Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The greatness of America is the right to protest for rights.” The freedom of assembly (protest) joins the freedom of speech, the freedom to petition, the freedom of the press, and the freedom of religion as the five essential freedoms granted to every American citizen. In the 20th century, it was the Civil Rights movement’s nonviolent protests that finally made America a true democracy. Today, in the 21st century, it is violent protests that threaten to return it to autocracy. For Dr. King protest wasn’t a moral stance alone—it was a strategy, a discipline, and a craft. Today, we’ve lost all three.
Invoking Dr. King in any conversation about the act of protesting is appropriate because he is the Henry Ford of protesting. Of course, Ford did not invent the automobile, nor did Dr. King invent protesting. But Ford taught the world how to efficiently build a car by applying his assembly line idea to the process. Similarly, Dr. King taught Americans how to properly protest by applying his philosophy of nonviolence to the act of protest resistance.
The last few years have seen a potent number of protest movements sweep America: Black Lives Matter, the January 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill, the “Free Palestine” movement, the “No Kings” rallies, and the ongoing protests against the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All claimed to be acting in the great spirit and grand tradition of Dr. King. But the only thing these have in common with the protest demonstrations of the Civil Rights movement is that they gathered a crowd of people together.
Black Lives Matter protest provoked property destruction. On January 6, 2021, protestors attacked one of the seats of our government and temporarily shut down the certification of a national election. Pro-Palestinian protestors have seized campus buildings, scuffled with police, and physically stopped pro-Israel rallies. And many of us are aware of protestors committing vehicular attacks on ICE agents. These acts of resistance are anything but nonviolent.
The core principle of the Civil Rights movement was voluntary conversion, never any compulsion or arm-twisting. Its protests were mounted as an appeal to the conscience and goodwill of both the protest target and the wider public. Protesters, never the protest targets, endured every consequence their demonstrations brought: physical assault, destruction of their property, restriction of movement, and imprisonment by law enforcement. For them, protest was a demonstration of their commitment to the cause; it was never a punishment of the people or institutions that were the protest’s target.
The core principle of today’s movements seems to be involuntary coercion and intimidation. Too often, they want to force others to adopt their perspective and support their cause by threat or physical attack. They seek to shut down any program, activity, or speech they disagree with.
When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus, she didn’t attempt to interfere with the bus driver or to stop any other passengers from sitting down where they chose. Her message was not, If I can’t sit where I choose, I will stop the bus from operating. Her message was, I am prepared to subject myself to physical abuse and arrest, offering no resistance, in order to exercise my right as a human being and an American citizen to choose to sit in any available empty bus seat.
When Black college students sat down at Greensboro lunch counters and refused to move until they were served or arrested, they purposely never occupied all the empty seats available at the lunch counter. They knew not to prevent other customers from entering and conducting business in the stores, because their protest message was not, If Blacks can’t buy lunch here, no one will be allowed to buy lunch or shop here. The message was: We will not move from this lunch counter until served or arrested, because the color of one’s skin should not prevent someone from being served.
The Birmingham middle- and high school students who showed up for a children’s march at Kelly Ingram Park in 1963 were attacked by police dogs and sprayed with high-pressure fire hoses. The images shocked Americans. Yet, regardless of the morality of their cause, had these children been armed with guns, knives, and lead pipes to resist their attackers, American sentiment would have been: Yes, the police needed the dogs and firehoses to put down violent thugs with weapons. Instead, the students met violence with nonviolence; their only intention was to resist racism and possibly sacrifice their lives for justice, freedom, and democracy. As a result, American sentiment was to make the 1964 Civil Rights Act the law of the land, which made America a true democracy for the first time in its history.
The Civil Rights protestors also avoided violent speech. Never would you have seen a Civil Rights protest sign that read “Death to the klu klux klan.” Even when it came to one of America’s most notorious racists, never would you have heard a protest speaker say “George Wallace should be condemned to Hell.” The only messages Dr. King would allow printed on signs and heard in speeches at protests were positive and affirmative. “I too am a human being,” “I am an American citizen entitled to equal rights,” or “We shall overcome.” There was never any violent speech directed at or about the protest targets. Yet today’s protestors frequently abuse their opponents, call for retribution upon them, and praise acts of horrific violence that are inflicted on their protest targets.
A nonviolent protestor’s goal is to create a minimum degree of discomfort or inconvenience to draw attention to the protest cause. But the discomfort or inconvenience should never exist to the point of preventing a college class, a public speech, or a legal arrest. It must never deny its opponent’s rights.
A successful nonviolent protest generates sympathy for the cause, and it requires planning. Dr. King would have never sent out a social media message to meet him in an hour for a protest; instead, he would have sent out a message to meet him in an hour to plan a protest. He never led a march, organized a boycott, or convened a rally without first addressing all the necessary logistical questions and contingencies. A proper site must be selected and, if necessary, permits applied for. Plans must be made to deal with counter-protestors and any other attempts to interfere with the protest. And there must be plans on how law enforcement should be dealt with if and when they show up? Most importantly, protest organizers must insist on nonviolent protesting and explain its meaning. As Dr. King wrote in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, nonviolence is “a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love.”
Yet the passivity of the protestor can only go so far. Denial of a permit does not mean a protest should not happen, because an act of civil disobedience or disobeying a denied protest permit can itself be a legitimate protest tactic. Dr. King’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was written because he had been arrested for leading a march in defiance of a court order banning “racial demonstrations.” But attempting to obtain permission to protest is a necessary step along the Kingian path. Seeking permission to protest sends the message to all concerned that the intention is for the demonstration to be peaceful. Such a message could determine if the police or security forces show up wearing riot gear or their normal uniforms.
When pro-Palestinian students took over a building on Columbia’s campus in 2024, the violent spectacle drew the worst possible attention to the cause. The students began by breaking windows to enter the building. Some pre-protest planning might have helped. For instance, a protestor could have hidden in the building to let the rest in after it closed. Instead, the students caused great damage to the building by breaking its windows and using its furniture to barricade themselves inside.
Occupying a campus building to focus attention on a protest cause can be a legitimate protest tactic. Perhaps destruction was partly the point in this case, but truly effective protest requires that no property be destroyed to facilitate the protest. Protestors can plan to use their bodies en masse as an obstacle to prevent entering or re-occupying the building. Still, they should never resist arrest—in the 1960s, when nonviolent protestors against the war in Vietnam occupied a Columbia University building, they did not resist removal.
But the way that pro-Palestinian college students occupied a Columbia University campus building in 2024, the way some BLM protests turned to property destruction, the way protestors violently invaded Capitol Hill on January 6th, and the way some protestors impede ICE from doing their job is to adopt the means of tyranny and autocracy. Ironically, these protestors see themselves as genuinely resisting tyranny, but by doing so violently, they make their causes deeply unsympathetic. As Dr. King wrote in 1967, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. The beauty of nonviolence is that in its own way and in its own time it seeks to break the chain reaction of evil.”
American democracy cannot survive without the right to protest. Yet in the 21st century, twenty-three states have enacted at least fifty-five laws to limit how and when people can exercise their constitutional right to protest. Protesting the way of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights activists he led is the way to protect one of America’s greatest rights, the right to protest for rights. If a just protest cause is to succeed, its advocates must protest in the Kingian nonviolent way!!!