year, I keep about $4000 to $5000 a year for myself from the honorariums that I receive from various speaking engagements. About 90 percent of my speaking is for S.C. L. C., and it brings into our treasury something around $200,000 a year. Additionally, I get a fairly sizable but fluctuating income in the form of royalties from my writings. But all of this, too, I give to my church, or to my alma mater, Morehouse College, here in Atlanta. I believe as sincerely as I believe anything that the struggle for freedom in which S. C. L. C. is engaged is not one that should reward any participant with individual wealth and gain. I think I'd rise up in my grave if I died leaving two or three hundred thousand dollars. But people just don't seem to believe that this is the way I feel about it. If I have any weaknesses, they are not in the area of coveting wealth. My wife knows this well; in fact, she feels that I overdo it. But the Internal Revenue people, they stay on me; they feel sure that one day they are going to find a fortune stashed in a mattress. To give you some idea of my reputed affluence, just last week I came in from a trip and learned that a television program had announced I was going to purchase an expensive home in an all-white neighborhood here in Atlanta. It was news to me! PLAYBOY: Your schedule of speaking engagements and civil rights commitments throughout the country is a punishing one-often 20 hours a day, seven days a week, according to reports. How much time do you get to spend at home? KING: Very little, indeed. I've averaged not more than two days a week at home here in Atlanta over the past year-or since Birmingham, actually. I'm away two and three weeks at a time, mostly working in commumues across the South. WhereYer I am, I try to be in a pulpit as many Sundays as possible. But eYery day when I'm at home, I break from the office for dinner and try to spend a few hours with the children before I return to the office for some night work. And on Tuesdays when I'm not out of town, I don't go to the office. I keep this for my quiet day of reading and silence and meditation, and an entire evening with Mrs. King and the children. PLAYBOY: If you could have a week's uninterrupted rest. with no commitments whatever, how would you spend it? KING: It's difficult to imagine such a thing, but if I had the luxury of an entire week, I would spend it meditating and reading, refreshing myself spiritually and intellectually. I have a deep nostalgia for the periods in the past that I was able to devote in this manner. Amidst the struggle, amidst the frustrations, amidst the endless work, I often reflect that I am forever giving-never pausing to take in. I feel urgently the need for even an hour of time to get away, to withdraw, to refuel. I need more time to think through what is being done, to take time out from the mechanics of the movement, to reflect on the meaning of the movement. PLAYBOY: If you were marooned on the proverbial desert island, and could have with you only one book-apart from the Bible-what would it be? KING: That's tough. Let me think about it-one book, not the Bible. Well, I think I would have to pick Plato's Republic. I feel that it brings together more of the insights of history than any other book. There is not a creative idea extant that is not discussed, in some way, in this work. Whatever realm of theology or philosophy is one's interest-and I am deeply interested in both-somewhere along the way, in this book, you will find the matter explored. PLAYBOY: If you could send someoneanyone-to that desert island in your stead, who would it be? KING: That's another tough one. Let me see, I guess I wouldn't mind seeing Mr. Goldwater dispatched to a desert island. I hope they'd feed him and everything, of course. I am nonviolent, you know. Politically, though, he's already on a desert island, so it may be unnecessary to send him there. PLAYBOY: We take it you weren't overly distressed by his defeat in the Presidential race. KING: Until that defeat, Goldwater was the most dangerous man in America. He talked soft and nice, but he gave aid and comfort to the most vicious racists and the most extreme rightists in America. He gave respectability to views totally alien to the democratic process. Had he won, he would have led us down a fantastic path that would have totally destroyed America as we know it. PLAYBOY: Until his withdrawal from the race following Goldwater's nomination, Alabama's Governor Wallace was another candidate for the Presidency. What's your opinion of his qualifications for that office? KING: Governor \Vallace is a demagog with a capital D. He symbolizes in this country many of the evils that were alive in Hitler's Germany. He is a merchant of racism, peddling hate under the guise of States' rights. He wants to turn bao:;k the clock, for his own personal aggrandizement, and he will do literally anything to accomplish this. He represents the misuse, the corruption, the destruc- ' tion of leadership. I am not sure that he beli eves all the poison that he preaches, but he is artful enough to o:;onvince others that he does. Instead of guiding people to new peaks of reasonableness, he intensifies misunderstanding, deepens suspicion and prejudice. He is perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today. PLAYBOY: One of the most controversial issues of the past year, apart from civil rights, was the question of school prayer, which has been ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court. Governor Wallace, among others, has denounced the decision. How do you feel about it? KING: I endorse it. I think it was correct. Contrary to what many have said, it sought to outlaw neither prayer nor belief in God. In a pluralistic society such as ours, who is to determine what prayer shall be spoken, and by whom? Legally, constitutionally or otherwise, the state certainly has no such right. I am strongly opposed to the efforts that have been made to nullify the decision. They have been motivated, I think, by little more than the wish to embarrass the Supreme Court. When I saw Brother Wallace going up to Washington to testify against the decision at the Congressional hearings, it only strengthened my conviction that the decision was right. PLAYBOY: Governor Wallace has intimated tha t President Johnson, in championing the cause of civil rights only since he became Vice-President, may be guilty of "insincerity." KING: How President Johnson may or may not have felt about or voted on civil rights during his years in Congress is less relevant, at this point, than what he has said and done about it during his tenure· as President of the United States. In my opinion, he has done a good job up to now. He is an extremely keen political man, and he has demonstrated his wisdom and his commitment in forthrightly coming to grips. with the problem. He does not tire of reminding the nation of the moral issues involved. My impression is that he will remain a strong President for civil rights. PLAYBOY: Late in 1963, you wrote, "As I look toward 1964, one fact is unmistakably clear: The thrust of the Negro toward full emancipation will increase rather than decrease." As last summer's riots testified, these words were unhappily prophetic. Do you foresee more violence in the year ahead? KING: To the degree that the Negro is not thwarted in his thrust forward, I believe that one can predict less violence. I am not saying that there will be no demonstrations. There assuredly will, for the Negro in America has not made one civil rights gain without tense legal. and extralegal pressure. If the Constitution were today applied equally and impartially to all of America's citizens, in every section of the country, in every court and code of law, there would be no need for any group of citizens to seek extralegal redress. Our task has been a difficult one, and will continue to be, for privileged groups, historically, have not volunteered to give up their privileges. As Reinhold Niebuhr has written, individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily abandon their unjust posture, but groups tend to be more immoral, and more intransigent, than individuals. Our nonviolent direct-action program, therefore-which has proved its strength and effectiveness in more than a thousand American cities where some baptism of fire has taken place-will continue to dramatize and demonstrate against local injustices to the Negro until the last of those who impose those injustices are forced to negotiate; until, finally, the Negro ·wins the protections of the Constitution that have been denied to him; until society, at long last, is stricken gloriously and incurably color-blind. PLAYBOY: In well-earned recognition of your dedication to and leadership of the struggle to achieve these goals, you became, in October of last year, the youngest man ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. What was your reaction to the news? KING: It made me feel very humble indeed. But I would like to think that the award is not a personal tribute, but a tribute to the entire freedom movement, and to the gallant people of both races who surround me in the drive for civil rights which will make the American dream a reality. I think that this internationally known award will call even more attention to our struggle, gain even greater sympathy and understanding for our cause, from people all over the world. I like to think that the award recognizes symbolically the gallantry, the courage and the amazing discipline of the Negro in America, for these things are to his eternal credit. Though we have had riots, the bloodshed that we would have known without the discipline of nonviolence would have been truly frightening. I know that many whites feel the civil rights movement is getting out of hand; this may reassure them. It may let them see that basically this is a disciplined struggle, let them appreciate the meaning of our struggle, let them see that a great struggle for human freedom can occur within the framework of a democratic society. PLAYBOY: Do you feel that this goal will be achieved within your lifetime? KING: I confess that I do not believe this day is around the corner. The concept of supremacy is so imbedded in the white society that it will take many years for color to cease to be a judgmental factor. But it is certainly my hope and dream. Indeed, it is the keystone of my faith in the future that we will someday achieve a thoroughly integrated society. I believe that before the turn of the century, if trends continue to move and develop as presently, we will have moved a long, long way toward such a society. PLAYBOY: Do you intend to dedicate the rest of your life, then, to the Negro cause? KING: If need be, yes. But I dream of the day when the demands presently cast upon me will be greatly diminished. I would say that in the next five years, though, I can't hape for much letup-either in the South or in the North. After that time, it is my hope that things will taper off a bit. PLAYBOY: If they do, what are your plans? KING: Well, at one time I dreamed of pastoring for a few years, and then of going to a university to teach theology. But I gave that up when I became deeply involved in the civil rights struggle. Perhaps, in five years or so, if the demands on me have lightened, I will have the chance to make that dream come true. PLAYBOY: In the meanwhile, you are now the universally acknowledged leader of the American civil rights movement, and chief spokesman for the nation's 20,000,000 Negroes. Are there ever moments when you feel awed by this burden of responsibility, or inadequate to its demands? KING: One cannot be in my position, looked to by some for guidance, without being constantly reminded of the awesomeness of its responsibility. I live with one deep concern: Am I making the right decisions? Sometimes I am uncertain, and I must look to God for guidance. There was one morning I recall, when I was in the Birmingham jail, in solitary, with not even my lawyers permitted to visit, and I was in a nightmare of despair. The very future of our movement hung in the balance, depending upon capricious turns of events over which I could have no control there, incommunicado, in an utterly dark dungeon. This was about ten days after our Birmingham demonstrations began. Over 400 of our followers had gone to jail; some had been bailed out, but we had ·used up all of our money for bail, and about 300 remained in jail, and I felt personally responsible. It was then that President Kennedy telephoned my wife, Coretta. After that, my jail conditions were relaxed, and the following Sunday afternoon-it was Easter Sunday -two S.C.L.C. attorneys were permitted to visit me. The next day, word came to me from New York that Harry Belafonte had raised $50,000 that was available immediately for bail bonds, and if more was needed, he would raise that. I cannot express what I felt, but I knew at that moment that God's presence had never left me, that He had been with me there in solitary. I subject myself to self-purification and to endless self-analysis; I question and soul-search constantly into myself to be as certain as I can that -I am fulfilling the true meaning of my work, that I am maintaining my sense of purpose, that I am holding fast to my ideals, that I am guiding my people in the right direction. But whatever my doubts, however heavy the burden, I feel that I must accept the task of helping to make this nation and this world a better place to live in-for all men, black and white alike. I never will forget a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother. "What do you want?" the ·policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked him straight in the eye and answered, "Fee-dom." She couldn't even pronounce it, but she knew.lt was beautiful! Many times when I have been in sorely trying situations, the memory of that little one has come into my mind, and has buoyed me. .Similarly, not long ago, I toured in eight communities of the state of Mississippi. And I have carried with me ever since a visual image of the penniless and the unlettered, and of the expressions on their faces--of deep and courageous determination to cast off the imprint of the past and become free people. I welcome the opportunity to be a part of this great drama, for it is a drama that will determine America's destiny. If the problem is not solved, America will be on the road to its self-destruction. But if it is solved, America will just as surely be on the high road to the fulfillment of the founding fathers' dream, when they wrote: "We hold these truths to be selfevident ..• "  Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called "civil". Hence, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance.[1][2] Henry David Thoreau's essay Resistance to Civil Government, published posthumously as Civil Disobedience, popularized the term in the US, although the concept itself has been practiced longer before. It has inspired leaders such as Susan B. Anthony of the U.S. women's suffrage movement in the late 1800s, Saad Zaghloul in the 1910s culminating in Egyptian Revolution of 1919 against British Occupation, and Mahatma Gandhi in 1920s India in their protests for Indian independence against the British Empire. Martin Luther King Jr.'s and James Bevel's peaceful protests during the civil rights movement in the 1960s United States contained important aspects of civil disobedience. Although civil disobedience is rarely justifiable in court,[3] King regarded civil disobedience to be a display and practice of reverence for law: "Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."[4] History An early depiction of civil disobedience is in Sophocles' play Antigone, in which Antigone, one of the daughters of former King of Thebes, Oedipus, defies Creon, the current King of Thebes, who is trying to stop her from giving her brother Polynices a proper burial. She gives a stirring speech in which she tells him that she must obey her conscience rather than human law. She is not at all afraid of the death he threatens her with (and eventually carries out), but she is afraid of how her conscience will smite her if she does not do this.[5] Conrad Grebel and Anabaptists advocated civil disobedience to oppression.[6] Étienne de La Boétie's thought developed in his work Discours de la servitude volontaire ou le Contr'un (1552) was also taken up by many movements of civil disobedience, which drew from the concept of rebellion to voluntary servitude the foundation of its instrument of struggle. Étienne de La Boétie was one of the first to theorize and propose the strategy of non-cooperation, and thus a form of nonviolent disobedience, as a really effective weapon. In the lead-up to the Glorious Revolution in Britain—when the 1689 Bill of Rights was documented, the last Catholic monarch was deposed, and male and female joint-co-monarchs elevated—the English Midland Enlightenment developed a manner of voicing objection to a law viewed as illegitimate and then taking the consequences of the law. This was focused on the illegitimacy of laws claimed to be "divine" in origin, both the "divine rights of kings" and "divine rights of man", and the legitimacy of laws acknowledged to be made by human beings.[7][8][9][relevant?] Following the Peterloo massacre of 1819, the poet Percy Shelley wrote the political poem The Mask of Anarchy later that year, that begins with the images of what he thought to be the unjust forms of authority of his time—and then imagines the stirrings of a new form of social action. According to Ashton Nichols, it is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent protest.[10] A version was taken up by the author Henry David Thoreau in his essay Civil Disobedience, and later by Gandhi in his doctrine of Satyagraha.[10] Gandhi's Satyagraha was partially influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action.[11] In particular, it is known that Gandhi often quoted Shelley's Masque of Anarchy to vast audiences during the campaign for a free India.[10][12] Thoreau's 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government", has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. The driving idea behind the essay is that citizens are morally responsible for their support of aggressors, even when such support is required by law. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican–American War. He writes, If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico;—see if I would go;" and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. By the 1850s, a range of minority groups in the United States: African Americans, Jews, Seventh Day Baptists, Catholics, anti-prohibitionists, racial egalitarians, and others—employed civil disobedience to combat a range of legal measures and public practices that to them promoted ethnic, religious, and racial discrimination. Pro Public and typically peaceful resistance to political power remained an integral tactic in modern American minority rights politics.[13] In Ireland starting from 1879 the Irish "Land War" intensified when Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, in a speech in Ennis proposed that when dealing with tenants who take farms where another tenant was evicted, rather than resorting to violence, everyone in the locality should shun them. Following this Captain Charles Boycott, the land agent of an absentee landlord in County Mayo, Ireland, was subject to social ostracism organized by the Irish Land League in 1880. Boycott attempted to evict eleven tenants from his land. While Parnell's speech did not refer to land agents or landlords, the tactic was applied to Boycott when the alarm was raised about the evictions. Despite the short-term economic hardship to those undertaking this action, Boycott soon found himself isolated – his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail. The movement spread throughout Ireland and gave rise to the term to Boycott, and eventually led to legal reform and support for Irish independence.[14] Egypt saw a massive implementation on a nation-wide movement starting 1914 and peaking in 1919 as the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. This was then adopted by other native peoples who objected to British occupation from 1920 and on. This was not used with native laws that were more oppressive than the British occupation[specify], leading to problems for these countries today.[15] Zaghloul Pasha, considered the mastermind behind this massive civil disobedience, was a native middle-class, Azhar graduate, political activist, judge, parliamentary and ex-cabinet minister whose leadership brought Christian and Muslim communities together as well as women into the massive protests. Along with his companions of Wafd Party, who have achieved an independence of Egypt and a first constitution in 1923. Civil disobedience is one of the many ways people have revolted against what they deem to be unfair laws. It has been used in many nonviolent resistance movements in India (Mahatma Gandhi's campaigns for independence from the British Empire), in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, in early stages of the Bangladeshi independence movement against Pakistani colonialism and in East Germany to oust their Stalinist government.[16] In South Africa during the leftist campaign against the far-right Apartheid regime, in the American civil rights movement against Jim Crow laws, in the Singing Revolution to bring independence to the Baltic countries from the Soviet Union, and more recently with the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004 Orange Revolution[17] and the 2013–2014 Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, the 2016–2017 Candlelight Revolution in South Korea, and the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests, among many other various movements worldwide. Etymology Henry David Thoreau's classic essay Civil Disobedience inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and many other activists. Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay "Resistance to Civil Government" was eventually renamed "Essay on Civil Disobedience". After his landmark lectures were published in 1866, the term began to appear in numerous sermons and lectures relating to slavery and the war in Mexico.[18][19][20][21] Thus, by the time Thoreau's lectures were first published under the title "Civil Disobedience", in 1866, four years after his death, the term had achieved fairly widespread usage. It has been argued that the term "civil disobedience" has always suffered from ambiguity and in modern times, become utterly debased. Marshall Cohen notes, "It has been used to describe everything from bringing a test-case in the federal courts to taking aim at a federal official. Indeed, for Vice President Spiro Agnew it has become a code-word describing the activities of muggers, arsonists, draft evaders, campaign hecklers, campus militants, anti-war demonstrators, juvenile delinquents and political assassins."[22] LeGrande writes that the formulation of a single all-encompassing definition of the term is extremely difficult, if not impossible. In reviewing the voluminous literature on the subject, the student of civil disobedience rapidly finds himself surrounded by a maze of semantical problems and grammatical niceties. Like Alice in Wonderland, he often finds that specific terminology has no more (or no less) meaning than the individual orator intends it to have. He encourages a distinction between lawful protest demonstration, nonviolent civil disobedience, and violent civil disobedience.[23] In a letter to P. K. Rao, dated 10 September 1935, Gandhi disputes that his idea of civil disobedience was derived from the writings of Thoreau:[24] The statement that I had derived my idea of Civil Disobedience from the writings of Thoreau is wrong. The resistance to authority in South Africa was well advanced before I got the essay ... When I saw the title of Thoreau's great essay, I began to use his phrase to explain our struggle to the English readers. But I found that even "Civil Disobedience" failed to convey the full meaning of the struggle. I therefore adopted the phrase "Civil Resistance." Theories In seeking an active form of civil disobedience, one may choose to deliberately break certain laws, such as by forming a peaceful blockade or occupying a facility illegally,[25] though sometimes violence has been known to occur. Often there is an expectation to be attacked or even beaten by the authorities. Protesters often undergo training in advance on how to react to arrest or to attack. Civil disobedience is usually defined as pertaining to a citizen's relation to the state and its laws, as distinguished from a constitutional impasse, in which two public agencies, especially two equally sovereign branches of government, conflict. For instance, if the head of government of a country were to refuse to enforce a decision of that country's highest court, it would not be civil disobedience, since the head of government would act in his or her capacity as public official rather than private citizen.[26] This definition is disputed by Thoreau's political philosophy on the conscience vs. the collective. The person is the final judge of right and wrong. More than this, since only people act, only a person can act unjustly. When the government knocks on the door, it is a person in the form of a postman or tax collector whose hand hits the wood. Before Thoreau's imprisonment, when a confused taxman had wondered aloud about how to handle his refusal to pay, Thoreau had advised, "Resign". If a man chose to be an agent of injustice, then Thoreau insisted on confronting him with the fact that he was making a choice. He admits that government may express the will of the majority but it may also express nothing more than the will of elite politicians. Even a good form of government is "liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it". If a government did express the voice of most people, this would not compel the obedience of those who disagree with what is said. The majority may be powerful but it is not necessarily right.[27] In his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls described civil disobedience as "a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about change in the law or policies of the government".[28] Ronald Dworkin held that there are three types of civil disobedience: "Integrity-based" civil disobedience occurs when a citizen disobeys a law they feel is immoral, as in the case of abolitionists disobeying the fugitive slave laws by refusing to turn over escaped slaves to authorities. "Justice-based" civil disobedience occurs when a citizen disobeys laws to lay claim to some right denied to them, as when Black people illegally protested during the civil rights movement. "Policy-based" civil disobedience occurs when a person breaks the law to change a policy they believe is dangerously wrong.[29] Some theories of civil disobedience hold that civil disobedience is only justified against governmental entities. Brownlee argues that disobedience in opposition to the decisions of non-governmental agencies such as trade unions, banks, and private universities can be justified if it reflects "a larger challenge to the legal system that permits those decisions to be taken". The same principle, she argues, applies to breaches of law in protest against international organizations and foreign governments.[30] It is usually recognized that lawbreaking, if it is not done publicly, at least must be publicly announced to constitute civil disobedience. But Stephen Eilmann argues that if it is necessary to disobey rules that conflict with morality, we might ask why disobedience should take the form of public civil disobedience rather than simply covert lawbreaking. If a lawyer wishes to help a client overcome legal obstacles to securing their natural rights, he might, for instance, find that assisting in fabricating evidence or committing perjury is more effective than open disobedience. This assumes that common morality does not have a prohibition on deceit in such situations.[31] The Fully Informed Jury Association's publication "A Primer for Prospective Jurors" notes, "Think of the dilemma faced by German citizens when Hitler's secret police demanded to know if they were hiding a Jew in their house."[32] By this definition, civil disobedience could be traced back to the Book of Exodus, where Shiphrah and Puah refused a direct order of Pharaoh but misrepresented how they did it. (Exodus 1: 15–19)[33] Violent vs. nonviolent There have been debates as to whether civil disobedience must necessarily be non-violent. Black's Law Dictionary includes nonviolence in its definition of civil disobedience. Christian Bay's encyclopedia article states that civil disobedience requires "carefully chosen and legitimate means", but holds that they do not have to be non-violent.[34] It has been argued that, while both civil disobedience and civil rebellion are justified by appeal to constitutional defects, rebellion is much more destructive; therefore, the defects justifying rebellion must be much more serious than those justifying disobedience, and if one cannot justify civil rebellion, then one cannot justify a civil disobedient's use of force and violence and refusal to submit to arrest. Civil disobedients' refraining from violence is also said to help preserve society's tolerance of civil disobedience.[35] The philosopher H. J. McCloskey argues that "if violent, intimidatory, coercive disobedience is more effective, it is, other things being equal, more justified than less effective, nonviolent disobedience."[36] In his best-selling Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order,[37] Howard Zinn takes a similar position; Zinn states that while the goals of civil disobedience are generally nonviolent, in the inevitable tension accompanying the transition from a violent world to a non-violent one, the choice of means will almost never be pure, and will involve such complexities that the simple distinction between violence and non-violence does not suffice as a guide ... the very acts with which we seek to do good cannot escape the imperfections of the world we are trying to change.[38] Zinn rejects any "easy and righteous dismissal of violence", noting that Thoreau, the popularizer of the term civil disobedience, approved of the armed insurrection of John Brown. He also notes that some major civil disobedience campaigns which have been classified as non-violent, such as the Birmingham campaign, have actually included elements of violence.[39][40] Revolutionary vs. non-revolutionary Non-revolutionary civil disobedience is a simple disobedience of laws on the grounds that they are judged "wrong" by a person's conscience, or as part of an effort to render certain laws ineffective, to cause their repeal, or to exert pressure to get one's political wishes on some other issue. Revolutionary civil disobedience is more of an active attempt to overthrow a government (or to change cultural traditions, social customs or religious beliefs). Revolution does not have to be political, i.e. "cultural revolution", it simply implies sweeping and widespread change to a section of the social fabric.[41] Gandhi's acts have been described as revolutionary civil disobedience.[26] It has been claimed that the Hungarians under Ferenc Deák directed revolutionary civil disobedience against the Austrian government.[42] Thoreau also wrote of civil disobedience accomplishing "peaceable revolution".[43] Howard Zinn, Harvey Wheeler, and others have identified the right espoused in the US Declaration of Independence to "alter or abolish" an unjust government to be a principle of civil disobedience.[40][44] Collective vs. solitary The earliest recorded incidents of collective civil disobedience took place during the Roman Empire.[45] Unarmed Jews gathered in the streets to prevent the installation of pagan images in the Temple in Jerusalem.[46][original research?] In modern times, some activists who commit civil disobedience as a group collectively refuse to sign bail until certain demands are met, such as favourable bail conditions, or the release of all the activists. This is a form of jail solidarity.[47][page needed] There have also been many instances of solitary civil disobedience, such as that committed by Thoreau, but these sometimes go unnoticed. Thoreau, at the time of his arrest, was not yet a well-known author, and his arrest was not covered in any newspapers in the days, weeks and months after it happened. The tax collector who arrested him rose to higher political office, and Thoreau's essay was not published until after the end of the Mexican War.[48] Choices Further information: Examples of civil disobedience Action Civil disobedients have chosen a variety of different illegal acts. Hugo A. Bedau writes, There is a whole class of acts, undertaken in the name of civil disobedience, which, even if they were widely practiced, would in themselves constitute hardly more than a nuisance (e.g. trespassing at a nuclear-missile installation) ... Such acts are often just a harassment and, at least to the bystander, somewhat inane ... The remoteness of the connection between the disobedient act and the objectionable law lays such acts open to the charge of ineffectiveness and absurdity. Bedau also notes, though, that the very harmlessness of such entirely symbolic illegal protests toward public policy goals may serve a propaganda purpose.[42] Some civil disobedients, such as the proprietors of illegal medical cannabis dispensaries and Voice in the Wilderness, which brought medicine to Iraq without the permission of the US government, directly achieve a desired social goal (such as the provision of medication to the sick) while openly breaking the law. Julia Butterfly Hill lived in Luna, a 180-foot (55 m)-tall, 600-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days, preventing its felling. In cases where the criminalized behaviour is pure speech, civil disobedience can consist simply of engaging in the forbidden speech. An example is WBAI's broadcasting of the bit "Filthy Words" from a George Carlin comedy album, which eventually led to the 1978 Supreme Court case of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. Threatening government officials is another classic way of expressing defiance toward the government and unwillingness to stand for its policies. For example, Joseph Haas was arrested for allegedly sending an email to the Lebanon, New Hampshire, city councillors stating, "Wise up or die."[49] More generally, protesters of particular victimless crimes often see fit to openly commit that crime. Laws against public nudity, for instance, have been protested by going naked in public, and laws against cannabis consumption have been protested by openly possessing it and using it at cannabis rallies.[50] Some forms of civil disobedience, such as illegal boycotts, refusals to pay taxes, draft dodging, distributed denial-of-service attacks, and sit-ins, make it more difficult for a system to function. In this way, they might be considered coercive; coercive disobedience has the effect of exposing the enforcement of laws and policies, and it has even operated as an aesthetic strategy in contemporary art practice.[51] Brownlee notes that "although civil disobedients are constrained in their use of coercion by their conscientious aim to engage in moral dialogue, nevertheless they may find it necessary to employ limited coercion to get their issue onto the table".[30] The Plowshares organization temporarily closed GCSB Waihopai by padlocking the gates and using sickles to deflate one of the large domes covering two satellite dishes. Electronic civil disobedience can include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft and data leaks, illegal web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, and virtual sabotage. It is distinct from other kinds of hacktivism in that the perpetrator openly reveals his identity. Virtual actions rarely succeed in completely shutting down their targets, but they often generate significant media attention.[52] Dilemma actions are designed to create a "response dilemma" for public authorities "by forcing them to either concede some public space to protesters or make themselves look absurd or heavy-handed by acting against the protest."[53] Compliance A police officer speaks with a demonstrator at a union picket, explaining that she will be arrested if she does not leave the street. The demonstrator was arrested moments later. Some disciplines of civil disobedience hold that the protester must submit to arrest and cooperate with the authorities. Others advocate falling limp or resisting arrest, especially when it will hinder the police from effectively responding to a mass protest. Many of the same decisions and principles that apply in other criminal investigations and arrests arise also in civil disobedience cases. For example, the suspect may need to decide whether to grant a consent search of his property, and whether to talk to police officers. It is generally agreed within the legal community,[54] and is often believed within the activist community, that a suspect's talking to criminal investigators can serve no useful purpose, and may be harmful. Some civil disobedients are compelled to respond to investigators' questions, sometimes by a misunderstanding of the legal ramifications or a fear of seeming rude.[55] Also, some civil disobedients seek to use the arrest as an opportunity to make an impression on the officers. Thoreau wrote, My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with—for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel—and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well that he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he will treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action.[43] Some civil disobedients feel it is incumbent upon them to accept punishment because of their belief in the validity of the social contract, which is held to bind all to obey the laws that a government meeting certain standards of legitimacy has established, or else suffer the penalties set out in the law. Other civil disobedients who favour the existence of government still do not believe in the legitimacy of their particular government or do not believe in the legitimacy of a particular law it has enacted. Anarchistic civil disobedients do not believe in the legitimacy of any government, so see no need to accept punishment for a violation of criminal law. Plea An important decision for civil disobedients is whether to plead guilty. There is much debate on this point, as some believe that it is a civil disobedient's duty to submit to the punishment prescribed by law, while others believe that defending oneself in court will increase the possibility of changing the unjust law.[56] It has also been argued that either choice is compatible with the spirit of civil disobedience. ACT UP's Civil Disobedience Training handbook states that a civil disobedient who pleads guilty is essentially stating, "Yes, I committed the act of which you accuse me. I don't deny it; in fact, I am proud of it. I feel I did the right thing by violating this particular law; I am guilty as charged", but that pleading not guilty sends a message of, "Guilt implies wrong-doing. I feel I have done no wrong. I may have violated some specific laws, but I am guilty of doing no wrong. I, therefore, plead not guilty." A plea of no contest is sometimes regarded as a compromise between the two.[57] One defendant accused of illegally protesting nuclear power, when asked to enter his plea, stated, "I plead for the beauty that surrounds us";[58] this is known as a "creative plea", and will usually be interpreted as a plea of not guilty.[59] When the Committee for Non-Violent Action sponsored a protest in August 1957, at the Camp Mercury nuclear test site near Las Vegas, Nevada, 13 of the protesters attempted to enter the test site knowing that they faced arrest. At an announced time, one by one they crossed a line and were immediately arrested. They were put on a bus and taken to the Nye County seat of Tonopah, Nevada, and arraigned for trial before the local Justice of the Peace, that afternoon. A civil rights attorney, Francis Heisler, had volunteered to defend the accused, advising them to plead nolo contendere rather than guilty or not guilty. They were found guilty and given suspended sentences, conditional on not reentering the test site.[60] Howard Zinn writes, There may be many times when protesters choose to go to jail, as a way of continuing their protest, as a way of reminding their countrymen of injustice. But that is different than the notion that they must go to jail as part of a rule connected with civil disobedience. The key point is that the spirit of protest should be maintained all the way, whether it is done by remaining in jail, or by evading it. To accept jail penitently as an accession to "the rules" is to switch suddenly to a spirit of subservience, to demean the seriousness of the protest ... In particular, the neo-conservative insistence on a guilty plea should be eliminated.[61] Sometimes the prosecution proposes a plea bargain to civil disobedients, as in the case of the Camden 28, in which the defendants were offered an opportunity to plead guilty to one misdemeanour count and receive no jail time.[62] In some mass arrest situations, the activists decide to use solidarity tactics to secure the same plea bargain for everyone.[59] But some activists have opted to enter a blind plea, pleading guilty without any plea agreement in place. Mahatma Gandhi pleaded guilty and told the court, "I am here to ... submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen."[63] Allocution Some civil disobedience defendants choose to make a defiant speech, or a speech explaining their actions, in allocution. In U.S. v. Burgos-Andujar, a defendant who was involved in a movement to stop military exercises by trespassing on US Navy property argued to the court in allocution that "the ones who are violating the greater law are the members of the Navy". As a result, the judge increased her sentence from 40 to 60 days. This action was upheld because, according to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, her statement suggested a lack of remorse, an attempt to avoid responsibility for her actions, and even a likelihood of repeating her illegal actions.[64] Some of the other allocution speeches given by the protesters complained about mistreatment from government officials.[65] Tim DeChristopher gave an allocution statement to the court describing the US as "a place where the rule of law was created through acts of civil disobedience" and arguing, "Since those bedrock acts of civil disobedience by our founding fathers, the rule of law in this country has continued to grow closer to our shared higher moral code through the civil disobedience that drew attention to legalized injustice."[66] Legal implications Steven Barkan writes that if defendants plead not guilty, "they must decide whether their primary goal will be to win an acquittal and avoid imprisonment or a fine, or to use the proceedings as a forum to inform the jury and the public of the political circumstances surrounding the case and their reasons for breaking the law via civil disobedience." A technical defence may enhance the chances for acquittal but increase the possibility of additional proceedings and of reduced press coverage. During the Vietnam War era, the Chicago Eight used a political defence, but Benjamin Spock used a technical defence.[67] In countries such as the United States, whose laws guarantee the right to a jury trial but do not excuse lawbreaking for political purposes, some civil disobedients seek jury nullification. Over the years, this has been made more difficult by court decisions such as Sparf v. United States, which held that the judge need not inform jurors of their nullification prerogative, and United States v. Dougherty, which held that the judge need not allow defendants to openly seek jury nullification. Governments have generally not recognized the legitimacy of civil disobedience or viewed political objectives as an excuse for breaking the law. Specifically, the law usually distinguishes between criminal motive and criminal intent; the offender's motives or purposes may be admirable and praiseworthy, but his intent may still be criminal.[68] Hence the saying that "if there is any possible justification of civil disobedience it must come from outside the legal system."[69] One theory is that, while disobedience may be helpful, any great amount of it undermines the law by encouraging general disobedience which is neither conscientious nor of social benefit. Therefore, conscientious lawbreakers must be punished.[70] Michael Bayles argues that if a person violates a law to create a test case as to the constitutionality of a law, and then wins his case, then that act did not constitute civil disobedience.[71] It has also been argued that breaking the law for self-gratification, as in the case of a cannabis user who does not direct his act at securing the repeal of amendment of the law, is not civil disobedience.[72] Likewise, a protester who attempts to escape punishment by committing the crime covertly and avoiding attribution, or by denying having committed the crime, or by fleeing the jurisdiction, is generally not called a civil disobedient. Courts have distinguished between two types of civil disobedience: "Indirect civil disobedience involves violating a law which is not, itself, the object of protest, whereas direct civil disobedience involves protesting the existence of a particular law by breaking that law."[73] During the Vietnam War, courts typically refused to excuse the perpetrators of illegal protests from punishment on the basis of their challenging the legality of the Vietnam War; the courts ruled it was a political question.[74] The necessity defence has sometimes been used as a shadow defence by civil disobedients to deny guilt without denouncing their politically motivated acts, and to present their political beliefs in the courtroom.[75] Court cases such as United States v. Schoon have greatly curtailed the availability of the political necessity defence.[76] Likewise, when Carter Wentworth was charged for his role in the Clamshell Alliance's 1977 illegal occupation of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, the judge instructed the jury to disregard his competing harms defence, and he was found guilty.[77] Fully Informed Jury Association activists have sometimes handed out educational leaflets inside courthouses despite admonitions not to; according to the association, many of them have escaped prosecution because "prosecutors have reasoned (correctly) that if they arrest fully informed jury leafleters, the leaflets will have to be given to the leafleter's own jury as evidence."[78] Along with giving the offender his just deserts, achieving crime control via incapacitation and deterrence is a major goal of criminal punishment.[79][80] Brownlee argues, "Bringing in deterrence at the level of justification detracts from the law's engagement in a moral dialogue with the offender as a rational person because it focuses attention on the threat of punishment and not the moral reasons to follow this law."[30] British judge Lord Hoffman writes, "In deciding whether or not to impose punishment, the most important consideration would be whether it would do more harm than good. This means that the objector has no right not to be punished. It is a matter for the state (including the judges) to decide on utilitarian grounds whether to do so or not."[81] Hoffman also asserted that while the "rules of the game" for protesters were to remain non-violent while breaking the law, the authorities must recognize that demonstrators are acting out of their conscience in pursuit of democracy. "When it comes to punishment, the court should take into account their personal convictions", he said.[82] See also Anti-establishment – Opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society Agorism – Social philosophy advocating a voluntary society Astroturfing – Public relations tactic using fake grassroots movements Billboard hacking – Illegal alteration of a billboard Civil resistance – Political action that relies on the use of non-violent methods by civil groups Civilian-based defense Climate disobedience – What people can do personally to help stop global warming Colour revolution – Political term associated with post-Soviet revolutions Conscientious objector – Person refusing military service on moral grounds Counterculture – Subculture whose values and norms of behavior deviate from those of mainstream society Counter-economics – Economic theory and method Culture jamming – Form of protest to subvert media culture Demonstration – Collective action by people in favor of a cause Dissent – Non-agreement or opposition to authority Direct action – Method of activism Diversity of tactics – Social phenomenon Ecoterrorism – Act of violence committed in support of environmental causes Extinction Rebellion – Environmental pressure group Gene Sharp – American political scientist (1928–2018) Grassroots – Movement based on local communities Grey market – Commodity trade outside of original producer's distribution channel Hunt sabotage – Interference with hunting by animal rights activists Indian independence movement – 1857–1947 movement to end British rule over India Insubordination – Act of willfully disobeying one's superior Internet activism – Form of activism on the internet Malicious compliance – Behaviour of intentionally inflicting harm by strictly following the orders of a superior Mass incidents in China – Large-scale incidents of civil disobedience Minority influence – Form of social influence Nonconformism to the established Church of England Non-conformists of the 1930s – Avantgarde movement during the inter-war period in France Nonviolent resistance – Act of protest through nonviolent means Nonviolent revolution – Civil resistance to bring about the departure of governments Off-the-grid – Not being connected to public utilities Protest art – creative works that concern or are produced by activists and social movements Satyagraha – Form of nonviolent resistance practised during British colonial rule in India Tree sitting – Occupying trees as a political protest Underground culture – various alternative cultures User revolt – Type of website-based social conflict The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.[7][8] It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections.[7] Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act sought to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country.[9] It is also "one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history."[10] The act contains numerous provisions that regulate elections. The act's "general provisions" provide nationwide protections for voting rights. Section 2 is a general provision that prohibits state and local government from imposing any voting rule that "results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race or color" or membership in a language minority group.[11] Other general provisions specifically outlaw literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities. The act also contains "special provisions" that apply to only certain jurisdictions. A core special provision is the Section 5 preclearance requirement, which prohibited certain jurisdictions from implementing any change affecting voting without first receiving confirmation from the U.S. attorney general or the U.S. District Court for D.C. that the change does not discriminate against protected minorities.[12] Another special provision requires jurisdictions containing significant language minority populations to provide bilingual ballots and other election materials. Section 5 and most other special provisions applied to jurisdictions encompassed by the "coverage formula" prescribed in Section 4(b). The coverage formula was originally designed to encompass jurisdictions that engaged in egregious voting discrimination in 1965, and Congress updated the formula in 1970 and 1975. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula as unconstitutional, reasoning that it was obsolete.[13] The court did not strike down Section 5, but without a coverage formula, Section 5 is unenforceable.[14] The jurisdictions which had previously been covered by the coverage formula massively increased the rate of voter registration purges after the Shelby decision.[15] In 2021, the Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee Supreme Court ruling reinterpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, substantially weakening it.[16][11] The ruling interpreted the "totality of circumstances" language of Section 2 to mean that it does not generally prohibit voting rules that have disparate impact on the groups that it sought to protect, including a rule blocked under Section 5 before the Court inactivated that section in Shelby County v. Holder.[16][11] In particular, the ruling held that fears of election fraud could justify such rules, even without evidence that any such fraud had occurred in the past or that the new rule would make elections safer.[11] Research shows that the Act had successfully and massively increased voter turnout and voter registrations, in particular among black people.[17][18][19] The Act has also been linked to concrete outcomes, such as greater public goods provision (such as public education) for areas with higher black population shares, more members of Congress who vote for civil rights-related legislation, and greater Black representation in local offices.[20][21][22] Background Further information: Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction era As initially ratified, the United States Constitution granted each state complete discretion to determine voter qualifications for its residents.[23][24]: 50  After the Civil War, the three Reconstruction Amendments were ratified and limited this discretion. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) prohibits slavery "except as a punishment for crime"; the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) grants citizenship to anyone "born or naturalized in the United States" and guarantees every person due process and equal protection rights; and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) provides that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." These Amendments also empower Congress to enforce their provisions through "appropriate legislation".[25] To enforce the Reconstruction Amendments, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts in the 1870s. The acts criminalized the obstruction of a citizen's voting rights and provided for federal supervision of the electoral process, including voter registration.[26]: 310  However, in 1875 the Supreme Court struck down parts of the legislation as unconstitutional in United States v. Cruikshank and United States v. Reese.[27]: 97  After the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877, enforcement of these laws became erratic, and in 1894, Congress repealed most of their provisions.[26]: 310  Southern states generally sought to disenfranchise racial minorities during and after Reconstruction. From 1868 to 1888, electoral fraud and violence throughout the South suppressed the African-American vote.[28] From 1888 to 1908, Southern states legalized disenfranchisement by enacting Jim Crow laws; they amended their constitutions and passed legislation to impose various voting restrictions, including literacy tests, poll taxes, property-ownership requirements, moral character tests, requirements that voter registration applicants interpret particular documents, and grandfather clauses that allowed otherwise-ineligible persons to vote if their grandfathers voted (which excluded many African Americans whose grandfathers had been slaves or otherwise ineligible).[26][28] During this period, the Supreme Court generally upheld efforts to discriminate against racial minorities. In Giles v. Harris (1903), the court held that regardless of the Fifteenth Amendment, the judiciary did not have the remedial power to force states to register racial minorities to vote.[27]: 100  refer to caption Alabama police in 1965 attack voting rights marchers on "Bloody Sunday", the first of the Selma to Montgomery marches Prior to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 there were several efforts to stop the disenfranchisement of black voters by Southern states,.[7] Besides the above-mentioned literacy tests and poll taxes other bureaucratic restrictions were used to deny them the right to vote. African Americans also "risked harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence when they tried to register or vote. As a result, very few African Americans were registered voters, and they had very little, if any, political power, either locally or nationally."[29] In the 1950s the Civil Rights Movement increased pressure on the federal government to protect the voting rights of racial minorities. In 1957, Congress passed the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction: the Civil Rights Act of 1957. This legislation authorized the attorney general to sue for injunctive relief on behalf of persons whose Fifteenth Amendment rights were denied, created the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice to enforce civil rights through litigation, and created the Commission on Civil Rights to investigate voting rights deprivations. Further protections were enacted in the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which allowed federal courts to appoint referees to conduct voter registration in jurisdictions that engaged in voting discrimination against racial minorities.[9] Although these acts helped empower courts to remedy violations of federal voting rights, strict legal standards made it difficult for the Department of Justice to successfully pursue litigation. For example, to win a discrimination lawsuit against a state that maintained a literacy test, the department needed to prove that the rejected voter-registration applications of racial minorities were comparable to the accepted applications of whites. This involved comparing thousands of applications in each of the state's counties in a process that could last months. The department's efforts were further hampered by resistance from local election officials, who would claim to have misplaced the voter registration records of racial minorities, remove registered racial minorities from the electoral rolls, and resign so that voter registration ceased. Moreover, the department often needed to appeal lawsuits several times before the judiciary provided relief because many federal district court judges opposed racial minority suffrage. Thus, between 1957 and 1964, the African-American voter registration rate in the South increased only marginally even though the department litigated 71 voting rights lawsuits.[27]: 514  Efforts to stop the disfranchisement by the Southern states had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual, because the "Department of Justice's efforts to eliminate discriminatory election practices by litigation on a case-by-case basis had been unsuccessful in opening up the registration process; as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional and enjoined, a new one would be substituted in its place and litigation would have to commence anew."[7] Congress responded to rampant discrimination against racial minorities in public accommodations and government services by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act included some voting rights protections; it required registrars to equally administer literacy tests in writing to each voter and to accept applications that contained minor errors, and it created a rebuttable presumption that persons with a sixth-grade education were sufficiently literate to vote.[24]: 97 [30][31] However, despite lobbying from civil rights leaders, the Act did not prohibit most forms of voting discrimination.[32]: 253  President Lyndon B. Johnson recognized this, and shortly after the 1964 elections in which Democrats gained overwhelming majorities in both chambers of Congress, he privately instructed Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to draft "the goddamndest, toughest voting rights act that you can".[24]: 48–50  However, Johnson did not publicly push for the legislation at the time; his advisers warned him of political costs for vigorously pursuing a voting rights bill so soon after Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Johnson was concerned that championing voting rights would endanger his Great Society reforms by angering Southern Democrats in Congress.[24]: 47–48, 50–52  Following the 1964 elections, civil rights organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) pushed for federal action to protect the voting rights of racial minorities.[32]: 254–255  Their efforts culminated in protests in Alabama, particularly in the city of Selma, where County Sheriff Jim Clark's police force violently resisted African-American voter registration efforts. Speaking about the voting rights push in Selma, James Forman of SNCC said: "Our strategy, as usual, was to force the U.S. government to intervene in case there were arrests—and if they did not intervene, that inaction would once again prove the government was not on our side and thus intensify the development of a mass consciousness among blacks. Our slogan for this drive was 'One Man, One Vote.'"[32]: 255  In January 1965, Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel,[33][34] and other civil rights leaders organized several peaceful demonstrations in Selma, which were violently attacked by police and white counter-protesters. Throughout January and February, these protests received national media coverage and drew attention to the issue of voting rights. King and other demonstrators were arrested during a march on February 1 for violating an anti-parade ordinance; this inspired similar marches in the following days, causing hundreds more to be arrested.[32]: 259–261  On February 4, civil rights leader Malcolm X gave a militant speech in Selma in which he said that many African Americans did not support King's nonviolent approach;[32]: 262  he later privately said that he wanted to frighten whites into supporting King.[24]: 69  The next day, King was released and a letter he wrote addressing voting rights, "Letter From A Selma Jail", appeared in The New York Times.[32]: 262  With increasing national attention focused on Selma and voting rights, President Johnson reversed his decision to delay voting rights legislation. On February 6, he announced he would send a proposal to Congress.[24]: 69  Johnson did not reveal the proposal's content or disclose when it would come before Congress.[32]: 264  On February 18 in Marion, Alabama, state troopers violently broke up a nighttime voting-rights march during which officer James Bonard Fowler shot and killed young African-American protester Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was unarmed and protecting his mother.[32]: 265 [35] Spurred by this event, and at the initiation of Bevel,[32]: 267 [33][34][36]: 81–86  on March 7 SCLC and SNCC began the first of the Selma to Montgomery marches, in which Selma residents intended to march to Alabama's capital, Montgomery, to highlight voting rights issues and present Governor George Wallace with their grievances. On the first march, demonstrators were stopped by state and county police on horseback at the Edmund Pettus Bridge near Selma. The police shot tear gas into the crowd and trampled protesters. Televised footage of the scene, which became known as "Bloody Sunday", generated outrage across the country.[27]: 515  A second march was held on March 9, which became known as "Turnaround Tuesday". That evening, three white Unitarian ministers who participated in the march were attacked on the street and beaten with clubs by four Ku Klux Klan members.[37] The worst injured was Reverend James Reeb from Boston, who died on Thursday, March 11.[38] In the wake of the events in Selma, President Johnson, addressing a televised joint session of Congress on March 15, called on legislators to enact expansive voting rights legislation. In his speech, he used the words "we shall overcome", adopting the rallying cry of the civil rights movement.[32]: 278 [39] The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was introduced in Congress two days later while civil rights leaders, now under the protection of federal troops, led a march of 25,000 people from Selma to Montgomery.[27]: 516 [32]: 279, 282  Legislative history Efforts to eliminate discriminatory election practices by litigation on a case-by-case basis by the United States Department of Justice had been unsuccessful and existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to overcome the resistance by state officials to enforcement of the 15th Amendment. Against this backdrop Congress came to the conclusion that a new comprehensive federal bill was necessary to break the grip of state disfranchisement.[7] The United States Supreme Court explained this in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966) with the following words: In recent years, Congress has repeatedly tried to cope with the problem by facilitating case-by-case litigation against voting discrimination. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 authorized the Attorney General to seek injunctions against public and private interference with the right to vote on racial grounds. Perfecting amendments in the Civil Rights Act of 1960 permitted the joinder of States as parties defendant, gave the Attorney General access to local voting records, and authorized courts to register voters in areas of systematic discrimination. Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expedited the hearing of voting cases before three-judge courts and outlawed some of the tactics used to disqualify Negroes from voting in federal elections. Despite the earnest efforts of the Justice Department and of many federal judges, these new laws have done little to cure the problem of voting discrimination. [...] The previous legislation has proved ineffective for a number of reasons. Voting suits are unusually onerous to prepare, sometimes requiring as many as 6,000 man-hours spent combing through registration records in preparation for trial. Litigation has been exceedingly slow, in part because of the ample opportunities for delay afforded voting officials and others involved in the proceedings. Even when favorable decisions have finally been obtained, some of the States affected have merely switched to discriminatory devices not covered by the federal decrees, or have enacted difficult new tests designed to prolong the existing disparity between white and Negro registration. Alternatively, certain local officials have defied and evaded court orders or have simply closed their registration offices to freeze the voting rolls. The provision of the 1960 law authorizing registration by federal officers has had little impact on local maladministration, because of its procedural complexities.[40] In South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966) the Supreme Court also held that Congress had the power to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 under its Enforcement Powers stemming from the Fifteenth Amendment: Congress exercised its authority under the Fifteenth Amendment in an inventive manner when it enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. First: the measure prescribes remedies for voting discrimination which go into effect without any need for prior adjudication. This was clearly a legitimate response to the problem, for which there is ample precedent under other constitutional provisions. See Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294, 379 U. S. 302–304; United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, 312 U. S. 120–121. Congress had found that case-by-case litigation was inadequate to combat widespread and persistent discrimination in voting, because of the inordinate amount of time and energy required to overcome the obstructionist tactics invariably encountered in these lawsuits. After enduring nearly a century of systematic resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress might well decide to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims. [...] Second: the Act intentionally confines these remedies to a small number of States and political subdivisions which, in most instances, were familiar to Congress by name. This, too, was a permissible method of dealing with the problem. Congress had learned that substantial voting discrimination presently occurs in certain sections of the country, and it knew no way of accurately forecasting whether the evil might spread elsewhere in the future. In acceptable legislative fashion, Congress chose to limit its attention to the geographic areas where immediate action seemed necessary. See McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 366 U. S. 427; Salsburg v. Maryland, 346 U. S. 545, 346 U. S. 550–554. The doctrine of the equality of States, invoked by South Carolina, does not bar this approach, for that doctrine applies only to the terms upon which States are admitted to the Union, and not to the remedies for local evils which have subsequently appeared. See Coyle v. Smith, 221 U. S. 559, and cases cited therein.[41] Original bill refer to caption United States President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965 Senate The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was introduced in Congress on March 17, 1965, as S. 1564, and it was jointly sponsored by Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) and Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL), both of whom had worked with Attorney General Katzenbach to draft the bill's language.[42] Although Democrats held two-thirds of the seats in both chambers of Congress after the 1964 Senate elections,[24]: 49  Johnson worried that Southern Democrats would filibuster the legislation because they had opposed other civil rights efforts. He enlisted Dirksen to help gain Republican support. Dirksen did not originally intend to support voting rights legislation so soon after supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but he expressed willingness to accept "revolutionary" legislation after learning about the police violence against marchers in Selma on Bloody Sunday.[24]: 95–96  Given Dirksen's key role in helping Katzenbach draft the legislation, it became known informally as the "Dirksenbach" bill.[24]: 96  After Mansfield and Dirksen introduced the bill, 64 additional senators agreed to cosponsor it,[24]: 150  with a total 46 Democratic and 20 Republican cosponsors.[43] The bill contained several special provisions that targeted certain state and local governments: a "coverage formula" that determined which jurisdictions were subject to the Act's other special provisions ("covered jurisdictions"); a "preclearance" requirement that prohibited covered jurisdictions from implementing changes to their voting procedures without first receiving approval from the U.S. attorney general or the U.S. District Court for D.C. that the changes were not discriminatory; and the suspension of "tests or devices", such as literacy tests, in covered jurisdictions. The bill also authorized the assignment of federal examiners to register voters, and of federal observers to monitor elections, to covered jurisdictions that were found to have engaged in egregious discrimination. The bill set these special provisions to expire after five years.[26]: 319–320 [27]: 520, 524 [44]: 5–6  The scope of the coverage formula was a matter of contentious congressional debate. The coverage formula reached a jurisdiction if (1) the jurisdiction maintained a "test or device" on November 1, 1964, and (2) less than 50 percent of the jurisdiction's voting-age residents either were registered to vote on November 1, 1964, or cast a ballot in the November 1964 presidential election.[26]: 317  This formula reached few jurisdictions outside the Deep South. To appease legislators who felt that the bill unfairly targeted Southern jurisdictions, the bill included a general prohibition on racial discrimination in voting that applied nationwide.[45]: 1352  The bill also included provisions allowing a covered jurisdiction to "bail out" of coverage by proving in federal court that it had not used a "test or device" for a discriminatory purpose or with a discriminatory effect during the 5 years preceding its bailout request.[44]: 6  Additionally, the bill included a "bail in" provision under which federal courts could subject discriminatory non-covered jurisdictions to remedies contained in the special provisions.[46][47]: 2006–2007  The bill was first considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose chair, Senator James Eastland (D-MS), opposed the legislation with several other Southern senators on the committee. To prevent the bill from dying in committee, Mansfield proposed a motion to require the Judiciary Committee to report the bill out of committee by April 9, which the Senate overwhelmingly passed by a vote of 67 to 13.[24]: 150 [43] During the committee's consideration of the bill, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) led an effort to amend the bill to prohibit poll taxes. Although the Twenty-fourth Amendment—which banned the use of poll taxes in federal elections— was ratified a year earlier, Johnson's administration and the bill's sponsors did not include a provision in the voting rights bill banning poll taxes in state elections because they feared courts would strike down the legislation as unconstitutional.[27]: 521 [32]: 285  Additionally, by excluding poll taxes from the definition of "tests or devices", the coverage formula did not reach Texas or Arkansas, mitigating opposition from those two states' influential congressional delegations.[27]: 521  Nonetheless, with the support of liberal committee members, Kennedy's amendment to prohibit poll taxes passed by a 9–4 vote. In response, Dirksen offered an amendment that exempted from the coverage formula any state that had at least 60 percent of its eligible residents registered to vote or that had a voter turnout that surpassed the national average in the preceding presidential election. This amendment, which effectively exempted all states from coverage except Mississippi, passed during a committee meeting in which three liberal members were absent. Dirksen offered to drop the amendment if the poll tax ban were removed. Ultimately, the bill was reported out of committee on April 9 by a 12–4 vote without a recommendation.[24]: 152–153  On April 22, the full Senate started debating the bill. Dirksen spoke first on the bill's behalf, saying that "legislation is needed if the unequivocal mandate of the Fifteenth Amendment ... is to be enforced and made effective, and if the Declaration of Independence is to be made truly meaningful."[24]: 154  Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) retorted that the bill would lead to "despotism and tyranny", and Senator Sam Ervin (D-NC) argued that the bill was unconstitutional because it deprived states of their right under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution to establish voter qualifications and because the bill's special provisions targeted only certain jurisdictions. On May 6, Ervin offered an amendment to abolish the coverage formula's automatic trigger and instead allow federal judges to appoint federal examiners to administer voter registration. This amendment overwhelmingly failed, with 42 Democrats and 22 Republicans voting against it.[24]: 154–156  After lengthy debate, Ted Kennedy's amendment to prohibit poll taxes also failed 49–45 on May 11.[43] However, the Senate agreed to include a provision authorizing the attorney general to sue any jurisdiction, covered or non-covered, to challenge its use of poll taxes.[32]: 156–157 [44]: 2  An amendment offered by Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) to enfranchise English-illiterate citizens who had attained at least a sixth-grade education in a non-English-speaking school also passed by 48–19. Southern legislators offered a series of amendments to weaken the bill, all of which failed.[24]: 159  On May 25, the Senate voted for cloture by a 70–30 vote, thus overcoming the threat of filibuster and limiting further debate on the bill.[48] On May 26, the Senate passed the bill by a 77–19 vote (Democrats 47–16, Republicans 30–2); only senators representing Southern states voted against it.[24]: 161 [49] House of Representatives "Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965" 20:40 Statement by United States President Johnson on August 6, 1965, about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965" 21:03 Audio only Problems playing these files? See media help. Emanuel Celler (D-NY), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced the Voting Rights Act in the House of Representatives on March 19, 1965, as H.R. 6400.[43] The House Judiciary Committee was the first committee to consider the bill. The committee's ranking Republican, William McCulloch (R-OH), generally supported expanding voting rights, but he opposed both the poll tax ban and the coverage formula, and he led opposition to the bill in committee. The committee eventually approved the bill on May 12, but it did not file its committee report until June 1.[24]: 162  The bill included two amendments from subcommittee: a penalty for private persons who interfered with the right to vote and a prohibition of all poll taxes. The poll tax prohibition gained Speaker of the House John McCormack's support. The bill was next considered by the Rules Committee, whose chair, Howard W. Smith (D-VA), opposed the bill and delayed its consideration until June 24, when Celler initiated proceedings to have the bill discharged from committee.[43] Under pressure from the bill's proponents, Smith allowed the bill to be released a week later, and the full House started debating the bill on July 6.[24]: 163  To defeat the Voting Rights Act, McCulloch introduced an alternative bill, H.R. 7896. It would have allowed the attorney general to appoint federal registrars after receiving 25 serious complaints of discrimination against a jurisdiction, and it would have imposed a nationwide ban on literacy tests for persons who could prove they attained a sixth-grade education. McCulloch's bill was co-sponsored by House minority leader Gerald Ford (R-MI) and supported by Southern Democrats as an alternative to the Voting Rights Act.[24]: 162–164  The Johnson administration viewed H.R. 7896 as a serious threat to passing the Voting Rights Act. However, support for H.R. 7896 dissipated after William M. Tuck (D-VA) publicly said he preferred H.R. 7896 because the Voting Rights Act would legitimately ensure that African Americans could vote. His statement alienated most supporters of H.R. 7896, and the bill failed on the House floor by a 171–248 vote on July 9.[50] Later that night, the House passed the Voting Rights Act by a 333–85 vote (Democrats 221–61, Republicans 112–24).[24]: 163–165 [43][51] Conference committee The chambers appointed a conference committee to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. A major contention concerned the poll tax provisions; the Senate version allowed the attorney general to sue states that used poll taxes to discriminate, while the House version outright banned all poll taxes. Initially, the committee members were stalemated. To help broker a compromise, Attorney General Katzenbach drafted legislative language explicitly asserting that poll taxes were unconstitutional and instructed the Department of Justice to sue the states that maintained poll taxes. To assuage concerns of liberal committee members that this provision was not strong enough, Katzenbach enlisted the help of Martin Luther King Jr., who gave his support to the compromise. King's endorsement ended the stalemate, and on July 29, the conference committee reported its version out of committee.[24]: 166–167  The House approved this conference report version of the bill on August 3 by a 328–74 vote (Democrats 217–54, Republicans 111–20),[52] and the Senate passed it on August 4 by a 79–18 vote (Democrats 49–17, Republicans 30–1).[24]: 167 [53][54] On August 6, President Johnson signed the Act into law with King, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and other civil rights leaders in attendance at the signing ceremony.[24]: 168  Amendments Main article: Amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 refer to caption United States President George W. Bush signs amendments to the Act in July 2006 Congress enacted major amendments to the Act in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006. Each amendment coincided with an impending expiration of some or all of the Act's special provisions. Originally set to expire by 1970, Congress repeatedly reauthorized the special provisions in recognition of continuing voting discrimination.[24]: 209–210 [44]: 6–8  Congress extended the coverage formula and special provisions tied to it, such as the Section 5 preclearance requirement, for five years in 1970, seven years in 1975, and 25 years in both 1982 and 2006. In 1970 and 1975, Congress also expanded the reach of the coverage formula by supplementing it with new 1968 and 1972 trigger dates. Coverage was further enlarged in 1975 when Congress expanded the meaning of "tests or devices" to encompass any jurisdiction that provided English-only election information, such as ballots, if the jurisdiction had a single language minority group that constituted more than five percent of the jurisdiction's voting-age citizens. These expansions brought numerous jurisdictions into coverage, including many outside of the South.[55] To ease the burdens of the reauthorized special provisions, Congress liberalized the bailout procedure in 1982 by allowing jurisdictions to escape coverage by complying with the Act and affirmatively acting to expand minority political participation.[27]: 523  In addition to reauthorizing the original special provisions and expanding coverage, Congress amended and added several other provisions to the Act. For instance, Congress expanded the original ban on "tests or devices" to apply nationwide in 1970, and in 1975, Congress made the ban permanent.[44]: 6–9  Separately, in 1975 Congress expanded the Act's scope to protect language minorities from voting discrimination. Congress defined "language minority" to mean "persons who are American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Natives or of Spanish heritage."[56] Congress amended various provisions, such as the preclearance requirement and Section 2's general prohibition of discriminatory voting laws, to prohibit discrimination against language minorities.[57]: 199  Congress also enacted a bilingual election requirement in Section 203, which requires election officials in certain jurisdictions with large numbers of English-illiterate language minorities to provide ballots and voting information in the language of the language minority group. Originally set to expire after 10 years, Congress reauthorized Section 203 in 1982 for seven years, expanded and reauthorized it in 1992 for 15 years, and reauthorized it in 2006 for 25 years.[58]: 19–21, 25, 49  The bilingual election requirements have remained controversial, with proponents arguing that bilingual assistance is necessary to enable recently naturalized citizens to vote and opponents arguing that the bilingual election requirements constitute costly unfunded mandates.[58]: 26  Several of the amendments responded to judicial rulings with which Congress disagreed. In 1982, Congress amended the Act to overturn the Supreme Court case Mobile v. Bolden (1980), which held that the general prohibition of voting discrimination prescribed in Section 2 prohibited only purposeful discrimination. Congress responded by expanding Section 2 to explicitly ban any voting practice that had a discriminatory effect, regardless of whether the practice was enacted or operated for a discriminatory purpose. The creation of this "results test" shifted the majority of vote dilution litigation brought under the Act from preclearance lawsuits to Section 2 lawsuits.[27]: 644–645  In 2006, Congress amended the Act to overturn two Supreme Court cases: Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board (2000),[59] which interpreted the Section 5 preclearance requirement to prohibit only voting changes that were enacted or maintained for a "retrogressive" discriminatory purpose instead of any discriminatory purpose, and Georgia v. Ashcroft (2003),[60] which established a broader test for determining whether a redistricting plan had an impermissible effect under Section 5 than assessing only whether a minority group could elect its preferred candidates.[61]: 207–208  Since the Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula as unconstitutional in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), several bills have been introduced in Congress to create a new coverage formula and amend various other provisions; none of these bills have passed.[62][63][64] Provisions refer to caption The first page of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 The act contains two types of provisions: "general provisions", which apply nationwide, and "special provisions", which apply to only certain states and local governments.[65]: 1  "The Voting Rights Act was aimed at the subtle, as well as the obvious, state regulations which have the effect of denying citizens their right to vote because of their race. Moreover, compatible with the decisions of this Court, the Act gives a broad interpretation to the right to vote, recognizing that voting includes "all action necessary to make a vote effective." 79 Stat. 445, 42 U.S.C. § 19731(c)(1) (1969 ed., Supp. I). See Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 377 U. S. 555 (1964)."[66] Most provisions are designed to protect the voting rights of racial and language minorities. The term "language minority" means "persons who are American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Natives or of Spanish heritage."[56] The act's provisions have been colored by numerous judicial interpretations and congressional amendments. General provisions General prohibition of discriminatory voting laws Section 2 prohibits any jurisdiction from implementing a "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right ... to vote on account of race," color, or language minority status.[58]: 37 [67] Section 2 of the law contains two separate protections against voter discrimination for laws which, in contrast to Section 5 of the law, are already implemented.[68][69] The first protection is a prohibition of intentional discrimination based on race or color in voting. The second protection is a prohibition of election practices that result in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote based on race or color.[68][69][70][71] If the violation of the second protection is intentional, then this violation is also a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.[70] The Supreme Court has allowed private plaintiffs to sue to enforce these prohibitions.[72]: 138 [73] In Mobile v. Bolden (1980), the Supreme Court held that as originally enacted in 1965, Section 2 simply restated the Fifteenth Amendment and thus prohibited only those voting laws that were intentionally enacted or maintained for a discriminatory purpose.[74]: 60–61 [75][68][7][76] In 1982, Congress amended Section 2 to create a "results" test,[77] which prohibits any voting law that has a discriminatory effect irrespective of whether the law was intentionally enacted or maintained for a discriminatory purpose.[78][79]: 3 [68][7][76] The 1982 amendments stipulated that the results test does not guarantee protected minorities a right to proportional representation.[80] In Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) the United States Supreme Court explained with respect to the 1982 amendment for section 2 that the "essence of a Section 2 claim is that a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and historical conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters to elect their preferred representatives."[81] The United States Department of Justice declared that section 2 is not only a permanent and nationwide-applying prohibition against discrimination in voting to any voting standard, practice, or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group, but also a prohibition for state and local officials to adopt or maintain voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.[81] The United States Supreme Court expressed its views regarding Section 2 and its amendment from 1982 in Chisom v. Roemer (1991).[82] Under the amended statute, proof of intent is no longer required to prove a § 2 violation. Now plaintiffs can prevail under § 2 by demonstrating that a challenged election practice has resulted in the denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on color or race. Congress not only incorporated the results test in the paragraph that formerly constituted the entire § 2, but also designated that paragraph as subsection (a) and added a new subsection (b) to make clear that an application of the results test requires an inquiry into "the totality of the circumstances." Section 2(a) adopts a results test, thus providing that proof of discriminatory intent is no longer necessary to establish any violation of the section. Section 2(b) provides guidance about how the results test is to be applied.[83] There is a statutory framework to determine whether a jurisdiction's election law violates the general prohibition from Section 2 in its amended form:[84] Section 2 prohibits voting practices that “result[] in a denial or abridgment of the right * * * to vote on account of race or color [or language-minority status],” and it states that such a result “is established” if a jurisdiction’s “political processes * * * are not equally open” to members of such a group “in that [they] have less opportunity * * * to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” 52 U.S.C. 10301. [...] Subsection (b) states in relevant part: A violation of subsection (a) is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.[85][86] The Office of the Arizona Attorney general stated with respect to the framework to determine whether a jurisdiction's election law violates the general prohibition from Section 2 in its amended form and the reason for the adoption of Section 2 in its amended form: To establish a violation of amended Section 2, the plaintiff must prove,“based on the totality of circumstances,” that the State’s “political processes” are “not equally open to participation by members” of a protected class, “in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” § 10301(b). That is the “result” that amended Section 2 prohibits: “less opportunity than other members of the electorate,” viewing the State’s “political processes” as a whole. The new language was crafted as a compromise designed to eliminate the need for direct evidence of discriminatory intent, which is often difficult to obtain, but without embracing an unqualified “disparate impact” test that would invalidate many legitimate voting procedures. S. REP. NO. 97–417, at 28–29, 31–32, 99 (1982)[87][86] In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) the United States Supreme Court introduced the means to review Section 2 challenges.[88][89] The slip opinion stated in its Syllabus section in this regard that "The Court declines in these cases to announce a test to govern all VRA [Section 2] challenges to rules that specify the time, place, or manner for casting ballots. It is sufficient for present purposes to identify certain guideposts that lead to the Court's decision in these cases."[90] The Court laid out these guideposts used to evaluate the state regulations in context of Section 2, which included: the size of the burden created by the rule, the degree which the rule deviates from past practices, the size of the racial imbalance, and the overall level of opportunity afforded voters in considering all election rules.[91][89][71] When determining whether a jurisdiction's election law violates the general prohibition from Section 2 of the VRA, courts have relied on factors enumerated in the Senate Judiciary Committee report associated with the 1982 amendments ("Senate Factors"), including:[81] The history of official discrimination in the jurisdiction that affects the right to vote; The degree to which voting in the jurisdiction is racially polarized; The extent of the jurisdiction's use of majority vote requirements, unusually large electoral districts, prohibitions on bullet voting, and other devices that tend to enhance the opportunity for voting discrimination; Whether minority candidates are denied access to the jurisdiction's candidate slating processes, if any; The extent to which the jurisdiction's minorities are discriminated against in socioeconomic areas, such as education, employment, and health; Whether overt or subtle racial appeals in campaigns exist; The extent to which minority candidates have won elections; The degree that elected officials are unresponsive to the concerns of the minority group; and Whether the policy justification for the challenged law is tenuous. The report indicates not all or a majority of these factors need to exist for an electoral device to result in discrimination, and it also indicates that this list is not exhaustive, allowing courts to consider additional evidence at their discretion.[75][80]: 344 [92]: 28–29  No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined. Our Constitution leaves no room for classification of people in a way that unnecessarily abridges this right. — Justice Black on the right to vote as the foundation of democracy in Wesberry v. Sanders (1964).[93] Section 2 prohibits two types of discrimination: "vote denial", in which a person is denied the opportunity to cast a ballot or to have their vote properly counted, and "vote dilution",[94][95]: 2–6  in which the strength or effectiveness of a person's vote is diminished.[96]: 691–692  Most Section 2 litigation has concerned vote dilution, especially claims that a jurisdiction's redistricting plan or use of at-large/multimember elections prevents minority voters from casting sufficient votes to elect their preferred candidates.[96]: 708–709  An at-large election can dilute the votes cast by minority voters by allowing a cohesive majority group to win every legislative seat in the jurisdiction.[97]: 221  Redistricting plans can be gerrymandered to dilute votes cast by minorities by "packing" high numbers of minority voters into a small number of districts or "cracking" minority groups by placing small numbers of minority voters into a large number of districts.[98] In Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), the Supreme Court used the term "vote dilution through submergence" to describe claims that a jurisdiction's use of an at-large/multimember election system or gerrymandered redistricting plan diluted minority votes, and it established a legal framework for assessing such claims under Section 2.[a] Under the Gingles test, plaintiffs must show the existence of three preconditions: The racial or language minority group "is sufficiently numerous and compact to form a majority in a single-member district"; The minority group is "politically cohesive" (meaning its members tend to vote similarly); and The "majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate."[100]: 50–51  The first precondition is known as the "compactness" requirement and concerns whether a majority-minority district can be created. The second and third preconditions are collectively known as the "racially polarized voting" or "racial bloc voting" requirement, and they concern whether the voting patterns of the different racial groups are different from each other. If a plaintiff proves these preconditions exist, then the plaintiff must additionally show, using the remaining Senate Factors and other evidence, that under the "totality of the circumstances", the jurisdiction's redistricting plan or use of at-large or multimember elections diminishes the ability of the minority group to elect candidates of its choice.[80]: 344–345  Subsequent litigation further defined the contours of these "vote dilution through submergence" claims. In Bartlett v. Strickland (2009),[101] the Supreme Court held that the first Gingles precondition can be satisfied only if a district can be drawn in which the minority group comprises a majority of voting-age citizens. This means that plaintiffs cannot succeed on a submergence claim in jurisdictions where the size of the minority group, despite not being large enough to comprise a majority in a district, is large enough for its members to elect their preferred candidates with the help of "crossover" votes from some members of the majority group.[102][103]: A2  In contrast, the Supreme Court has not addressed whether different protected minority groups can be aggregated to satisfy the Gingles preconditions as a coalition, and lower courts have split on the issue.[b] The Supreme Court provided additional guidance on the "totality of the circumstances" test in Johnson v. De Grandy (1994).[99] The court emphasized that the existence of the three Gingles preconditions may be insufficient to prove liability for vote dilution through submergence if other factors weigh against such a determination, especially in lawsuits challenging redistricting plans. In particular, the court held that even where the three Gingles preconditions are satisfied, a jurisdiction is unlikely to be liable for vote dilution if its redistricting plan contains a number of majority-minority districts that is proportional to the minority group's population size. The decision thus clarified that Section 2 does not require jurisdictions to maximize the number of majority-minority districts.[109] The opinion also distinguished the proportionality of majority-minority districts, which allows minorities to have a proportional opportunity to elect their candidates of choice, from the proportionality of election results, which Section 2 explicitly does not guarantee to minorities.[99]: 1013–1014  An issue regarding the third Gingles precondition remains unresolved. In Gingles, the Supreme Court split as to whether plaintiffs must prove that the majority racial group votes as a bloc specifically because its members are motivated to vote based on racial considerations and not other considerations that may overlap with race, such as party affiliation. A plurality of justices said that requiring such proof would violate Congress's intent to make Section 2 a "results" test, but Justice White maintained that the proof was necessary to show that an electoral scheme results in racial discrimination.[110]: 555–557  Since Gingles, lower courts have split on the issue.[c] The right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government. And the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen's vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise. [...] Undoubtedly, the right of suffrage is a fundamental matter in a free and democratic society. Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized. — Chief Justice Earl Warren on the right to vote as the foundation of democracy in Reynolds v. Sims (1964).[114] Although most Section 2 litigation has involved claims of vote dilution through submergence,[96]: 708–709  courts also have addressed other types of vote dilution under this provision. In Holder v. Hall (1994),[115] the Supreme Court held that claims that minority votes are diluted by the small size of a governing body, such as a one-person county commission, may not be brought under Section 2. A plurality of the court reasoned that no uniform, non-dilutive "benchmark" size for a governing body exists, making relief under Section 2 impossible.[116] Another type of vote dilution may result from a jurisdiction's requirement that a candidate be elected by a majority vote. A majority-vote requirement may cause a minority group's candidate of choice, who would have won the election with a simple plurality of votes, to lose after a majority of voters unite behind another candidate in a runoff election. The Supreme Court has not addressed whether such claims may be brought under Section 2, and lower courts have reached different conclusions on the issue.[d] In addition to claims of vote dilution, courts have considered vote denial claims brought under Section 2. The Supreme Court, in Richardson v. Ramirez (1974),[119] held that felony disenfranchisement laws cannot violate Section 2 because, among other reasons, Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment permits such laws.[27]: 756–757  A federal district court in Mississippi held that a "dual registration" system that requires a person to register to vote separately for state elections and local elections may violate Section 2 if the system has a racially disparate impact in light of the Senate Factors.[27]: 754 [120] Starting in 2013, lower federal courts began to consider various challenges to voter ID laws brought under Section 2.[121] Specific prohibitions The act contains several specific prohibitions on conduct that may interfere with a person's ability to cast an effective vote. One of these prohibitions is prescribed in Section 201, which prohibits any jurisdiction from requiring a person to comply with any "test or device" to register to vote or cast a ballot. The term "test or device" is defined as literacy tests, educational or knowledge requirements, proof of good moral character, and requirements that a person be vouched for when voting.[122] Before the Act's enactment, these devices were the primary tools used by jurisdictions to prevent racial minorities from voting.[123] Originally, the Act suspended tests or devices temporarily in jurisdictions covered by the Section 4(b) coverage formula, but Congress subsequently expanded the prohibition to the entire country and made it permanent.[44]: 6–9  Relatedly, Section 202 prohibits jurisdictions from imposing any "durational residency requirement" that requires persons to have lived in the jurisdiction for more than 30 days before being eligible to vote in a presidential election.[124]: 353  Several further protections for voters are contained in Section 11. Section 11(a) prohibits any person acting under color of law from refusing or failing to allow a qualified person to vote or to count a qualified voter's ballot. Similarly, Section 11(b) prohibits any person from intimidating, harassing, or coercing another person for voting or attempting to vote.[58] Two provisions in Section 11 address voter fraud: Section 11(c) prohibits people from knowingly submitting a false voter registration application to vote in a federal election, and Section 11(e) prohibits voting twice in a federal election.[125][126]: 360  Finally, under Section 208, a jurisdiction may not prevent anyone who is English-illiterate or has a disability from being accompanied into the ballot box by an assistant of the person's choice. The only exceptions are that the assistant may not be an agent of the person's employer or union.[57]: 221  Bail-in Section 3(c) contains a "bail-in" or "pocket trigger" process by which jurisdictions that fall outside the coverage formula of Section 4(b) may become subject to preclearance. Under this provision, if a jurisdiction has racially discriminated against voters in violation of the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments, a court may order the jurisdiction to have future changes to its election laws preapproved by the federal government.[47]: 2006–2007  Because courts have interpreted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to prohibit only intentional discrimination, a court may bail in a jurisdiction only if the plaintiff proves that the jurisdiction enacted or operated a voting practice to purposely discriminate.[47]: 2009  Section 3(c) contains its own preclearance language and differs from Section 5 preclearance in several ways. Unlike Section 5 preclearance, which applies to a covered jurisdiction until such time as the jurisdiction may bail out of coverage under Section 4(a), bailed-in jurisdictions remain subject to preclearance for as long as the court orders. Moreover, the court may require the jurisdiction to preclear only particular types of voting changes. For example, the bail-in of New Mexico in 1984 applied for 10 years and required preclearance of only redistricting plans. This differs from Section 5 preclearance, which requires a covered jurisdiction to preclear all of its voting changes.[47]: 2009–2010 [127] During the Act's early history, Section 3(c) was little used; no jurisdictions were bailed in until 1975. Between 1975 and 2013, 18 jurisdictions were bailed in, including 16 local governments and the states of Arkansas and New Mexico.[128]: 1a–2a  Although the Supreme Court held the Section 4(b) coverage formula unconstitutional in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), it did not hold Section 3(c) unconstitutional. Therefore, jurisdictions may continue to be bailed-in and subjected to Section 3(c) preclearance.[13][129] In the months following Shelby County, courts began to consider requests by the attorney general and other plaintiffs to bail in the states of Texas and North Carolina,[130] and in January 2014 a federal court bailed in Evergreen, Alabama.[131] A more narrow bail-in process pertaining to federal observer certification is prescribed in Section 3(a). Under this provision, a federal court may certify a non-covered jurisdiction to receive federal observers if the court determines that the jurisdiction violated the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments. Jurisdictions certified to receive federal observers under Section 3(a) are not subject to preclearance.[132]: 236–237  Special provisions See also: List of jurisdictions subject to the special provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 Coverage formula Map depicting states and counties encompassed by the act's coverage formula in January 2008 (excluding bailed-out jurisdictions) States and counties encompassed by the Act's coverage formula in January 2008 (excluding bailed-out jurisdictions). Several counties subsequently bailed out,[55] but the majority of the map accurately depicts covered jurisdictions before the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which declared the coverage formula unconstitutional. Section 4(b) contains a "coverage formula" that determines which states and local governments may be subjected to the Act's other special provisions (except for the Section 203(c) bilingual election requirements, which fall under a different formula). Congress intended for the coverage formula to encompass the most pervasively discriminatory jurisdictions. A jurisdiction is covered by the formula if: As of November 1, 1964, 1968, or 1972, the jurisdiction used a "test or device" to restrict the opportunity to register and vote; and Less than half of the jurisdiction's eligible citizens were registered to vote on November 1, 1964, 1968, or 1972; or less than half of eligible citizens voted in the presidential election of November 1964, 1968, or 1972. As originally enacted, the coverage formula contained only November 1964 triggering dates; subsequent revisions to the law supplemented it with the additional triggering dates of November 1968 and November 1972, which brought more jurisdictions into coverage.[55] For purposes of the coverage formula, the term "test or device" includes the same four devices prohibited nationally by Section 201—literacy tests, educational or knowledge requirements, proof of good moral character, and requirements that a person be vouched for when voting—and one further device defined in Section 4(f)(3): in jurisdictions where more than five percent of the citizen voting age population are members of a single language minority group, any practice or requirement by which registration or election materials are provided only in English. The types of jurisdictions that the coverage formula applies to include states and "political subdivisions" of states.[57]: 207–208  Section 14(c)(2) defines "political subdivision" to mean any county, parish, or "other subdivision of a State which conducts registration for voting."[133] As Congress added new triggering dates to the coverage formula, new jurisdictions were brought into coverage. The 1965 coverage formula included the whole of Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia; and some subdivisions (mostly counties) in Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, and North Carolina.[55] The 1968 coverage resulted in the partial coverage of Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Wyoming. Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, and Wyoming filed successful "bailout" lawsuits, as also provided by section 4.[55] The 1972 coverage covered the whole of Alaska, Arizona, and Texas, and parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, and South Dakota.[55] The special provisions of the Act were initially due to expire in 1970, and Congress renewed them for another five years. In 1975, the Act's special provisions were extended for another seven years. In 1982, the coverage formula was extended again, this time for 25 years, but no changes were made to the coverage formula, and in 2006, the coverage formula was again extended for 25 years.[55] Throughout its history, the coverage formula remained controversial because it singled out certain jurisdictions for scrutiny, most of which were in the Deep South. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court declared the coverage formula unconstitutional because the criteria used were outdated and thus violated principles of equal state sovereignty and federalism.[13][134][135] The other special provisions that are dependent on the coverage formula, such as the Section 5 preclearance requirement, remain valid law. However, without a valid coverage formula, these provisions are unenforceable.[14][136] Preclearance requirement Section 5[137] requires that covered jurisdictions receive federal approval, known as "preclearance", before implementing changes to their election laws. A covered jurisdiction has the burden of proving that the change does not have the purpose or effect of discriminating on the basis of race or language minority status; if the jurisdiction fails to meet this burden, the federal government will deny preclearance and the jurisdiction's change will not go into effect. The Supreme Court broadly interpreted Section 5's scope in Allen v. State Board of Election (1969),[138] holding that any change in a jurisdiction's voting practices, even if minor, must be submitted for preclearance.[139] The court also held that if a jurisdiction fails to have its voting change precleared, private plaintiffs may sue the jurisdiction in the plaintiff's local district court before a three-judge panel.[e] In these Section 5 "enforcement actions", a court considers whether the jurisdiction made a covered voting change, and if so, whether the change had been precleared. If the jurisdiction improperly failed to obtain preclearance, the court will order the jurisdiction to obtain preclearance before implementing the change. However, the court may not consider the merits of whether the change should be approved.[12][72]: 128–129 [138]: 556 [141]: 23  Jurisdictions may seek preclearance through either an "administrative preclearance" process or a "judicial preclearance" process. If a jurisdiction seeks administrative preclearance, the attorney general will consider whether the proposed change has a discriminatory purpose or effect. After the jurisdiction submits the proposed change, the attorney general has 60 days to interpose an objection to it. The 60-day period may be extended an additional 60 days if the jurisdiction later submits additional information. If the attorney general interposes an objection, then the change is not precleared and may not be implemented.[142]: 90–92  The attorney general's decision is not subject to judicial review,[143] but if the attorney general interposes an objection, the jurisdiction may independently seek judicial preclearance, and the court may disregard the attorney general's objection at its discretion.[27]: 559  If a jurisdiction seeks judicial preclearance, it must file a declaratory judgment action against the attorney general in the U.S. District Court for D.C. A three-judge panel will consider whether the voting change has a discriminatory purpose or effect, and the losing party may appeal directly to the Supreme Court.[144] Private parties may intervene in judicial preclearance lawsuits.[60]: 476–477 [142]: 90  In several cases, the Supreme Court has addressed the meaning of "discriminatory effect" and "discriminatory purpose" for Section 5 purposes. In Beer v. United States (1976),[145] the court held that for a voting change to have a prohibited discriminatory effect, it must result in "retrogression" (backsliding). Under this standard, a voting change that causes discrimination, but does not result in more discrimination than before the change was made, cannot be denied preclearance for having a discriminatory effect.[146]: 283–284  For example, replacing a poll tax with an equally expensive voter registration fee is not a "retrogressive" change because it causes equal discrimination, not more.[147]: 695  Relying on the Senate report for the Act, the court reasoned that the retrogression standard was the correct interpretation of the term "discriminatory effect" because Section 5's purpose is " 'to insure that [the gains thus far achieved in minority political participation] shall not be destroyed through new [discriminatory] procedures' ".[145]: 140–141  The retrogression standard applies irrespective of whether the voting change allegedly causes vote denial or vote dilution.[146]: 311  In 2003, the Supreme Court held in Georgia v. Ashcroft[60] that courts should not determine that a new redistricting plan has a retrogressive effect solely because the plan decreases the number of minority-majority districts. The court emphasized that judges should analyze various other factors under the "totality of the circumstances", such as whether the redistricting plan increases the number of "influence districts" in which a minority group is large enough to influence (but not decide) election outcomes. In 2006, Congress overturned this decision by amending Section 5 to explicitly state that "diminishing the ability [of a protected minority] to elect their preferred candidates of choice denies or abridges the right to vote within the meaning of" Section 5.[148] Uncertainty remains as to what this language precisely means and how courts may interpret it.[27]: 551–552, 916  Before 2000, the "discriminatory purpose" prong of Section 5 was understood to mean any discriminatory purpose, which is the same standard used to determine whether discrimination is unconstitutional. In Reno v. Bossier Parish (Bossier Parish II) (2000),[59] the Supreme Court extended the retrogression standard, holding that for a voting change to have a "discriminatory purpose" under Section 5, the change must have been implemented for a retrogressive purpose. Therefore, a voting change intended to discriminate against a protected minority was permissible under Section 5 so long as the change was not intended to increase existing discrimination.[146]: 277–278  This change significantly reduced the number of instances in which preclearance was denied based on discriminatory purpose. In 2006, Congress overturned Bossier Parish II by amending Section 5 to explicitly define "purpose" to mean "any discriminatory purpose."[61]: 199–200, 207 [149] Federal examiners and observers Until the 2006 amendments to the Act,[58]: 50  Section 6 allowed the appointment of "federal examiners" to oversee certain jurisdictions' voter registration functions. Federal examiners could be assigned to a covered jurisdiction if the attorney general certified that The Department of Justice received 20 or more meritorious complaints that the covered jurisdiction denied its residents the right to vote based on race or language minority status; or The assignment of federal examiners was otherwise necessary to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments.[132]: 235–236  Federal examiners had the authority to register voters, examine voter registration applications, and maintain voter rolls.[132]: 237  The goal of the federal examiner provision was to prevent jurisdictions from denying protected minorities the right to vote by engaging in discriminatory behavior in the voter registration process, such as refusing to register qualified applicants, purging qualified voters from the voter rolls, and limiting the hours during which persons could register. Federal examiners were used extensively in the years following the Act's enactment, but their importance waned over time; 1983 was the last year that a federal examiner registered a person to vote. In 2006, Congress repealed the provision.[132]: 238–239  Under the Act's original framework, in any jurisdiction certified for federal examiners, the attorney general could additionally require the appointment of "federal observers". By 2006, the federal examiner provision was used solely as a means to appoint federal observers.[132]: 239  When Congress repealed the federal examiner provision in 2006, Congress amended Section 8 to allow for the assignment of federal observers to jurisdictions that satisfied the same certification criteria that had been used to appoint federal examiners.[58]: 50  Federal observers are tasked with observing poll worker and voter conduct at polling places during an election and observing election officials tabulate the ballots.[132]: 248  The goal of the federal observer provision is to facilitate minority voter participation by deterring and documenting instances of discriminatory conduct in the election process, such as election officials denying qualified minority persons the right to cast a ballot, intimidation or harassment of voters on election day, or improper vote counting.[132]: 231–235  Discriminatory conduct that federal observers document may also serve as evidence in subsequent enforcement lawsuits.[132]: 233  Between 1965 and the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder to strike down the coverage formula, the attorney general certified 153 local governments across 11 states.[150] Because of time and resource constraints, federal observers are not assigned to every certified jurisdiction for every election.[132]: 230  Separate provisions allow for a certified jurisdiction to "bail out" of its certification.[150] Bailout Under Section 4(a), a covered jurisdiction may seek exemption from coverage through a process called "bailout."[55] To achieve an exemption, a covered jurisdiction must obtain a declaratory judgment from a three-judge panel of the District Court for D.C. that the jurisdiction is eligible to bail out.[12][55] As originally enacted, a covered jurisdiction was eligible to bail out if it had not used a test or device with a discriminatory purpose or effect during the 5 years preceding its bailout request.[44]: 22, 33–34  Therefore, a jurisdiction that requested to bail out in 1967 would have needed to prove that it had not misused a test or device since at least 1962. Until 1970, this effectively required a covered jurisdiction to prove that it had not misused a test or device since before the Act was enacted five years earlier in 1965,[44]: 6  making it impossible for many covered jurisdictions to bail out.[44]: 27  However, Section 4(a) also prohibited covered jurisdictions from using tests or devices in any manner, discriminatory or otherwise; hence, under the original act, a covered jurisdiction would become eligible for bailout in 1970 by simply complying with this requirement. But in the course of amending the Act in 1970 and 1975 to extend the special provisions, Congress also extended the period of time that a covered jurisdiction must not have misused a test or device to 10 years and then to 17 years, respectively.[44]: 7, 9  These extensions continued the effect of requiring jurisdictions to prove that they had not misused a test or device since before the Act's enactment in 1965. In 1982, Congress amended Section 4(a) to make bailout easier to achieve in two ways. First, Congress provided that if a state is covered, local governments in that state may bail out even if the state is ineligible to bail out.[55] Second, Congress liberalized the eligibility criteria by replacing the 17-year requirement with a new standard, allowing a covered jurisdiction to bail out by proving that in the 10 years preceding its bailout request: The jurisdiction did not use a test or device with a discriminatory purpose or effect; No court determined that the jurisdiction denied or abridged the right to vote based on racial or language minority status; The jurisdiction complied with the preclearance requirement; The federal government did not assign federal examiners to the jurisdiction; The jurisdiction abolished discriminatory election practices; and The jurisdiction took affirmative steps to eliminate voter intimidation and expand voting opportunities for protected minorities. Additionally, Congress required jurisdictions seeking bailout to produce evidence of minority registration and voting rates, including how these rates have changed over time and in comparison to the registration and voting rates of the majority. If the court determines that the covered jurisdiction is eligible for bailout, it will enter a declaratory judgment in the jurisdiction's favor. The court will retain jurisdiction for the following 10 years and may order the jurisdiction back into coverage if the jurisdiction subsequently engages in voting discrimination.[44][55][58]: 22–23 [151] The 1982 amendment to the bailout eligibility standard went into effect on August 5, 1984.[55] Between that date and 2013, 196 jurisdictions bailed out of coverage through 38 bailout actions; in each instance, the attorney general consented to the bailout request.[128]: 54  Between that date and 2009, all jurisdictions that bailed out were located in Virginia.[55] In 2009, a municipal utility jurisdiction in Texas bailed out after the Supreme Court's opinion in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder (2009),[152] which held that local governments that do not register voters have the ability to bail out.[153] After this ruling, jurisdictions succeeded in at least 20 bailout actions before the Supreme Court held in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) that the coverage formula was unconstitutional.[128]: 54  Separate provisions allow a covered jurisdiction that has been certified to receive federal observers to bail out of its certification alone. Under Section 13, the attorney general may terminate the certification of a jurisdiction if 1) more than 50 percent of the jurisdiction's minority voting age population is registered to vote, and 2) there is no longer reasonable cause to believe that residents may experience voting discrimination. Alternatively, the District Court for D.C. may order the certification terminated.[132]: 237, 239 [150] Bilingual election requirements Two provisions require certain jurisdictions to provide election materials to voters in multiple languages: Section 4(f)(4) and Section 203(c). A jurisdiction covered by either provision must provide all materials related to an election—such as voter registration materials, ballots, notices, and instructions—in the language of any applicable language minority group residing in the jurisdiction.[57]: 209  Language minority groups protected by these provisions include Asian Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Native Alaskans.[154] Congress enacted the provisions to break down language barriers and combat pervasive language discrimination against the protected groups.[57]: 200, 209  Section 4(f)(4) applies to any jurisdiction encompassed by the Section 4(b) coverage formula where more than five percent of the citizen voting age population are members of a single language minority group. Section 203(c) contains a formula that is separate from the Section 4(b) coverage formula, and therefore jurisdictions covered solely by 203(c) are not subject to the Act's other special provisions, such as preclearance. The Section 203(c) formula encompasses jurisdictions where the following conditions exist: A single language minority is present that has an English-illiteracy rate higher than the national average; and Either: The number of "limited-English proficient" members of the language minority group is at least 10,000 voting-age citizens or large enough to comprise at least five percent of the jurisdiction's voting-age citizen population; or The jurisdiction is a political subdivision that contains an Indian reservation, and more than five percent of the jurisdiction's American Indian or Alaska Native voting-age citizens are members of a single language minority and are limited-English proficient.[57]: 223–224  Section 203(b) defines "limited-English proficient" as being "unable to speak or understand English adequately enough to participate in the electoral process".[57]: 223  Determinations as to which jurisdictions satisfy the Section 203(c) criteria occur once a decade following completion of the decennial census; at these times, new jurisdictions may come into coverage while others may have their coverage terminated. Additionally, under Section 203(d), a jurisdiction may "bail out" of Section 203(c) coverage by proving in federal court that no language minority group within the jurisdiction has an English illiteracy rate that is higher than the national illiteracy rate.[57]: 226  After the 2010 census, 150 jurisdictions across 25 states were covered under Section 203(c), including statewide coverage of California, Texas, and Florida.[155] Impact refer to caption Final page of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the Senate Hubert Humphrey, and Speaker of the House John McCormack After its enactment in 1965, the law immediately decreased racial discrimination in voting. The suspension of literacy tests and the assignments of federal examiners and observers allowed for high numbers of racial minorities to register to vote.[96]: 702  Nearly 250,000 African Americans registered in 1965, one-third of whom were registered by federal examiners.[156] In covered jurisdictions, less than one-third (29.3 percent) of the African American population was registered in 1965; by 1967, this number increased to more than half (52.1 percent),[96]: 702  and a majority of African American residents became registered to vote in 9 of the 13 Southern states.[156] Similar increases were seen in the number of African Americans elected to office: between 1965 and 1985, African Americans elected as state legislators in the 11 former Confederate states increased from 3 to 176.[157]: 112  Nationwide, the number of African American elected officials increased from 1,469 in 1970 to 4,912 in 1980.[123]: 919  By 2011, the number was approximately 10,500.[158] Similarly, registration rates for language minority groups increased after Congress enacted the bilingual election requirements in 1975 and amended them in 1992. In 1973, the percent of Hispanics registered to vote was 34.9 percent; by 2006, that amount nearly doubled. The number of Asian Americans registered to vote in 1996 increased 58 percent by 2006.[57]: 233–235  After the Act's initial success in combating tactics designed to deny minorities access to the polls, the Act became predominately used as a tool to challenge racial vote dilution.[96]: 691  Starting in the 1970s, the attorney general commonly raised Section 5 objections to voting changes that decreased the effectiveness of racial minorities' votes, including discriminatory annexations, redistricting plans, and election methods such as at-large election systems, runoff election requirements, and prohibitions on bullet voting.[142]: 105–106  In total, 81 percent (2,541) of preclearance objections made between 1965 and 2006 were based on vote dilution.[142]: 102  Claims brought under Section 2 have also predominately concerned vote dilution.[96]: 708–709  Between the 1982 creation of the Section 2 results test and 2006, at least 331 Section 2 lawsuits resulted in published judicial opinions. In the 1980s, 60 percent of Section 2 lawsuits challenged at-large election systems; in the 1990s, 37.2 percent challenged at-large election systems and 38.5 percent challenged redistricting plans. Overall, plaintiffs succeeded in 37.2 percent of the 331 lawsuits, and they were more likely to succeed in lawsuits brought against covered jurisdictions.[159]: 654–656  By enfranchising racial minorities, the Act facilitated a political realignment of the Democratic and Republican parties. Between 1890 and 1965, Black disenfranchisement enabled the Democratic Party to dominate Southern politics. After Johnson signed the Act into law, newly enfranchised Black voters began to push the Democratic Party to the left throughout the South; this in turn pushed Southern white conservatives to switch their support from the Democratic to Republican party.[160]: 290  This trend caused the two parties to ideologically polarize, with the Democratic Party becoming more Liberal and the Republican Party becoming more Conservative.[160]: 290  The trends also created competition between the two parties,[160]: 290  which Republicans capitalized on by implementing the Southern strategy.[161] Over the subsequent decades, the creation of majority-minority districts to remedy racial vote dilution claims also contributed to these developments. By packing liberal-leaning racial minorities into small numbers of majority-minority districts, large numbers of surrounding districts became more solidly white, conservative, and Republican. While this increased the elected representation of racial minorities as intended, it also decreased white Democratic representation and increased the representation of Republicans overall.[160]: 292  By the mid-1990s, these trends culminated in a political realignment: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party became more ideologically polarized and defined as liberal and conservative parties, respectively; and both parties came to compete for electoral success in the South,[160]: 294  with the Republican Party controlling most of Southern politics.[24]: 203  Research shows that the Act successfully and massively increased voter turnout and voter registration, in particular among African Americans.[17][18] The act has also been linked to concrete outcomes, such as greater public goods provision (such as public education) for areas with higher black population shares and more members of Congress who vote for civil rights-related legislation.[20][21] A 2016 study in the American Journal of Political Science found "that members of Congress who represented jurisdictions subject to the preclearance requirement were substantially more supportive of civil rights-related legislation than legislators who did not represent covered jurisdictions."[20] A 2013 Quarterly Journal of Economics study found that the Act boosted voter turnout and increases in public goods transfers from state governments to localities with higher black population.[21] A 2018 study in The Journal of Politics found that Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act "increased black voter registration by 14–19 percentage points, white registration by 10–13 percentage points, and overall voter turnout by 10–19 percentage points. Additional results for Democratic vote share suggest that some of this overall increase in turnout may have come from reactionary whites."[17] A 2019 study in the American Economic Journal found that preclearance substantially increased turnout among minorities, even as far as to 2012 (the year prior to the Supreme Court ruling ending preclearance).[18] The study estimates that preclearance led to an increase in minority turnout of 17 percentage points.[18] A 2020 study found that the jurisdictions which had previously been covered by preclearance massively increased the rate of voter registration purges after the 2013 United States Supreme Court Shelby County v. Holder decision in which the "coverage formula" in Section 4(b) of the VRA that determined which jurisdictions had to presubmit changes in their election policies for federal approval was struck down.[15] Another 2020 study found that VRA coverage halved the incidence and the onset of political violence.[162] Constitutionality Voter eligibility provisions Early in the history of enforcement for the Act, the Supreme Court of the United States was rather quick to address both the constitutionality of the Act in its entirety as well as the constitutionality of several provisions relating to voter qualifications and prerequisites to voting. During the following year, in 1966, two legal cases were adjudicated by the Court regarding the Act. On the seventh day of March, in the landmark case of South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966), the Supreme Court held that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a constitutional method to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment. A few months later, on the thirteenth day of June, the Supreme Court held that section 4(e) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was constitutional in the case of Katzenbach v. Morgan (1966). This section prohibits jurisdictions from administering literacy tests to citizens who attain a sixth-grade education in an American school in which the predominant language was Spanish, such as schools in Puerto Rico.[163] Although the Court had earlier held that literacy tests did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, in the case of Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections (1959), the Katzenbach-Morgan case allowed Congress could enforce Fourteenth Amendment rights—such as the right to vote—by prohibiting conduct that it deemed to interfere with such rights, even if that conduct may not be independently unconstitutional.[164]: 405–406 [165]: 652–656  After Congress created a nationwide ban on all literacy tests and similar devices in 1970, in the case of Oregon v. Mitchell (1970), the Supreme Court upheld the ban as being constitutional.[124][166] In that case, the Court also addressed the constitutionality of various other provisions relating to voter qualifications and prerequisites to voting; the Court upheld Section 202 of the 1965 law, which prohibits every state and local government from requiring people to live in their borders for longer than 30 days before allowing them to vote in a presidential election. Additionally, the Court upheld the provision lowering the minimum voting age to 18 years in federal elections, but it held that Congress exceeded its power by lowering the voting age to 18 in state elections; this precipitated the ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment the following year, which lowered the voting age in all elections from 21 years to 18 years in age. The Court was deeply divided in the Oregon-Mitchell case and a majority of the justices did not agree on one rationale for the holding.[124]: 353 [166]: 118–121  Section 2 results test The question of constitutionality regarding section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which contains a general prohibition on discriminatory voting laws, has not been definitively explained by the Supreme Court. As amended in 1982, section 2 prohibits any voting practice that has a discriminatory effect, irrespective of whether the practice was enacted or is administered for the purpose of discriminating. This "results test" contrasts with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, both of which directly prohibit only purposeful discrimination. Given this disparity, whether the Supreme Court would uphold the constitutionality of section 2 as appropriate legislation that was passed to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and under what rationale, remains unclear.[27]: 758–759  In Mississippi Republican Executive Opinion v. Brooks (1984),[167] the Supreme Court summarily affirmed, without a written opinion, a lower court's decision that 1982 amendment to section 2 is constitutional.[168] Justice Rehnquist, joined by Chief Justice Burger, dissented from the opinion. They reasoned that the case presented complex constitutional issues that warranted a full hearing. When making later decisions, the Supreme Court is more likely to disregard a previous judgment if it lacks a written opinion, but for lower courts the Supreme Court's unwritten summary affirmances are as binding as are Supreme Court judgments with written opinions. Partially due to Brooks, the constitutionality of the section 2 results test has since been unanimously upheld by lower courts.[27]: 759–760  The case of Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) evaluated the applicability of section 2 of the 1965 law in the wake of the decision in the case of Shelby County v. Holder (2013). The Democratic National Committee asserted a set of Arizona election laws and policies were discriminatory towards Hispanics and Native Americans under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While lower courts upheld the election laws, an en banc Ninth Circuit reversed the decision and found these laws to be in violation of section 2 of the 1965 law.[169] The Arizona law was upheld by the Supreme Court after it introduced the means to review section 2 challenges.[88][89][91] Coverage formula and preclearance The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Section 5 preclearance requirement in three cases. The first case was South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966),[170] which was decided about five months after the Act's enactment. The court held that Section 5 constituted a valid use of Congress's power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, reasoning that "exceptional circumstances" of pervasive racial discrimination, combined with the inadequacy of case-by-case litigation in ending that discrimination, justified the preclearance requirement.[170]: 334–335 [171]: 76  The court also upheld the constitutionality of the 1965 coverage formula, saying that it was "rational in both practice and theory" and that the bailout provision provided adequate relief for jurisdictions that may not deserve coverage.[170]: 330 [171]: 76–77  The Supreme Court again upheld the preclearance requirement in City of Rome v. United States (1980).[172] The court held that because Congress had explicit constitutional power to enforce the Reconstruction Amendments "by appropriate legislation", the Act did not violate principles of federalism. The court also explicitly upheld the "discriminatory effect" prong of Section 5, stating that even though the Fifteenth Amendment directly prohibited only intentional discrimination, Congress could constitutionally prohibit unintentional discrimination to mitigate the risk that jurisdictions may engage in intentional discrimination. Finally, the court upheld the 1975 extension of Section 5 because of the record of discrimination that continued to persist in the covered jurisdictions. The court further suggested that the temporary nature of the special provisions was relevant to Section 5's constitutionality.[171]: 77–78  The final case in which the Supreme Court upheld Section 5 was Lopez v. Monterey County (Lopez II) (1999).[173] In Lopez II, the court reiterated its reasoning in Katzenbach and Rome, and it upheld as constitutional the requirement that covered local governments obtain preclearance before implementing voting changes that their parent state required them to implement, even if the parent state was not itself a covered jurisdiction.[171]: 78 [174]: 447  The 2006 extension of Section 5 was challenged before the Supreme Court in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder (2009).[152] The lawsuit was brought by a municipal water district in Texas that elected members to a water board. The District wished to move a voting location from a private home to a public school, but that change was subject to preclearance because Texas was a covered jurisdiction. The District did not register voters, and thus it did not appear to qualify as a "political subdivision" eligible to bail out of coverage. Although the court indicated in dicta (a non-binding part of the court's opinion) that Section 5 presented difficult constitutional questions, it did not declare Section 5 unconstitutional; instead, it interpreted the law to allow any covered local government, including one that does not register voters, to obtain an exemption from preclearance if it meets the bailout requirements.[175][176] In a 5–4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013),[177] the Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) as unconstitutional.[13][136] The court reasoned that the coverage formula violates the constitutional principles of "equal sovereignty of the states" and federalism because its disparate treatment of the states is "based on 40 year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day", rendering the formula outdated.[13][135] The court did not strike down Section 5, but without Section 4(b), no jurisdiction may be subject to Section 5 preclearance unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula.[14] After the decision, several states that were fully or partially covered—including Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina—implemented laws that were previously denied preclearance. This prompted new legal challenges to these laws under other provisions unaffected by the court's decision, such as Section 2.[178]: 189–200  Research has shown that the coverage formula and the requirement of preclearance substantially increased turnout among racial minorities, even as far as the year before Shelby County.[18] Some jurisdictions that had previously been covered by the coverage formula increased the rate of voter registration purges after Shelby County.[179] On 1 July 2021, the Act's preclearance requirements were further weakened at the state and local level following the Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee in a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling which held that Section 2 preclearance provisions could not apply to out-of-precinct voting or ballot collecting.[16][11] Racial gerrymandering Main article: Gerrymandering in the United States: Affirmative racial gerrymandering While Section 2 and Section 5 prohibit jurisdictions from drawing electoral districts that dilute the votes of protected minorities, the Supreme Court has held that in some instances, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prevents jurisdictions from drawing district lines to favor protected minorities. The court first recognized the justiciability of affirmative "racial gerrymandering" claims in Shaw v. Reno (1993).[180] In Miller v. Johnson (1995),[181] the court explained that a redistricting plan is constitutionally suspect if the jurisdiction used race as the "predominant factor" in determining how to draw district lines. For race to "predominate", the jurisdiction must prioritize racial considerations over traditional redistricting principles, which include "compactness, contiguity, [and] respect for political subdivisions or communities defined by actual shared interests."[181]: 916 [182]: 621  If a court concludes that racial considerations predominated, then the redistricting plan is considered "racially gerrymandered" and must be subjected to strict scrutiny, meaning that the redistricting plan will be upheld as constitutional only if it is narrowly tailored to advance a compelling state interest. In Bush v. Vera (1996),[183]: 983  a plurality of the Supreme Court assumed that complying with Section 2 or Section 5 constituted compelling interests, and lower courts have allowed only these two interests to justify racial gerrymandering.[27]: 877  See also flag United States portal icon Law portal icon Politics portal Federal laws National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) Help America Vote Act (HAVA) Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) Attempted federal legislation For the People Act (2019 and 2021) John Lewis Voting Rights Act (2019 and 2021) State laws California Voting Rights Act Voting Rights Act of Virginia More

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