Why We Can't Wait

   Protesting is the expression or disapproval of or objection to something. Typically when I think of protesting I think of violent protests such as the Battle of Athens in 1946. In 1946 a small community in Athens, Tennessee violently protested  the corrupt voting schemes and corrupt legislator, Paul Cantrell. On August 1st, 1946 during election day there was a felt sense of corruption and there was plenty of gun violence to go along with that. Many men were wounded and the dispute ended when dynamite came into play. Long story short, the corruption ended and the protest was a success, but came with the price of violence. Now, within the first few chapters of Why We Can't Wait, we can see that Martin Luther King Jr. had a much different approach than the people of Athens, Tennessee when the need to protest arises. Martin Luther King Jr. explains in chapter two how the flaws withing the past protests failed because of the violence and that non-violence is the answer. This is not an easy approach considering the pent up anger African Americans had during this time and still today. I believe that almost all humans natural reaction is violence when frustration arises. When thinking what I would do in Martin Luther King Jr.'s shoes I probably would've turned to violence to try and make things right. He was way smarter in his approach than I would've been. He was smart in many ways but in particular his thought process behind this new non-violent approach. I believe that he was so successful because instead of just reacting like many of us would've, he analyzed past protests to see what was good about them and what wasn't so great about them. He found a common theme that violence was not the answer based on previous attempts of attaining equality and that it would be more efficient to approach this with no violence. He was evidently very smart with his approach, I believe that many should not only look at his strategies for protest reasoning's but also for his way of thinking and reasoning. 

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