Seeing Like an Activist: Civil Disobedience and the Civil Rights Movement

There are few movements more firmly associated with civil disobedience than the Civil Rights Movement.In the mainstream imagination, civil rights activists eschewed coercion, appealed to the majority's principles, and submitted willingly to legal punishment in order to demand necessary legislative reforms and facilitate the realization of core constitutional and democratic principles.Their fidelity to the spirit of the law, commitment to civility, and allegiance to American democracy set the normative standard for liberal philosophies of civil disobedience. This narrative offers the civil disobedience of the Civil Rights Movement as a moral exemplar: a blueprint for activists who seek transformative change and racial justice within the bounds of democracy.Yet in this book, Erin R. Pineda shows how it more often functions as a disciplining example-a means of scolding activists and quieting dissent.As Pineda argues, the familiar account of Civil Rights disobedience not only misremembers