Page 19 - February 2017

because he believed it was the right of all Americans Including Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP chief
who shared the responsibility to defend our country to attorney who at the time argued Brown v. the board of
share also equally the privilege of service. Education , Topeka, before the United States Supreme
Court, the case that would end forever legally enforced
Secondly, one of the world’s great leaders Gandhi was racial segregation in the United States in 1954.
assassinated in India. Now we don’t usually associate
Gandhi’s work to wrestle control of India back from Undoubtedly, it can be said that the period from the
the British with American late 1940’s and through
history. the 1960s represented
a defining moment for
There is little doubt, many other Americans
however, that Gandhi’s as well; they began to
example of revolution see new possibilities
through non-violent civil and new opportunities.
disobedience greatly The traditional ways
shaped of the Civil of thinking were being
Rights Movement in our challenged and a sense
country. We know, for of entitlement began
example, that just months to grow amongst black
after Gandhi’s death, Americans and other
Martin Luther King, Jr. minorities, including
was greatly moved and women and Latinos.
influenced by a lecture They received support
he heard concerning and encouragement,
Gandhi’s principles by and large, from
of non-violent civil Americans in all walks
disobedience. of life.

Gandhi, after all, freed For 10 year old Linda
an entire country of 750 Brown it was time to
million people from 400 challenge a law that
years of domination by prevented her from
the then greatest empire attending the fifth grade
on earth, the British at the public schools in
Empire, whose flags Topeka, Kansas. For
and colonies circled the Rosa Parks, it was time
globe, touching every to sit in the section of
hemisphere and every bus legally reserved
continent. At that time, for whites only under
it was a vast area of such the laws of the state
proportions that it was of Alabama and as
said that the sun never a practical matter,
set on the British Empire. throughout the entire
But Gandhi, through the South. For Martin
use of non-violent civil Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mahatma Gandhi Luther King, Jr., it was
disobedience and world time to step out of the
public opinion, forced the British to leave India in shadow of his father and into the public eye, in support
1947. And Gandhi did it without firing a shot, striking of Rosa Parks, and lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
a single blow or uttering a single world in anger. And
it was that extraordinary principle, nonviolent civil For King, it was also a time to pick up the banner that
disobedience characterized by restraint and non-violent fell when Gandhi was assassinated and raise it to lead a
confrontation, which marked especially the early similar struggle.
years of the American civil rights struggle and helped
create the moral support necessary for it to grow into a There is one thing all of these people have in common,
nationally supported movement. Linda Brown, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther
King, Jr. and, let me add, Thurgood Marshall. They
The third major event that propelled the struggle was were all what King might call, were he still alive today,
that the NAACP started attracting new members and “disturbers of the peace.”
a broader financial base. It also began attracting some
the brightest lawyers, white and black, in the nation, Let me explain by taking you back to 1962. Racial

F r en c h·a n d·E le c t r ic·B l ue·F e b r u a r y·2017·p a g e·19