What was Martin Luther King Jr’s opinion on violent vs non-violent protest?

Nonviolence was a core part of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s theology and practice from at least early 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott, until his murder in 1968. King outlined his commitment to nonviolence in many of his sermons, speeches, and in his writing. On April 3rd, 1968, the day before he was killed, King spoke at mass meeting in support of the Memphis sanitation workers strike and declared, “It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence! That is where we are today.”

King saw nonviolence as both an effective strategy and a moral necessity. In 1958, in Stride Towards Freedom, King wrote the following:

“The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent, but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.”

King was a Baptist minister and tied his belief in nonviolence to his Christian faith. In his 1963 book Strength to Love, King would write movingly about the need for believers to live out Jesus’s command to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43–44), stating, “Our responsibility as Christians is to discover the meaning of this command and to seek passionately to live it out in our daily lives.” For King, nonviolence was a way to adhere to an ethic of Love, which was at the core of Christianity.

King had not been committed to pacifism and nonviolence when he first rose to prominence at the start of the Montgomery bus boycott. According to some accounts, he actually initially had armed guards stationed outside his home. However, King met with Bayard Rustin and Glenn E. Smiley, members of the pacifist group The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), who advised him to take a nonviolent approach to the protest. FOR included peace activists from many different denominations but had a particularly strong Quaker influence. Starting with Montgomery, King would emphasize nonviolence.

King also was inspired by reading about the success of Gandhi against the British. Gandhi had used a method he termed satyagraha, a form of nonviolent protest, and attracted widespread international support for efforts to achieve Indian independence. Like King, Gandhi saw nonviolent protest as more than a tactic; it was key part of his ethical and religious worldview.

King was condemnatory of violent protests, though he understood that violent action had roots in the oppression of black communities. In his last book, Where Do We Go from Here? Chaos or Community, King calls riots the “the language of the unheard” and “the desperate suicidal cry of one who is so fed up with his cave existence that he asserts he would rather be dead than ignored.” He writes specifically about the Watts riots, saying:

“Occasionally Negros contend that the 1965 Watts riots and other riots in various cities represented effective civil rights action. But those who express this view always end up stumbling with words when asked what concrete gains have been won as a result…. Nowhere have riots won any concreate improvement such as have the organized protest demonstrations.”

It does not seem an exaggeration to say that nonviolence was central to King’s vision of the Beloved Community, a society with justice and equality.