St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1961-03-24
Howard Course
Teaches Technique
Of Non-vioIence
lFrom March IL, TINEl

Of Non-VioIence
(From March II, TIME)
Southern policemen these days
are up against an outbreak of
non-crime called ''nonviolence."
Last week it forced a key gain for
Negroes in Atlanta, where white
agreed to desegregate
lunch counters when school segre-
cation ends (see National Affairs.
In Durham, NC, professors at
Duke University and North Car
DINA (Negro) College Joined stu
dents in picketing segregated NOV
lie theaters. In Columbia, SC, 100
Negro students began to stand trial
for singing hymns outside the state
capitol. The year-long success of
such demonstrations has raised a
thirst for knowledge Of the first
principles Of the weapon. WASH
ington, D.C.'s Howard University,
the nations leading Negro campus,
is answering. this curiosity with
what is probably the first credit
course in Philosophy and Meth
DDS of Nonviolence."
The teacher at Towards School
Of Religion is small, earnest Vice
President William Stuart Nelson,
65, a longtime religion professor
and onetime friend Of Mahatma
Gandhi. His 20 students, one-third
Of them white, attend for good &C
ademic reasons but also to learn
wiser leadership in sit-ins.
The Uselessness of Hate. DR..
Nelson defines nonviolence as
neither coercion nor pacifism. It
is "a weapon Of the strong, not Of
the weak. The object is to convert
not by making someone else suf-
fer but by suffering yourself. The
very sight Of that suffering will
draw attention to the problem. It
is a way of life, a religion"
The concept, he tells his stu
dents, first appeared between 1000
and 1000 BIC. in Indian Hinduism's
sacred Sanslxrit Vedas, which en-
phasized the idea of one universe
where all creatures are interde-
pendent parts Of God. In the Up
anishads, nonviolence (ahimsa) be-
came one Of the five moral virtues.
Gautama Buddha 900 B. c.
preached the impracticality Of
selfishness and hatred, saying that
"hatreds are not quenched by hat
red. Hatreds are quenched by
love-" Side by side with Buddhism
in the 9Th century BIC. came the
similar, If sterner, ethics of jain
ism, which held that because all
beings hate palms." the "quintess-
ence of wisdom Is not to kill any
thing"
Hard-Boiled Self-Sacrince. Gand-
hi, who grew up in Jain-strong
western India, was particularly in
nuenced by Jainism. But In per-
fecting the strategy that peace
fully defeated Britain in India,
Gandhi drew heavily on the New
Testament, which awakened him
to "the rightness and value Of
passive resistance" Gandhi's con-
Nction was further bolstered by
Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is
Within You and Thoreau's famed
essay Civil Disobedience, both writ
ten by men who made celebrated
attempts to carry out nonviolence.
What emerged in Gandhi was a
hard-boiled idea that sacrificing
oneself is ultimately more effec-
tive than sacrificing others.
Having got this far, DR.. Nelson's
students are deep in such endeav-
ors as trying to understand South
ern cops and judges. He advises
them to TRY to consider the judges
whole life, his inability to rise
above his limitations" But though
he denies that his class Is a work
shop" Of nonviolence, Nelson does
intend soon to weave In some prac-
tice along with history and theory.
Sample future topics: department,
choosing the place for nonviolence,
the Importance Of going to Jail.
He believes that the practice will
ultimately "reshape the entire
structure of race relations in the
US"