White Americans begin to look bad in the public eye as they are seen as the aggressors, and black Americans as pacifists (which they totally are). People begin to side with those who are being peaceful and non-violent and start to hate or even despise those who are violent and cruel. Social change was possible when people were forced to look at those committing abusive acts towards those being nonviolent. He knows that the people involved in his campaign are peacefully protesting and are non-violent but are being beaten to a pulp by white Americans for everyone to see. He knows that people around the country and maybe the world can see what is happening to black people in the United States. That is the response King wanted from viewers. It can be anger, sadness, fear, disgust, etcetera. Seeing this type of racial abuse being enacted by other human beings causes all of these negative feelings to come to the surface. Therefore, it is these vulnerable populations of people that are receiving the bulk of the police brutality and beatings from other oppressive white groups. King makes a point of all of this by making the frontrunners of his campaign young children and elderly men and women. The actual suffering that people of color, especially black people, have to face on a daily basis is cruel and unjust. Self-purification and direct action are important toward social change as they force oppressive white Americans and onlookers from around the world to look at what is happening in American society. This process of direct action interferes with how the American public operates, so they are all but forced to listen to what the arrested person has to say.
Once in court, they can make a scene, plead their views, or do whatever they believe they can do to make white Americans see the unjustness of that specific law. People do not need to break the law they think is unjust they just need to break a law that will land them in front of a judge. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored’ (King 2). King defined direct action as follows: ‘Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. People wanted their day in court in order to oppose any law they saw to be unjust. However, they had to very publicly break a law because the goal was to end up in jail and go before a judge.
King instructed those who were involved in his campaign to go out into the public and break a law. This not only shows a strength from within but a problem with white Americans as they are hurting those who are being peaceful.Ī direct action is a form of civil disobedience. For King, violence further hurts the cause and puts people ten steps backward. It was a way in which one had to physically prepare to go to a protest, whether it be at a sit-in, a bus boycott, a march, or whatever it be that day, and to mentally prepare to get beaten and not strike whoever is hurting them.
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