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In the history of the movement for racial advancement, many creative forms have been developed—the mass boycott, sitdown protests and strikes, sit-ins,—refusal to pay fines and bail for unjust arrests—mass marches—mass meetings—prayer pilgrimages, etc.
Fascinating that sit-ins are cited here since most of the earlier Civil Rights movement were against the tactic when the students initiated them.
I not only desire, but have labored unceasingly to effect the peaceful abolition of slavery, by an appeal to the reason and conscience of every slaveholder; yet, as a peace man … an ultra peace man, I am prepared to say, success to every slave insurrection in the South and in every slave country. I do not see how I compromise or stain my peace profession in making that declaration.
The officials of the county and the city rejected their request on the grounds that the Klan was a legal organization having as much constitutional right to organize as the NAACP.
Our demands for equal employment rights were the most important of the ten points. Many plants were moving in from the North—runaway industry from the North moving in to avoid labor unions and seeking low-priced workers in the South. They received considerable tax-supported concessions from the local Industrial Development Commission, and they didn’t hire any Negroes. In fact, local bigoted officials had done everything in their power to prevent Negroes from obtaining employment. They had even gone so far as to stipulate that the new industries could not hire Afro-Americans if they expected
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I believe this is an important part of the overall Negro struggle, but when these concessions are used for propaganda by Negro “leaders” as examples of the marvelous progress the Afro-American is supposedly making, and thereby shift attention from the basic evils, then such victories cease to be even peripheral and become self-defeating.
