Nonviolence

During chapel at the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey, King delivers “The Philosophy of Non-violence.”

King, King, Sr., Abernathy, C. K. Steele, and Glenn Smiley attend a two-day FOR-sponsored workshop stressing nonviolent social protest tactics at Tuskegee Institute.

During the spring of 1961, student activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides to challenge segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals. Traveling on buses from Washington, D.C., to Jackson, Mississippi, the riders met violent opposition in the Deep South, garnering extensive media attention and eventually forcing federal intervention from John F. Kennedy’s administration. Although the campaign succeeded in securing an Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) ban on segregation in all facilities under their jurisdiction, the Freedom Rides fueled existing tensions between student activists and Martin Luther King, Jr., who publicly supported the riders, but did not participate in the campaign.

King’s article, “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” appears in Christian Century. 

King, Jr., hears Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, preach at Philadelphia’s Fellowship House on Mohandas K. Gandhi’s satyagraha as a method of social change.

Social activist Homer Jack was an early supporter of the Montgomery bus boycott. He corresponded with Martin Luther King and visited Montgomery during March 1956 to gain first-hand information about the boycott. Afterward he sent a newsletter to his colleagues in the civil rights and peace community describing the movement: “The Gandhian flavor was not apparent at the beginning.… It grew naturally.” He concluded, “They have conducted a disciplined campaign which would, in many aspects, have made Mahatma Gandhi very proud” (Jack, 9 March 1956).

In December 1956, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) held the first of its annual conferences on nonviolent direct action, called the Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change. The theme of the 1956 institute was “Freedom and Dignity Through Love,” and it included an address by Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the early days of the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr., referred to India's Mahatma Gandhi as “the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change” (Papers 5:231). Following the success of the boycott in 1956, King contemplated traveling to India to deepen his understanding of Gandhian principles.

G. Ramachandran, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, served as the secretary of the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi (Gandhi National Memorial Fund), which co-sponsored Martin Luther King’s 1959 India trip. King thanked Ramachandran for his hospitality during his trip to India, writing that Ramachandran’s interpretations of Gandhi “left an indelible imprint on my thinking” (Papers 5:212).

Described by Martin Luther King, Jr., as his “spiritual mentor,” Benjamin Mays was a distinguished Atlanta educator who served as president of Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967 (Scott King, 249). While King was a student at Morehouse, the two men developed a relationship that continued until King’s death in 1968.