Future Hope Column: The Limits of Tyrants

 

By Ted Glick

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

-Frederick Douglass, August 3, 1857, in Canandaigua, NY

65 years ago today, on February 1, 1960, the first student sit-in at lunch counters throughout the segregated South began in downtown Greensboro at a Woolworth’s store. Young people literally put their bodies on the line, and were beaten and jailed for doing so, to demand an end to racist laws and daily practices prohibiting Black people from using public and private facilities solely because of the color of their skin.

This action sparked similar actions throughout the South, the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the emergence of a national mass movement against segregation and racism. Four years later, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed in Congress, followed the next year by the Voting Rights Act.

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Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.