MARTIN LUTHER KING

A black lady called Rosa Parks, refused to sit at the back of the bus, where black people were supposed to sit. She was arrested. The African-Americans in the town decided to campaign on her behalf, against this discrimination. They chose the unknown Dr. Martin Luther King to lead the campaign. They did not know that his speeches would be so powerful in bringing down racism in America. No one imagined he would follow Gandhi's footsteps and campaign using nonviolence to put his point across.

Here are some of his principles, and he lived by them until the day he died:

  1. Nonviolence is the way of the strong. You are not physically aggressive, but you need a lot of inner strength to stand up to violence without fighting back.
  2. The aim of nonviolence is friendship and reconciliation. But after violence, there is only bitter regrets and anger.
  3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat evil, not people. Those committing violence are in the grasp of a evil, and our struggle is against evil, not each other.
  4. Nonviolence means being willing to suffer without comeback. This kind of attitude can really change people’s hearts and minds. It has a powerful effect on others, much more so than striking back. “We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. Do to us what you will and we will still love you… we will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer.” This is a powerful challenge.
  5. Nonviolence is love in action.It is the power and the love of God defeating evil in the way that Jesus did.

By protesting in this non-violent way against racial discrimination, Martin Luther King changed the hearts and minds of a lot of people. Even though he and his protesters were beaten, tear-gassed and attacked with police dogs, and some died, they did not respond with violence. His bravery and peacefulness won the day. He was himself assassinated in 1968, but his message of equality and peace changed America forever.

MAHATMA GANDHI

Gandhi is one of India’s greatest heroes. He was born in India in the late 19th century. He studied law in England, then returned to India. He became interested in non-violent ideas, for example in Jesus’ teaching and in Hindu religion. In the Boer war in South Africa and became known as a leader and also as a holy man, because of the purity of his life: he gave up sex (with his wife), would fast for long periods of time, meditate and practice peacefulness towards everybody . When the British began to crack down on freedom in India, he began to organise peaceful protests against this: he would organise many people to follow him in refusing to co-operate with the British government, but not actually fighting against them. This infuriated the British, who could do nothing about it. Even if they beat the Indians or imprisoned them, they would continue their peaceful protest. Eventually, the British had to give in and listen to his demands, and give India the independence it wanted, without any lives being lost.

DOROTHY DAY

Dorothy Day was a strong, independent minded woman. She job as a reporter on a newspaper. Around this time, she joined a Christian pacifist organisation. She was convinced that Jesus’ teaching meant that violence was never the answer and she became a Catholic. When the war started, and countries like Spain and Germany were becoming more militaristic, she argued that people should resist conscription into the army, refuse to pay war taxation and refuse to produce weapons. She saw war and violence as going against Jesus’ message of love and argued that we need the spiritual weapons of prayer to defeat evil, not real weapons. Because of her attitude of peace towards everyone, she lived her life sharing it with the poor, jobless and homeless, speaking out for them in her newspaper, the Catholic Worker,. She refused no-one her help. She did not achieve any big goals, like stopping a war, but her example was an inspiration to many people to follow her ideas. She has been proposed for sainthood.