Activist James Bevel Promotes Nonviolence (1966)

we're doing with that philosophy now. I think one of the problems that a lot of people have is the word. Several words that's going around creates a lot of problems. One of them is probably "Black Power." One of them is the word "nonviolence." And I think there is a lot of confusion surrounding both words. And I don't think that neither one of the words are constantly defined to the extent that people know what we're talking about when we use those words. I constantly use the word "nonviolence." Because for the last six years I've been involved in a movement and we were teaching the philosophy of nonviolence. And nonviolence as a practical way of bringing about social change. I would like to say that personally I am committed to the philosophy of nonviolence. I believe in it and practice it. It may be a bad philosophy. But my experiences. My experiences in America.

And the state of affairs in the world today even drive me closer to search for realities within the framework of that philosophy. I mean one of the problems is that a lot of people think it means sitting around doing nothing. I remember once I was talking about nonviolence and one fellow said that Negroes have been nonviolent all the time and I had to point out that at exactly the problem. Negroes have not been nonviolent. In fact they have been violent. That is the difference between nonviolence and on violence. The absence of violence and using the technique and the philosophy of nonviolence. There's two differences. One means to sit around and do nothing in the midst of problems and troubles. And to wait for someone else to do your job. One is a philosophy that takes into account the very nature of man and the very problems of man and then tried to create out of the problems of synthesis and a new direction that may lead people to a better understanding of themselves, the problem, and maybe to a practical solution.

That is, that's different than just being passive, sitting around, doing nothing. Now, one of the problems involved in nonviolence, I guess, is the whole question of truth. Knowing the truth or searching for truth, trying to understand truth, trying to understand the nature of the world in the midst of a problem and then trying to get to the root of the problem. If you use nonviolence in raising the question of tyranny I don't think the basic question is how to not be a slave but seems to me it would be how to destroy tyranny. A long time ago I guess people have worked at that and they've used violence to overthrow tyrannical governments and I would like to say violence is a very good in overthrowing a tyrant but violence is never good for getting rid of tyranny. Let me give you an illustration in terms of modern times. In 1940, in about 41 the United States government ended the war on the

pretense that violence used by the United States government would suddenly stop one country from taking over the world. We use violence. We defeated Hitler but we didn't prove that a country couldn't take over the world. Hitler didn't take over the world but Lyndon B. Johnson has done a magnificent job of taking over the world. So even though we fight against tyranny, we got that one tyrant but we didn't get a bit of tyranny, we simply set up another system of tyranny and we need to understand that about violence because of its very nature that it will get rid of a tyrant but it will not get rid of tyranny and there are lot of