How can one practice non-violence?

In 1965 when I was studying Humanities at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Martin Luther King came to speak to the student body. The civil rights movement was then at its height in the southern United States. There was not a room big enough to hold the student crowd, so King spoke to thousands of students in an open air meeting.

At the end of his talk King made a call for volunteers to go to work in the south, doing civil rights activities. About 25 of us responded. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded by Martin Luther King, was a non violent movement. We volunteers received two days of training in non violent resistance methods. We were told that if attacked we should not fight back, but instead we should adopt a non violent position. In the worst case scenario, we were to curl up and take up a fetal position and refuse to fight back.

Civil Rights -- Again

Two days ago, John Lewis, an American congressman from Georgia was interviewed on CBC radio here in Canada. Listening to him brought my mind back to an event in August, 1965 which occurred in Americus, Georgia.

A group of six of us, John Lewis, two black friends, a Jewish woman, with my wife and I, tried to enter an all white Baptist church to worship. We were stopped at the door by a group of church deacons and leaders. John Lewis had some words with them.