This study will argue that it is not legitimate to use violence in social protests in the United States.
One of the most famous uses of violence in social and political protest in this country in recent decades involved the split between the two camps of black activists in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. As Albert and Albert write in The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade, the civil rights movement was first led and dominated by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King's leadership was founded on non-violent boycotts and demonstrations. Passive resistance won a number of victories for the civil rights movement and drew the attention of politicians, the media, and the public. In the early years of the 1960s, the success of the non-violent arm of the civil rights movement prevented the rise of a more violent arm, but it seemed that those earlier successes were not being sustained as the 1960s moved along. This was true, at least, in the minds of younger black leaders who wanted to step up the pressure on the establishment to meet their needs. They devised the notion of "Black Power" and they sought to usurp the leadership of the civil rights movement from King and his non-violent approach. Malcolm X was one such leader. He did not openly advocate violence, but he did advocate "self-defense" for blacks as they fought the white establishment and the police who represented that establishment. He hurled the first hint of what was to come. When King was assassinated, rioting broke out across the country, reflecting the black rage that had found expression earlier in the 1965 riots in Watts after the arrest of a black man:
By the end of 1968, the decade's racial upheavals had led to a total of 208 deaths and $792.8 million worth of property destruction. The amount of damage and extent of popular participation led many observers to describe the disturbances as a black insurrection. During the period of riots...