Nonviolent movements: Gandhi, King and People Power

Ages 13 to 17 Read alone · about 55 minutes

Read together

Nonviolent resistance uses protest, boycott, strikes and refusal to obey unjust laws, without hurting people. In 1930, Mohandas Gandhi led the Salt March in India, a 24-day walk to the sea to make salt in defiance of a British salt law. It drew world attention.

In the United States, Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister, led nonviolent campaigns against racial segregation, including the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956. In his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, he explained why he believed that an unjust law is no law at all.

In the Philippines, in February 1986, millions of people gathered peacefully on EDSA, the main highway of Metro Manila, to oppose a government they believed had stolen an election. Church leaders and ordinary citizens joined, and President Ferdinand Marcos left the country. Research by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan found that nonviolent campaigns have often been more successful than violent ones.

Do it

1. Read part of King's “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (it is long, so choose a section) and list his reasons for acting now.
2. Compare three movements in a chart: goal, methods, what happened, what it cost. Include the Salt March, the Montgomery boycott and EDSA 1986.
3. Think of an injustice in your school or community. Plan a nonviolent action: who, what, how would you stay peaceful and truthful?
4. Read Matthew 5:38–48 and Romans 12:17–21. How do these passages relate to nonviolent resistance?

Talk about it

• Why might nonviolence be effective?
• What are the risks and costs of nonviolent protest?

For the grown-up

Nonviolent movements drew deeply on faith, including Gandhi's Hindu and wider traditions, King's Baptist Christianity and Catholic networks in the Philippines. Historians discuss the movements' complexity and limits. Encourage your teen to learn from them while remembering that people, including leaders, are imperfect.

Mark as done

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Where this comes from

• Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (16 April 1963)
• Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2011)
• Mark R. Thompson, The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines (Yale University Press, 1995)
• Judith M. Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (Yale University Press, 1989)

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.