Gandhi and the fellowship of reconciliation: nonviolent tactics in the early Civil Rights Movement

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, more than twenty years before the height of the civil rights movement, a group of pacifists known as the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) contested injustices facing African Americans in the United States. Prominent members of FOR, including George Houser, Homer Jack, and A.J. Muste, were close fol- lowers of Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings, especially the nonviolent tactics he employed in the fight for Indian independence. the fight for Indian independence. Members of FOR began developing tactics shaped after Gandhi’s nonviolent philosophy, holding race relations institutes and interracial workshops to teach activists in different communities how to tackle segregation through demonstrations including sit-ins and boycotts. Although FOR made progress with its demonstrations, its members wanted to have a greater effect in the community so they created the nonviolent, direct-action organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), in 1942. Along with FOR, CORE took part in nonviolent demonstrations to fight segregation. These smaller demonstrations eventually led members of FOR and CORE to plan a large demonstration in 1947 known as the Journey of Reconciliation. That demon- stration, as well as the sit-ins and boycotts started by the members of FOR, influenced the members of CORE and the post-Brown civil rights movement, culminating in national figures on the order of Martin Luther King Jr. and demonstrations such as the Freedom Rides of 1961.