3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

what is right, but Iam not sure how .
It is not my intention, in treating the subject of self-defense in the civil rights
movement, to glorify violence, nor is it my intention to disparage nonviolent direct
action ; in fact, I am as equally intrigued by the awe-inspiring use of nonviolence during
the civil rights movement as I am by Americans' traditional reliance on self-protection in
the pursuit of constitutional freedom (here 1 am thinking of the colonial-era "Gadsden
flag," depicting a coiled snake, ready to strike, with the slogan "Don't Tread on Me") .
My irresolute approach, which hopefully yields a higher degree of objectivity, probably
derives from a notion introduced to me by several of the activists studied in this project :
that is, that nonviolence and self-defense were not necessarily mutually exclusive .
Few would question the effectiveness of nonviolent direct action in the American
civil rights movement. I certainly do not. It worked where other methods failed . In spite
of the utility of nonviolence (or perhaps because of it), this study proceeds from the
assumption that human nature does not normally dictate the absorption of punishment .
Afro-Americans are no different in this regard. Historically, most Christians have seemed
to prefer the Old Testament's crude maxim "an eye for an eye" instead of Jesus'
admonition to "turn the other cheek." ia If one considers how prone people have been
throughout human history to retribution and revenge, nonviolence becomes that much
mare extraordinary, particularly within the cultural matrix of what one scholar has called
`the proportionality theory of the former, as one scholar has noted, requires
much less charity than the latter. See Roger Lane and John J . Turner, eds., Riot, Rout.
and Tumult: Readings in American_ Social and Political Violence (Westport, Conn . :
Gr+eenwood Press, 1978), xi .