Narrator: Confined within the walls of a South African jail, the young lawyer from India found no reason to complain. Some say that jail is a palace. Others look upon it as a beautiful garden. Some others hold that through the jail gates, we shall pass from our present bondage to freedom The year was 1907. The young lawyer from India was Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi led his fellow Indians in a nonviolent struggle against racial oppression for eight years. They marched into forbidden territory. They burned their registration papers. They expected to be arrested -- and they were not disappointed. Gandhi said, "Nonviolent refusal to cooperate with injustice is the way to defeat it." He gave his nonviolent weapon a name "Satyagraha" holding to truth In every decade and on every continent underdogs have taken up Gandhi's strategies to fight for their rights and freedom Bernard Lafayette: Nonviolence means fighting back but you are fighting back with other weapons. The power that Gandhi discovered changed the 20th century. India crown jewel of the world's greatest colonial empire. Britain has ruled India for more than a century, but in 1930 the Viceroy Lord Irwin knows a crisis is coming. A confrontation in which British military might will count for little. Irwin's adversary is Mohandas Gandhi, a man whose name is already a synonym for non-violent action. Since returning from South Africa Gandhi has become his country's dominant political figure. He understands that control of India depends on Indian cooperation, not British coercion. He said how can just a hundred thousand British troops control at that time over three hundred and fifty million Indians just a hundred thousand British troops. Gandhi said we'll stop doing anything that the British want us to do the whole nation will come to a standstill civil disobedience on a mass scale. Many Indians welcome the struggle. Gandhi must find a way to use their energy to maximum effect Gandhi retires to his headquarters on the Sabarmati River, near India's west coast. In the Ashram, the spiritual community where he lives he turns inward in search of a nonviolent strategy for freedom. For weeks he is alone in his Spartan office. He gives no hint of his thinking. They even commented... Narayan Desai lived in Gandhi's ashram during those critical weeks. Some said oh he's a very clever man he doesn't want the British government to know what strategy he is going to take, and he would all the time say, No, I'm just waiting. I'm waiting for the call and I know I will hear the inner voice. In February he decides he will begin by challenging the British tax and monopoly on salt. He writes the Viceroy Lord Irwin on March the second. He explains the injustice of the salt laws and says he will go to the beach, to make salt illegally he will invite all Indians to do the same. He pleads with Irwin to negotiate. A few days later a note from Owens secretary expresses the Viceroy regret at Gandhi's plan of action. Gandhi sends advanced teams to choose a beach where civil disobedience will begin. In speeches and articles he attacks the salt laws emphasizing the injustice especially to the poor. He knows that salt will be a powerful symbol. Every human being needs salt. Without salt you and I can't exist so he wanted to touch a chord in every Indian heart that here is something you and I have and all of us need why should that be taxed. With a sharp instinct for political theater, Gandhi charts a route from his ashram to the sea. He and his volunteers will walk 240 miles being on the road for nearly a month he believes will build suspense and a bigger audience for his message. He expects to be arrested before he reaches the coast. At first light on March 12th, the great drama begins. At 60, Gandhi is the oldest of 78 marchers Thousands joined the procession, including police observers. But the government makes no attempt to interfere. They feared that it was so popular that they may be violent outbreaks, so they weighed the advantages and disadvantages of arresting him. And they also underrated this movement Salt cetera They felt it might fizzle out, and Gandhi who look ridiculous that if he goes are marching and he does not commit any breach of the laws, we can't arrest him. What are you arresting him for? Gandhi wants to be arrested but not too soon the longer he marches the more publicity he will receive. His messages are aimed equally at his immediate audience and the outside world represented by dozens of journalists who have joined the march. In his speeches, he insists we must not hate the British they have not taken India from us we have given it to them Gandhi ji, as I knew him as a schoolboy was someone you admired, someone who looked up to, someone who was a saint. He was a saint because a) he dressed like a saint, and b) the things he said seemed to be very saintly. On the other side, as I grew up, I began to see a very shrewd student of human history. He was a man who absolutely understood human psychology. He understood the British idea of fair play, he understood that, and he knew how to play on that sentiment Although the crown never hesitates to use force British administrators pride themselves on their enlightened rule and the cooperation they received from Indian officials. Gandhi intends to remove Indian consent to foreign rule The salt march will create a dilemma. If they arrest him, all India will rise up in protest. If he is permitted to openly defy the law British control will be lost. Perhaps irretrievably In every speech, Gandhi explains the power of nonviolent resistance. He asks local leaders to quit their government jobs. When everyone refuses to cooperate, he says the British will be able to do nothing. He was asking the village headman to resign their posts, and I think a hundred forty or so did resign. Why did he ask them to resign? It is a government, foreign government, running this country for their own benefit and why should you serve it? Defying rumors that his health is failing Gandhi sticks to his schedule. At every rest stop he asks: How many local officials have quit their government jobs? How many villages are wearing Khadi? the handmade cotton cloth that is the informal uniform of his movement. Gandhi tells Indians not to buy imported cloth he spins cotton for two hours every day to dramatize the millions of jobs lost to imported British cloth. Gandhi says if every Indian will spin at the same time the song of the spinning wheel will become the song of freedom. He gets by on four hours sleep. He must persuade thousands of volunteers to be arrested and go to jail or his long march will end in failure. Here was a man who understood how to get the maximum exposure for his message, and in a sense, you can say he was in one of India's greatest, I hate to use the word, but within quotes, "advertising man" and as he marched long before Martin Luther King's march on Washington Gandhi ji was the originator of this and as he marched and as he marched people began to spread the word he's on the march he's going to defy the law, Let's join him, this a chance to show the British without having to hate them to show them that we stand for something we are not just slaves. And by God by God even I who was only a schoolboy at that time I tell you my hair stood on end when I realized he was slowly approaching the goal and we all knew once he picked up that handful of salt he would be arrested. On the 24th day, the marchers approached the sea. An American newspaper editorializes. As Britain lost America through tea, it is about to lose India through salt. On the eve of the law-breaking, Gandhi meets on the beach with 12 thousand supporters. Hold the salt in your fist, he suggests, and think it is worth 60 million rupees that's how much the government has been taking from us through the monopoly on salt. At Dawn on April 6th, Gandhi bends down and picks up a lump of mud and salt News that Gandhi has broken the salt law, electrifies the country Thousands marched to the shore to follow his example. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's future Prime Minister describes the mood. It seemed as though spring had been suddenly released. All over the country. salt manufacture was the topic of the day. It was immaterial whether her stuff was good or bad the main thing was to commit a breach of the obnoxious salt law, and we were successful in that. This tremendous success of Salt Saytagraha was not foreseen by the British. There were many skeptics who thought Salt Satyagraha worked. You can't unseat the King-Emperor by boiling seawater in a kettle. So that was the assumption but in a nonviolent struggle, it is the insight of the leader which matters you know. What will mobilize the people? What will make them feel that they have a cause to fight for, and what will make them fight it nonviolently? As his movement engulfs the country, Gandhi is surprised he's not been arrested. Visiting seaside villages he encourages civil disobedience which he says is only the beginning. Today we are defying the salt law tomorrow we shall have to consign other laws to the wastepaper basket. We shall practice such non-cooperation that finally it will not be possible for the administration to carry on. When you are nonviolent, how do we tackle you? How do we meet your challenge? At most we can imprison you and if we imprison you again you become more popular We can't use arms against you we can't use violence against you so here is a person who has evolved a technique which overpowers the British. From the government in New Delhi Lord Irwin cables London. The personal influence of Gandhi threatens to embarrass the administration and in some areas, he has already undermined government authority Gandhi's headquarters are on the beach. A month after he picked up the first lump of salt he announces an escalation. He and his volunteers will seize the government salt works in the nearby town of Dharasana Near midnight on May 4th he writes to Lord Irwin offering three ways to stop the raid on the salt works and the salt tax arrest the raiding party or break their heads He finishes the letter and retires for the night By the next morning, Gandhi is behind bars he is delighted The arrest sets off a firestorm In city after City normal life comes to a standstill. Lord Irwin announces a strategy of steady pressure Police are to use minimum force Irwin issues emergency ordinances. Political meetings are prohibited the press is censored The Indian National Congress Working Committee is banned Irwin's plan to avoid repression fails as the new ordinances provide new opportunities for law-breaking. Thousands are arrested exactly what Gandhi wants. A batch of policemen came to arrest my father and some of us young children were following the police van and instead of saying bye-bye papa or something like that I was telling him Papa this time no less than two years which means I want you to be in prison for no less than two years you see it was it was a pride to have your father sentenced for two years and not for three months or so so Gandhi's idea is what had touched even the children in that atmosphere. Gandhi's raid on the Dharasana salt works goes forward without him. A well-known poet Sarojini Naidu leaves the siege. She instructs her army You must not use violence under any circumstances. You will be beaten but you must not resist you must not even raise a hand to ward off the blows After 10 days of skirmishing 2,500 demonstrators confront the guards at dawn. Police attacked the Satyagrahis with steel-tipped clubs called lathis A United Press reporter Webb Miller witnessed the scene They went down like tenpins I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls those struck down fell sprawling unconscious or writhing with pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders Miller's report is published in nearly two-thousand newspapers and read aloud in the US Senate One Satyagarahi explained Our object was to show the world at large the fangs and claws of the government in all its ugliness and ferocity in this, we have succeeded beyond measure In mid-summer the struggle is undiminished Even with Gandhi and most nationalist leaders in prison government has effectively lost control of major cities Press reports of police brutality damaged the British cause almost as much as the resistance campaign Irwin cables the governor of Bombay I am sure these Lahti charges are exactly what our enemies want we should be wracking our brains for a way to deny them this advantage In July government reports nearly 17,000 civil resistors have been arrested Gandhi's goal of filling the jails is more than self-sacrifice It is mass disobedience and is steadily eroding British Authority. If an authority enjoys power he enjoys the power to the extent to which obedience is rendered but moment the obedience goes off moment the laws are disobeyed moment the command of the powerful are not obeyed their power vanishes Those who can't endure the hardships of jail can still help in the fight boycotting or picketing shops which sell British goods when sales suffer Lord Irwin issues prevention of intimidation ordinance against picketing the result more arrests as bystanders cheer British trade with India drops 25% and in December, three out of four foreign cloth shops are closed By January, the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald sees that negotiations are the only way to end the standoff. He orders Gandhi and the other leaders released. The national movement remains strong as Gandhi's release is celebrated but the commander knows his foot soldiers need a rest. On February the 14th, he informs Lord Owen that he is ready to negotiate he insists that salt-making and boycotts will continue during the talks. At the Viceroy palace in New Delhi Gandhi is the first Indian ever to meet with the British ruler as an equal. Negotiations last three weeks Irwin refuses to give ground on the salt laws and cloth imports concessions which would alienate his Indian collaborators Gandhi secured the release of political prisoners and the lifting of repressive ordinances. He calls off civil disobedience. Constitutional issues are pushed back for later talks in London There were many people who were not satisfied. They thought that perhaps Gandhi compromised and perhaps went out of his way but Gandhi's argument always was that this movement is not in vain because it is through such movements that is training people that you can't have everything at one stroke You compromise, you gather your strength, you train yourself and they take the next step. A year after the salt march India remains under British rule but Gandhi has ended the pretense of British legitimacy in India by exposing injustice and ending Indians consent to foreign rule he has awakened the people to their own power and said India on the road to independence Britain grants Indian independence sixteen years later in 1947 within a year Gandhi is dead of an assassin's bullet. Far beyond his accomplishments in India his vision and his practice of non-violent conflict have set an example for future generations. He had once said My technique of nonviolent struggle is in the same stage as electricity in Edison's time to be refined and developed 60 years after Gandhi struggle in South Africa his ideas found new followers in the American South Students at Fisk University a leading black institution can ignore segregation on campus but when they venture downtown many are shocked by the southern system I grew up on the south side of Chicago and although I experienced segregation there it was not the overt kind where there were signs on water fountains and on restrooms It was humiliating Well Nashville was totally segregated city he was as segregated as Johannesburg the height of apartheid it was a city of two races there was virtually no contact between white community and the black community In school in neighborhoods in jobs in church Nashville was a totally and completely segregated City and for the most part totally satisfied and happy with that. Students at American Baptist College in eastern Nashville know that segregation is being challenged that some are working against the violent repression even lynchings that enforce it they want to join the struggle We've been told one thing in a school about the Declaration of Independence about the Bill of Rights about the Constitution and then in the real world we would live in something else James Lawson a Methodist minister from Ohio soon gives Nashville's students a chance to take part. The soft-spoken Lawson is 30 and has spent three years teaching in India where he studied the work of Mohandas Gandhi. In a small church near the fisk campus, Lawson has started a series of evening workshops on nonviolent action. Tonight we have a most important business to try to accomplish Jim Lawson's manner is cool his objective is breathtaking to eliminate segregation his classes attract Nashville's brightest students A good friend of mine in Alabama last April was taken out by the KKK and beaten on a tree tied to a tree beaten by chains and what not I thought non-violence would not work but I stayed with the workshops for one reason and that is because they were the only game in town that was the only group even trying to do anything to commit segregation that I knew about. They started praying Father forgive these Jim Lawson has been encouraged to come South by Martin Luther King Jr. who says the civil rights movement needs leaders who understand non-violence strategy and tactics. and you can't pray that prayer they said and then others said yes but the man who's gonna die has a right to pray anyway he wanted to pray and this immediately started a division among them we took the whole group through a holistic view of non-violence its history its roots and the Bible roots and Christian thought the methods of non-violence we told the stories of non-violence and I stressed the Gandhian idea of our being engaged in an experiment it may have much more meaning to the attacker if as he strikes you on the cheek you're looking him in the eye Unfortunately the concept of non-violence for many people is that you get hit on one cheek you turn the other cheek you don't do anything but non-violence means fighting back but you're fighting back with another purpose and with other weapons. Number one your fight is to win that person over and that is a fight that's a struggle that's much more challenging than fists to cuffs We said we were gonna desegregate downtown Nashville our first step is gonna be desegregate lunch counters and restaurants. That of course was a first Gandhian step that was the first step of non-violence to research and examine and focus on an issue choose the target choose an issue months before going to the lunch rooms Lawson begins preparing them. He wants them to have experienced both physical and verbal attacks and to learn how to resist the impulse to run or fight back Now let's see what we've learned from this to us as to how we might act non-violently what are the basic problems here You cannot go on a demonstration with 25 people doing whatever they want to do they have to have a common discipline and that's that's a key word for me that the difficulty with nonviolent people and efforts is that they don't recognize the necessity of fierce discipline and training and strategizing and planning and recruiting and doing the kinds of things that you to have a movement. That can't happen spontaneously it has to be done systematically They staged their first sit-in on a Saturday when they are sure to be noticed. We spent many many hours anticipating some of the opposition and we knew that that's one of the things that they would say we don't want to sit next to dirty people while we have lunch and so one of the ways we combated that was by having a dress code. We have been told it was a possibility of being arrested, but we went to the lunch counter we took our seats we sat and we sat in a very orderly peaceful fashion They are not surprised when there are a fused service. Store managers quickly closed the dining areas but the students remain until closing time reading and doing homework There is no violence and no one is arrested. The sit-ins make page ten of the Sunday paper. City editor John Seigenthaler remembers the reaction. The reaction initially was sort of shocked and maybe even some humor I'm who they think they hark for they think they're doing We knew it was a news story but didn't really know how to cover it. Local businesses take a predictable position. They'll close down before they'll serve black customers. A week later the students are back. They provoke curiosity and a verbal abuse but no arrests White's still think the sit-ins are a passing fad hardly a threat to the status quo On the third Saturday they are ready to target a total of six stores We were told in advance that day that they are gonna allow the hoodlums beat us up and then the police won't gonna arrest us so we need to be prepared to get beaten and arrested. So that was a condition under which we went down. By now, they're well-prepared for contingencies. Each group includes a leader and observers who will phone reports back to the church. Observers are carrying telephone numbers for ambulance services and a pocketful of telephone change. As they enter the stores the second and third waves of demonstrators stay out of sight. Ready to move in when the first group is arrested. As predicted the police hang back for the first 15 minutes When I asked each and every one of them separately to leave they didn't leave so I instructed the men to put in place him under arrest we place him under arrest when we cleared the stools some more color fellas and girls white boys girls got on the seat And really surprised the police they thought they had lowered the boom and when they turned around and looked in saw a lunch counter once again full of Negro students you could just see that they came to looked at each other out of course in their eyes as though do you see this what will we do now and there was still another group ready to take their places. We had a philosophy which was a power of non-violence and that kind of power we felt was more forceful than all of their police force all of their lawmakers and all of their dogs or billy clubs of jails and that our capacity and willingness to suffer outweigh any power they had. Mass arrests are a victory for the students Reporters realized they are covering a story of national significance It means like being a war correspondent in your own hometown. The only thing you knew was that the war was on that the weapon of non-violence was winning over violence and that this was a historic moment however it came out I think there was a sense of history there that we all understood. At police headquarters, on Monday morning the students are still behind bars. On principle, they have refused bail. In just 48 hours their small student movement has inspired thousands. Now the city's black community has joined in the struggle organizing, raising money, recruiting lawyers. Alexander Looby is among Nashville's most prominent black lawyers and he has organized local lawyers to defend the arrested students. People can believe that these young well dress innocent college students have been arrested and put in jail. They didn't like it and the city African-American population was mobilized in such a fashion and the movement spread to the city of Nashville like wildfire. As the crowds wait to see what the city will do the mayor speaks to reporters. By emphasizing law and order the mayor takes sides with the store owners. In fact, the arrested students have broken no law, and none of the white attackers has been arrested. The city and police were ill-prepared for a mass civil disobedience effort. They had anticipated that once the violence took place and arrest began, our movement would dissipate would be chased away because that's the purpose after all doing the violence and the purpose of doing the arrestee it's hopeful that then whatever this is will vanish and that's the end of it. That didn't happen. A week later, nothing has changed. As the students return to the lunch counters the city has only one answer, more arrests. Now in the national spotlight the movement is Dell used with new recruits. Jim Lawson's workshops expands to meet the demand Nashville's churches provide meeting space telephones mimeograph machines. Now, they must get the message out far beyond Nashville. We were not simply addressing our immediate opponents. What we were doing was addressing the larger audience the nation the world. Because the strategy and non-violence is that you educate a large number of constituents and win them on your side. In fact, even though we as African-Americans were minority no change could take place unless you have the sympathy of the majority if not the active participation The students know that sympathy by itself may not be enough. Taking advantage of the outrage their arrests have provoked they escalate the conflict. Sit-ins continued but a new tactic is added. A boycott of the downtown shopping district. Picketers asked customers not to patronize stores whose lunch counters are segregated The students have created a momentum. Now embraced by the larger community. As black clergy urged their congregation to stay away from the downtown shopping district all together. It allowed for the whole community to be participants in the movement. Because that's one of the things that we in the non-violent world always teach namely that in a non-violent movement everyone can be a participant children can participate, women can participate, men could participate young people old people everyone can do the work. As the boycott takes hold the sit-ins and arrests continue. The conflict becomes a seemingly permanent fact of life in the downtown shopping district. Picketing and boycotting provoked a racist backlash but the counter-demonstrations backfire frightened white people begin avoiding the downtown area unwittingly joining the boycott. A Fisk University economist calculates that some downtown stores have lost up to 40 percent of their business. As Easter approaches the usual surge of Spring buying never happens. Among blacks, the boycott is estimated at 98%. That was a powerful message set to the white community that you know it's one thing to deal with these students on Saturday to Saturday basis and lock them up and let them get bailed out and we will try almond sent us from $50 pounds and that's well there's another thing when you go down there and there's nobody on the street. At Easter, the counters are still segregated but the sit-ins have put civil rights on the national agenda as never before. The past several months a new strategy to end racial segregation has been spreading through the south. On Easter Sunday, NBC's Meet the press looks at nonviolent resistance. The moderator suggests that boycotts might be better than sit-ins and the rest. Dr. King, wouldn't you be on stronger ground though if you refuse to buy at those stores and if you called upon the white people of the country to follow you because of both your morale and your legal right not to buy? I think Mr. Smith that sometimes, it is necessary to dramatize an issue because many people are not aware of what is happening and I think the sit-in served to dramatize the indignities and the injustices and the dissatisfaction of the Negro with the whole system of segregation We had a meeting planned for 6:00 a.m. I was in the dormitory getting dressed and I heard this big boom I soon learned that attorney Z. Alexander Looby's home had been bombed It, of course, was the effort of the enemy to scare us off. Violence has a very simple dynamic. I make you suffer more than I suffer I make you suffer until you cry uncle and you surrender that's that's what a war is. It's violence. The difference in, with non-violence, is we don't want to beat the opponent up. We don't think that does any good. Looby and his wife are uninjured but as Lawson has taught his students, violence can backfire. The bombing has shocked the city and given the students a strategic opportunity. They send a telegram to the mayor demanding a meeting and they organize a silent march from the campus to City Hall They begin with 1,500 marchers along the way their number doubles Mayor Ben West is waiting for them. West gets into an argument with a black Minister. But then Diane Nash steps forward with some very direct questions I asked the mayor first of all mayor west do you feel that it's wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of his race their color I tried to be as best I could answer it frankly and honestly that I could not agree that it was morally right for someone to sell the merchandize and refuse him service and I had to answer it just exactly that way. Nash goes on to ask the mayor whether he feels that lunch counters should be desegregated he answers yes It was the first major change in the attitudes of the city. Nashville began to desegregate its public institutions and it's department stores that day it took three four years before theaters restaurants all public and lance's were desegregated but would Ben West's declaration no it's not right the process of change began. The downtown retailers now tell the students privately they want to desegregate. The students devise a plan we suggested to them which was a great relief to them that there would be no announcement that the demonstrations that ended there would be no announcements that black people were being served. No announcements no press no police. A movement that began in the basement of a small church in September has desegregated the downtown lunchrooms by Spring. They go on to desegregate other restaurants in public facilities. Showing how to remove business support for segregation by making it costly and controversial. It's a weapon that will prove decisive as the civil rights movement gains momentum We realized that we had the resources Both the spiritual resources as well as the psychological skills to make a difference in other places as well we. We understood how to organize the community. We all understood how to conduct a demonstration. We understood how to negotiate. He was saying how to deal with the media. We were warriors in that sense we have been prepared this was like a non-violent Academy equivalent to West Point For the rest of the decade, they carry what they've learned farther south and across the country. Reflecting on what they had achieved, one of Nashville's students wrote You cannot wait for someone else to do it. You cannot wait for the government to do it You must make it happen, through your own efforts an action and vision Every weekend, they bury their dead. In the last year, news of black youth shot by police has become as common as the weather report It's been called and uprising. Millions of black South Africans have intensified their struggle for equality. An end to the legalized discrimination called Apartheid Security forces have become newly aggressive in the black townships. A provocative target for angry young people Even innocent bystanders are being caught in the deadly cycle of rising violence. All the casualties are on one side Appalled by the bloodshed, a new generation of Township leaders is organizing looking for more effective ways to fight back. In Port Elizabeth, the 27 year years old Mukhuseli Jack has been a youth organizer since his teens. There was a frustration in the township as to what was happening there was a serious confrontation with young people fighting with the police with their bare hands. You know and police shooting at them without missing and then he said let us expose these policemen for what they are, let us take this fight in the townships away, and bring it right to their homes. Two miles away, most whites in Port Elizabeth are unaware of the strife White-owned newspapers in state-controlled television do not report Township disturbances. But a handful of whites have joined the anti-apartheid movement. One of them is Janet cherry a young social worker who has been an underground member of the outlawed African National Congress since college days. The idea was that we've gotta take the struggle into the white areas not because of any racist motive but because of their understanding that the state wasn't in fact vulnerable unless you made an impact outside of the townships. The black civic movement has been growing. In 1983, the United Democratic Front was created as a national umbrella for over 600 local civics Street committees church groups sports teams women's clubs. This organization broadened and broadened and broadened broadly it became extremely difficult for the security forces to crush these people because now you have big centers of resistance within the community and then slowly you studied everybody to include him in the struggle for justice and slowly everyone saw his role. In May 1985, several middle-aged women approached leaders of the Port Elizabeth Black Civic organization to suggest a boycott of white business. A consumer boycott has the potential to achieve Mkhuseli Jack's objective, to put pressure on the white community for the first time. Boycott organizers have only a few weeks to prepare. Half a million people must be persuaded to shop inside the township. The preparation was to tower to bring the business black business people. In the townships and tell them that we want them to stock the basic necessities that will be needed for this long drawn struggle that we are going to face Weekly funerals, the only public gatherings not prohibited by the government are their only opportunity to rally support for the boycott. Two days before the boycott will begin, Mkhuseli Jack is the main speaker It looks the same as any other morning, but by 10 a.m. the difference is obvious. The north end normally jammed with black shoppers is deserted. Observers sent to monitor the boycott report 100% compliance. The boycott is the latest tactic in a 10-month uprising, but in only five days it has proven the most effective weapon yet, and it is spreading elsewhere. A genuine threat to the apartheid regime. This state of affairs can no longer be tolerated. The government has in terms of the Public Security Act act three of 1953 Decided to proclaim a state of emergency in the following magisterial districts: Port Elizabeth Albany Uitenhage The South African army occupies the townships. Travel is restricted night and day curfews are imposed. Hundreds are arrested Young males are singled out for brutality but repression does not diminish the boycott. Security forces have little success rounding up the leaders. Most are anonymous outside their own neighborhoods dispersed among dozens of Street committees and civics If they declare a state of emergency they were panicking because they were we were becoming effective they were feeling us coming they were feeling us come so to us the state of emergency showed that extraordinary measures were to be implemented in order to keep apartheid alive and we knew that that we got aparted in a crisis and we were there were there to give it the push to push the push. But in the first three weeks shops began to closed. Can you believe it it was freedom celebration when we had that one shoppers crossing we just celebrated thank you and then the other one please come, thank you. Luke's a li Jack goes into hiding to avoid arrest moving from house to house he consults with the boycott committee on how to exploit their success. They add new conditions to the demands which must be met before they will lift the boycott We had a concrete demand and this demands doubt in those days with simple things when you look at them today like opening of public amenities of facilities to all races taking out of the troops from the township making this available whatever was not available and end discrimination in a workplace etc and we also had what we call long-term at the time you know like talking about Mandela's freedom oh my goodness this is something my child because the other people will discourage us about this I'll leave that that's impossible. We waited until the pain went into the bones otherwise what was the strike for we waited we took our time because we were losing nothing and they were losing hundreds of rents and then the chamber of commerce ultimately said we have to talk to them. Many of the demands we have most of the demands in fact we have every sympathy with after meeting with jack and the boycott leaders the Chamber of Commerce director talks with reporters. There are demands which which we can address directly and those we obviously will there are others which have to be addressed by the government and we feel there that it's our duty of responsibility. Jack has been a well-known youth leader for several years. Now his role as boycott spokesman has made him a serious threat to the regime. He was an extreme trouble maker an activist in the true sense of the word yes. Colonel Lawrence du plessis was chief of military intelligence for the Eastern Cape Province they're not really committing a crime like that you said earlier if they don't want to by it's not a crime if they don't want to buy through people but it's it's mass action and and what do you do you can't shoot all these people you can't lock them all up it's very effective well Gandhi started that if I'm not compel resistance when security forces realized the boycott is not disintegrating they decide to take action on the night of August the second mukha sadly jack and the boycott leaders are arrested and taken to st. Albans prison once the government decided to throw everyone in jail and you recall but how about 30,000 people who were thrown into jails in terms of the state of emergency of 1985 once you remove the leaders you create even greater conditions of desperation and you can have a situation of mayhem and this is what you know the state that pushed South Africa into spontaneous outbursts by angry young people now jeopardize the movement among the few courageous enough to warn of the danger is a South African church mode Bishop Desmond Tutu the hospital by keeping MOOCs ad Jack and his comrades behind bars the regime is preventing negotiations that could end the crippling boycott by September Port Elizabeth retailers are desperate jack suddenly has powerful white allies I mean a respected businessman going now looking for these people that have been described as a as hooligans and there's thugs now the businessman says these leaders got legitimate grievances if they have committed a crime take them in front of a court of law and try them and find them guilty or innocent don't just lock them up the boycott enters its fourth month thousands of blacks are still coming to their jobs in white owned shops but they buy nothing white businessmen have been negotiating a deal the boycott will be suspended if the businessman can arrange for the black leaders to be released we were not intending to antagonize these white people but our idea was just to drive our point home and you see when we stopped it of course also it served two purposes the pressure on our constituency to go and shop for Christmas was going to lead to some cracks within our own ranks so we hit two birds with one stone save those people and also kept our unity intact for the next fight the Christmas shopping season is back to normal as businessman begins serious negotiations with the boycott committee mcsalley Jack and his colleagues have set a deadline if their demands are not met by March 31st the boycott will be reimpose their short-term successes have given Port Elizabeth's blacks a sense of confidence their leaders have been released from prison and troops have been withdrawn but as the deadline approaches with no progress on their major political demands they prepare a new boycott unexpectedly on March 11th the government bans two civic leaders one of them is moocs le Jack the banning order is a form of house arrest which halts negotiations at that point there was a build up of international pressure build-up exposing that this was no more about it small apartheid it was complete fascism because almost every paper was penned every individual has penned and if you remember that time you will major corporations were running away you know it was embarrassing economic sanctions against South Africa are being debated in the US and Europe most governments are resisting saying that state imposed sanctions would hurt ordinary people more than the government but now as black South Africans call on Western governments to impose punitive sanctions an exodus begins led by AT&T IBM GE Ford General Motors and coca-cola March 22nd the Supreme Court justice lifts the ban on MOOCs a lead Jack saying the government has given insufficient reasons the victory energizes the movement just nine days before the new boycott is scheduled Jack tears up his banning orders using the celebration to cement the Solidarity they will need in the weeks ahead. The boycott is on. It will continue for nine weeks, and then a shock Security forces scar the black townships arresting thousands The government has secretly imposed a state of emergency for hours police raid the offices of black civics trade unions the UDF the South African Council of Churches arresting and confiscating documents Peaceful protesters at the Parliament buildings are dispersed and arrested 16 hours after the crackdown started President Berta speaks in Parliament He cites intelligence reports on the imminent threat of armed revolution by the ANC and Communist Party These revolutionaries are controlled by a power clique, which is typical of Marxist regimes and which is interested only in a violent takeover of power. It is not possible for the reasonable majority to continue the search for a peaceful and democratic civil community It is the second state of emergency in less than a year The emergency will be renewed every year for three years an admission that repression has become the primary function of the state Anti-apartheid forces are driven underground but not destroyed they have not brought the government down but nonviolent mass action has shattered its legitimacy The system of apartheid is no longer viable Power has shifted to black communities and their social organisations The end of apartheid is only a matter of time. You know there wasn't a principals stand against the use of violence and in fact it was widely acknowledged that the ANC was he was conducting an armed struggle but it was in fact the activities of the UDF in mass organization which brought about the change in South Africa really that it was that form that mass organization which put pressure on the state to ultimately to change I mean that brought about the stalemate the impasse where the state could no longer respond. The eyes of the world are presently focused on all South Africans. FW de Klerk becomes president in late 1989 after PW Botha is forced to resign. De Klerk acts quickly unbanning political organizations and ordering the release of Nelson Mandela who has been imprisoned for 27 years By refusing to renounce armed struggle Mandela has prolonged his imprisonment by years. During that time, the passivity that had once allowed apartheid to exist has been swept away by the spirit of a confident civil society. Where the armed struggle came to nothing as far as I'm concerned The people brought at birth and pressure from overseas that is what really in the end made it clear and people understood that we couldn't go and on any that's why de Klerk care to take the actions that he took. In 1993, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk share the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a constitution that guarantees equal rights for all South Africans. They will soon face each other in South Africa's first democratic elections They have never in their lives voted nor have their parents or their grandparents before them. The struggle against apartheid gains the racism in South Africa fundamentally had been nonviolent. We were inspired by what had happened in India, in Poland, in the civil rights movement in the United States States what was happening in the Philippines I suppose that human beings looking at it would say that arms are the most dangerous things that a dictator a tyrant needs to fear but in fact no it is when people decide they want to be free once they have made up that their minds to that there's nothing that will stop them major funding for this series was provided by Susan and Kerry Lerner additional funding was provided by the Albert Einstein Institution advancing the study of strategic nonviolent action in conflicts throughout the world Elizabeth and John H van Merkin Stein the third Andy and Allan levy and the Arthur vining Davis foundations you