Progressive Professor: "It is ok to use violence as long as it is a BIG part of your strategy"

Francis Piven starts out talking about the riots in the South during the MLK marches. She mentions the white mobs coming to beat the protesters up. She states that the Civil rights marchers were about non-violence. They were instructed to duck and cover themselves to protect against the beating and spitting, but the violence of the white mob was being used strategically in those demonstrations.

Piven states that blacks used violence. They new they would be beat and the used the violence of the right to their advantage. That was the success looking back. They did manage to use the pictures and video on a nation wide basis to achieve the legislation for the Civil Rights Act. However, she claims that the “Deacons for Defense” used violence directly in the riots in Birmingham Al.