Overall, the civil rights movement was better organized and its participants far more methodical and careful than tends to be recognized now. That is regrettable, because movement veterans again and again make that very point in discussing their approach to bringing about social change. Charles E. Cobb, Jr., a veteran of the Movement who served for years in Mississippi, summarized it as “struggle—disciplined, thoughtful, creative struggle.”
Consider those four words. Even read them aloud. They are worth such emphasis because they are essential to understanding how the movement operated. Discipline in military operations is most often thought of as following one’s training and obeying legal orders, and both of those are indeed crucial. But the foundation of it all is self-discipline, most often in simply being persistent, of putting one foot in front of the other, day after day, of keeping control of one’s own emotions and fears. This was also true of front-line volunteers in the movement across the South. In the movement, an additional form of discipline was maintaining the message that is being sent out to the world. Again and again, members of the civil rights movement emphasized and exhibited self-control in their public actions. As Martin Luther King Jr. once put it, “Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks.”
The views of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the great activist for Indian independence, on tactics and strategy are quite relevant here. Civil rights leaders did not study military history and were not affected directly by military principles, but several—especially Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bevel, one of his principal advisers on strategy—were deeply influenced by Gandhi, who often invoked military analogies. Gandhi taught, “There is no civil disobedience possible, until the crowds behave like disciplined soldiers.” Gandhi’s impact on King and the Movement, both directly through his writings and indirectly through American followers such as the Black educators Mordecai Johnson and Howard Thurman, probably has been underestimated, even now. The major reason for that misapprehension by historians, I suspect, is that the influence of Gandhi generally is more evident in King’s actions than in his words—as will be seen in the discussions below of the campaigns in Birmingham and Selma.