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

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

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

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involved in challenging Jim Crow would have suggested abnegating self-defense in one's<br />

own home, but most black people, listening to Martin Luther King <strong>and</strong> the other apostles<br />

of nonviolence, had difficulty disaggregating the practice of nonviolence in a private<br />

sphere from the practice of nonviolence in a public sphere . The result was a backlash<br />

against King's methods of protest . As one man would explain, claiming to voice the<br />

views of many blacks toward nonviolence :<br />

All those who dare to attack are going to learn the hard way that the<br />

Afro-American is not a pacifist; that he cannot forever be counted on not to<br />

defend himself . . . Those who doubt that the great majority of Negroes arc not<br />

pacifists, just let them slap one . Pick any Negro on any street corner in the United<br />

States of America <strong>and</strong> they'll find out how much he believes in turning the other<br />

cheek e<br />

The words <strong>and</strong> deeds of Robert F . Williams would signify a departure from the precedent<br />

set in Montgomery, <strong>and</strong> a return to traditional methods of self-protection in the face of<br />

white aggression .<br />

During the five-year period, 1957-1962, the locus of civil rights activity shifted<br />

away from Martin Luther King <strong>and</strong> his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership<br />

Conference (SCLC), founded in 1957 to continue civil rights agitation after the<br />

Montgomery bus boycott. For example, in the fall of 1957, the attention of a nation<br />

shifted to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Governor Orval Faubus vowed to block the<br />

desegregation of the all-white Central High School . In what proved to be the most<br />

serious domestic crisis of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, "Ike" ordered 1100 army<br />

'Robert F. Williams, NeQr+oes With Guns, (New York : Mariani & Munsell, Inc .,<br />

1962), 122 .<br />

34

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