Non-violence was met with aggression.
In December 1955, Rosa Parks disobeyed the segregation policy on transport by refusing to give up her seat to a white man and she was arrested. However, the non-violent protest eventually led to the integration of transport when black people refused to use the buses. Martin Luther King supported although he was subjected to harassment. Again, non-violent protest was met with aggression, but the bus company gave in.
Black and white ‘Freedom Riders’ sat next to each other in the Deep South although non-violent themselves, they were beaten up. President Kennedy sent U.S. Marshals to protect them when local authorities failed to. Freedom Riders campaigned against other forms of segregation; they helped to bring about change by doing sit-ins together in restaurants, lunch counters and hotels. Large companies worried about boycotts in the North, which might lead to desegregation in shops, restaurants and hotels.
In the 1940s the Black church was to become fully involved in the struggle for civil rights in the South. Martin Luther King explained what had happened in Montgomery and his views on non-violence in ‘Stride Toward Freedom’; this was to have a lot of influence. Students who were attacked because of their sit in at a restaurant in Woolworths followed Luther King’s teaching of non-violence.
At sit-ins all over the South, this tactic was adopted. Sit-ins ended segregation in 26 southern cities. Sit-ins were also successful against segregation in public parks, swimming pools, theatres, libraries and churches, museums and beaches. Non-violence was again successful but it had taken time.