Gandhi’s shrewd insight that conflict offers an opportunity to rearrange the ingredients that produced it in the first place has yet to be fully appreciated. Yet as more and more groups and societies across the world are able to know of the successful use of nonviolent tools to achieve political goals, it is possible that universal recognition of the worth and practicality of settling conflict without the insertion of violence may also grow. If anything, the inclination is toward greater use of the technique of collective nonviolent action in the twenty-first century. This website is about the power and limits of nonviolent civil resistance through the eyes of one of its practitioner scholars.

“Julian Bond Oral History Project: Mary King and Peter Bourne”: An interview with Mary King and Peter Bourne for the Julian Bond Oral History Project, sponsored by the School of Public Affairs at American University.

Renowned historian Ramachandra Guha acclaims Mary King’s

Gene Sharp

“Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr: The Power of Nonviolent Action” is now available for reading on the UNESCO site.

“Songs of the Civil Rights Movement”: Actor Clarke Peters narrates a special edition of Soul Music marking fifty years since the assassination of the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King on April 4th 1968.

“If in doubt, pray and sing” an activist recalls how music was used as part of Dr King’s non-violent resistance movement.

This edition of Soul Music tells the stories of the songs behind the Civil Rights Movement including the spirituals and freedom songs that were integral to the struggle. In the 19th century, music became a tool for protest and resistance among the enslaved peoples of the American South. The programme hears the stories behind some of the most popular anthems and Freedom Songs that were later used as part of the civil resistance movement that eventually led to voting rights and desegregation. From Swing Low Sweet Chariot and We Shall Overcome to Amazing Grace, Strange Fruit and A Change Is Gonna Come, witnesses to and participants in the Civil Rights Movement recall how songs were such a vital part of the story.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

“Scholar and Practitioner of Nonviolence: The Life and Work of Mary Elizabeth King,” by Dagmar Wernitznig, Online Journal of Studies on Women’s Memory (2017)

“A Change Is Gonna Come, by Sam Cooke”: Soul Music explores a song that has become synonymous with the American Civil Rights Movement, Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come released in December 1964 two weeks after he was shot dead in Los Angeles. Contributors include Sam Cooke’s brother LC, singer Bettye Lavette who sang it for Barack Obama at his inaugural ceremony and civil rights activists from the Freedom Summer of 64, Jennifer Lawson and Mary King.
Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Eamon Murphy reviews Mary’s book Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India and concludes: “This well-researched and argued volume is highly relevant to scholars of social change and reform in India as well as to a more general readership interested in the theory and practice of non-violent resistance to oppression in other societies.” — Contemporary South Asia, vol. 24, no. 2 (August 19, 2016), 213-14

“Civil Resistance: The Power of the People”: A 51-minute radio documentary that has been airing on the show America Abroad on National Public Radio stations around the United States since May. Mary is the third person to speak.

Mary Elizabeth King: Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India: The 1924-25 Vykom Satyagraha and the Mechanisms of Change.
by April Carter