WOULD YOU K*LL YOUR SLAVE MASTER?

Kwame Ture (1941-98), the brilliant Pan-Africanist and co-founder of All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (@aaprp on X and @aaprpinternational on IG), knew how to respond to those who challenged liberation tactics with critical, hard-hitting questions. In this video from a 1979 speech at the University of Georgia, he responded to one person who denounced Ture's willingness to use violence to overthrow the capitalist system. 

Ture famously said:

‘Dr. [Martin Luther] King's policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for Black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That's very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.’

While many people believe that the Civil Rights movement in the United States was built upon the principle of strict nonviolence, books such as ‘This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible’ (2014) by Charles E. Cobb Jr. and ‘We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement’ (2013) by Akinyele Omowale Umoja challenge this narrative by representing another side of the struggle. According to Cobb's research, even King sometimes kept a gun on him for self-defence ‘just in case.’

Do you agree with Ture's point, or do you think we can defeat capitalism through peaceful means?