Abstract

At mid-century, amid the abrasive, violent rhetoric of socio-political upheaval in America, the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. sounded a clarion call for peace and unity. King's peaceable philosophy and nonviolent method for social change attracted a large following and appeared to contribute substantially to significant political reform. ;In view of important political victories attributed to nonviolent movements not only in democratic America, but also, more recently, in several authoritarian regimes of Eastern Europe, this study is concerned to investigate the dynamics of nonviolent rhetoric and social change. ;Two specific questions guided the research for this dissertation. First, what was the precise form and content of Martin King's philosophy of social change? And, second, what rhetorical functions were served by King's and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's nonviolent theory and practice? ;This study adopted the historical-critical approach for reconstructing and synthesizing King's nonviolent ideology. Then, a functionalist movement study methodology was applied for assessing the rhetorical advantages of nonviolence in King's and SCLC's direct action campaigns. ;The study concludes that King's nonviolent theory was significantly influenced by personalistic philosophy, the sermon on the mount, Gandhi, Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold Niebuhr, and American democratic assumptions. It concludes, furthermore, that nonviolence served important rhetorical functions for the Civil Rights Movement: it supplied a philosophical context for interpreting the problem of social violence in America; it provided an attractive solution to America's race problem , including a nonviolent method for attaining that community; it provided a compelling rhetoric for mobilizing blacks and whites for social protest; it applied nonviolent direct action in the hope of prodding America's conscience, and it provided a flexible rhetoric for responding to establishment tactics. The study concludes, also, that King's lofty nonviolent ideals were not always incarnated in the heat of racial confrontation or in his personal life style