Demonstrations

In 2017, I had a post about opinions of Martin Luther King.  In surveys taken in 1964 and 1965, he had more positive ratings than negative ones, but not by much; in 1965 and 1966, he had more negative ratings than positive ones.  In the last survey taken during his lifetime (August 1966), only 33% gave him a positive rating, and 39% gave him the most negative rating possible (minus five on a scale of -5 to +5).

None of the surveys asked people to give reasons for their judgment, but some other ones shed light on the issue.  In May 1961, a Gallup poll asked "Do you think 'sit-ins' at lunch counters, 'freedom buses,' and other demonstrations by Negroes will hurt or help the Negro's chances of being integrated in the South?"  57% said hurt, and only 28% said help.  In June 1963 (a couple of months before the March on Washington), one asked "DO YOU THINK MASS DEMONSTRATIONS BY NEGROES ARE MORE LIKELY TO HELP OR MORE LIKELY TO HURT THE NEGRO'S CAUSE FOR RACIAL EQUALITY?," with similar results:  27% help and 60% hurt.  The "mass demonstrations" question was asked again in 1964 and it was down to 16% help and 74% hurt.  So it seems like most people thought that even nonviolent demonstrations did more harm then good.    A 1965 Harris survey asked "In the recent showdown in Selma, Alabama over Negro voting rights, have you tended to side more with the civil rights groups or with the State of Alabama?"  48% said civil rights groups, 21% said State of Alabama, 19% neither, and the rest not sure.  So there seem to have been a significant number of people who favored the civil rights groups when forced to make a choice, but didn't want to be forced to make a choice. 

There were two survey questions in the second half of 1973 that addressed these issues:  "Do you feel the protest marches led by Martin Luther King in the 1960's speeded up civil rights legislation, slowed it down, or didn't make much difference one way or the other?"  67% said speeded up, only 3% slowed down, and 23% said not much difference.  A different survey asked about whether different kinds of people did more good than harm or more harm than good--one was "Blacks who demonstrate for civil rights."  40% said more harm than good, and 60% said more good than harm, neither harmful nor helpful, or weren't sure (unfortunately, the report doesn't distinguish among those groups).  In retrospect, a lot of people seem to have decided that demonstrations had been effective, and even to have accept them as justified in the present.

My previous post was inspired by an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates which pointed to the surveys about Martin Luther King but concluded  the protests "affected the attitudes of the children of those white Americans who scorned them. . . . The point is the future."  The data from the 1970s suggest that he was right, but the future came faster than he thought.  It didn't take a generation--attitudes changed substantially in less than a decade.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]