HERBERT W. SIMONSTemple University

Patterns of Persuasion

in the Civil Rights Struggle

"p ECENTLY, Newsweek magazine published the re-sults of a second comprehensive national poll by

Louis Harris on racial attitudes among Americans. Forthose of us who were disheartened by the apparentwhite bigotry and Negro hopelessness reflected in the1963 poll, the 1966 survey was not too encouraging.Among Negroes, 15 per cent say they would join a riot.For every one who believes that the Negro cause hasbeen weakened by Watts-like rioting, two believe thatit has been helped. Among whites, 64 per cent insistthat Negroes "are asking for more than they are readyfor," 43 per cent assert that the Negro wants to "liveoff the handout" and 70 per cent think that the Negrois "trying to move too fast." These figures for whites,all up from 1963, also suggest an increasing polariza-tion of attitudes between the two races. A furtherindication of the racial schism is the finding that73 per cent of the Negroes judge demonstrations to behelpful while almost as many whites (63 per cent) seethem as being harmful.

Perhaps as a reflection of these statistics, the Negroleadership stands in what liayard Rustin has calleda "valley of confusion." Divided over whether to shoot,pray or litigate and over whether to remain alignedwith white liberals or disaffiliate under the banner of"Black Power," the leadership at least shares the un-happy experience of having been cursed and spat uponby members of both races. They have wisely turnedwithin to reformulate goals and techniques.

Cursory examination suggests that the Negro lead-ership confronts an essentially rhetorical problem.What combinjition of leadership style and messageappeal is likely to evoke constructive self-effort by

This article Is based on a paper presented at thePennsylvania Speech Association convention, October21, 1966.

VOLUME 15, NUMBER I, FEBRUARY, 1967

slum-dwelling Negroes? What brand of oratorical wiz-ardry can make a weak housing discrimination billpalatable to white senators or reverse the view heldby three out of five low-income whites polled byHarris that Negroes "smell different?"

Rhetoricians will not find magical answers to thesequestions in their bag of tricks. But from their store-house of research and theory, they may at least shedlight on the problem. Whatever his personal biaseson the issue of civil rights strategy, the rhetorician isobliged to examine the race relations drama profes-sionally, if for no other reason that it may provide animportant test of his speech principles. It is in thecontext of communication theory that an examinationof Negro leadership strategies will be undertaken inthis paper.

Any communication model must necessarily be ab-stract and thereby oversimplify. With this qualifica-tion stated let us begin our map of contemporarycivil rights rhetoric by plotting the principal actorsand their corresponding styles of persuasion.

The leaders of the movement have ranged, in Gil-bert Cantor's words, from those who "come on sweetand strong like a saint" to those who "come on fierceand ferocious like a Mau Mau." Near the one extremeare the business-suited legalists like Whitney Youngand Thurgood Marshall. Near the other extreme arethe fast-talking local hipsters of tbe North like CecilMoore of Philadelphia and tlie slow-iirawling Snick-sters of the South carefully uniformed in faded over-alls. Walking a tight-rope between are the disciplesof non-violence such as Rustin, Randolph, and Kingwho themselves disagree over the demonstration tac-tics and tone.

Alongside this scale of leadership militancy let usclassify the methods of Negro influence into two broadcategories: (1) peaceful persuasion and (2) coercivepersuasion. The former mode of influence is best ex-

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emplified by the rhetoric of the courtroom and theconference-table; the embodiment of reason in verbalinteraction. But it is also the more strident and im-passioned rhetoric of at least the early sit-ins and pro-test marches; the dramatic appeals to conscience byconservatively attired college students and ministers.If peaceful persuasion is addressed to the mind andthe heart, coercive persuasion is the rhetoric of directpressure, including the threat or employment of force.It ranges from the more militant exercises in non-violence as in the marches last summer in Chicago tothe massive retaliations against white injustice mani-fested by economic boycotts, rent strikes, riots andBlack Panther Parties.

Peaceful persuasion is the method rhetoricians un-derstand and characteristically prescribe. Textbookstell us that persuasion must take place on the listener'sterms, that the speaker must adapt to his auditor'sneeds, wants and values. It is axiomatic, we are told,that effective communication requires a shared frameof reference and a common set of symbols in an atmos-phere free from fear and threat. By all of our schol-arly yardsticks, the effectiveness of the civil rightsadvocate ought to be a direct function of his psycho-logical proximity to white audiences.

In keeping with this postulate, non-militants suchas Roy Wilkins, writing in New York Times Magazine,argued that the "prime, continuing racial policy look-ing toward eradication of inequities must be one ofwinning friends and influencing people among thewhite majority." Championing the peaceful protest,Wilkins asserted that "this type of demonstration actsas a powerful persuasive upon the national conscience,especially so in race relations where the merest school-boy knows the Negro has been grievously mistreated."

A M A T T E R OF V U L N E R A B I L I T Y

However successful the method of peaceful persua-sion ought to be, however much it may seem theoret-ically that the method is the only effective alternative,the very endurance of other rhetorics is evidence thatthis is not so. The reasons for this anomaly may besuggested by an expansion of our model to includethe audiences addressed by the civil rights leaders.

In the context of a polarized Negro minority seek-ing change from an equally polarized majority, whiteaudiences can be profitably categorized into (!) "pow-er-vulnerables" and (2) "power-invulnerables." Per-sons vulnerable to coercive persuasion are those inpublic or quasi-public positions whose effectiveness de-pends upon acceptable public postures and whose pro-

fessional survival may be at stake. They include electedand appointed government officials who may be re-moved from office or given an unfavorable press,church leaders who are obliged to express socially sanc-tioned public attitudes, and corporation executiveswhose businesses are susceptible to loss oi income.

"Power-invulnerables" are those who have little ornothing to lose by publicly voicing their prejudicesand acting on their self-concerns. They are the massof white Americans who are largely unaffected by rentstrikes and boycotts and who have so far defendedtheir neighborhood sanctuaries or have physically andpsychologically withdrawn to the suburbs. The aver-age American may fear riots but he can escape fromthem. He may or may not approve of boycotts anddemonstrations but in either case he is largely unaf-fected by them. He is subject to legislation but inmost cases until now he has been able to circumventit. Only through communications aimed at a changein his attitudes or through carefully foniiulated andtightly enforced government policies can his actions beappreciably modified.

If the foregoing analysis of white audiences is ac-curate, it should help to explain why peaceful andcoercive civil rights persuasions have both been ableto endure. Each is effective with a different audienceand neither is effective with both.

The dilemma facing the Negro leadership is agon-izing in the extreme. Should they strike militant pos-tures, they are likely to actuate "power-vulnerables"but at the same time magnify the backlash amongthose invulnerable to coercive persuasion. Should theyplead reasonably and protest peacefully they are likelyto win adherents among the white masses but be in-effective with those vulnerable to power.

The reason some Negro leaders have risked a back-lash is that in order to wrest changes from whites inpublic positions they have had to build a sizeablepower base among the Negro masses. And in orderto secure massive Negro support they have at least hadto strike militant pc^es. In the face of Negro impa-tience and hostility, a segment of the leadership isconvinced that psychological proximity to whites ispolitical suicide. They argue that the more moderateand peaceful the leader's appeals, tlie more likely heis to find himself a leader without a following.

Some support for this theory is reluctantly providedby opponents of coercive persuasion. Cabinet mem-ber Robert C. Weaver has lamented that "today, apublicized spokesman may be the individual who candevise the most militant cry and the leader one who

TODAY'S SPEECH

can articulate the most far-out position." And Loun-don Wainwright of Life Magazine has written:

". . . if the recent rioting has illuminated anything, it hasilluminated the fact that desperate people, trapped withouthope in their ghettos, are beyond listening to promisesthey've heard many times before. It is this fact which ac-counts for the precariousness of Negro leadership, especiallyin the North; on the critical questions of more job oppor-tunity, better housing, fully integrated school systems, theestablished leaders have not been able to deliver, and num-bers of oppressed people might prefer to listen lo the'riot-mongers' who preach hale for 'Whitey.'"

What emerges from this analysis is a pattern of per-suasion which defies our communication theorists; onewhich mobilizes and solidifies a Negro mass with littleto lose in order to cajole an entrenched white leader-ship with a great deal to lose. Rather than adapt towhites by speaking the language of moderacy andrestraint, militants have elected to increase their psy-chological distance from whites by voicing the angryepithets of their followers.

The espousal of a militant position is a necessarycondition for obtaining massive Negro support. Butthis does not mean (in 1966 at least) tliat the Negropeople are ready to accept the more extreme militants.According to the Newsweek poll, "black power" advo-cates Floyd McKissick and Stokely Carmichael are stillamong the least popular competitors for rank-and-fileallegiances. \

K I N G A N D T H E V U L N E R A B L E S

As of now it appears that tight-rope walker MartinLuther King is most capable of drawing upon Negrosupport to effect changes from vulnerable whites. Kinghas managed to be sufficiently militant in his tacticsto suit Negroes while at the same time preaching adoctrine of love which has won white sympathies. TbeSouthern Christian Leadership Conference whidi heheads has not been averse to coercive techniques butit has been buttressed by an ethos of dignity andreligiosity which white attackers have found it difficultto combat. King's standing with Negroes was foundby Louis Harris to be as high as ever, a respectable88 per cent.

Whether King maintains his popularity will de-pend on the results he can achieve. As his movementhas spread northward to confront the more sensitiveurban issues of open housing and full employmentKing has found it necessary to risk losing white sup-porters by relying less on pleading and more on poli-tical pressure. And as his philosophy of non-violencehas been challenged by "black power" advocates he

has had to compete for Negro support by speaking inmore strident tones.

In the last analysis the comparative effectiveness ofpeaceful and coercive methods of persuasion will varywith the issues involved. The former method, for ex-ample, will probably be more effective in persuadingwhite teachers to volunteer for work in Negro slumswhile the latter will probably effect a breakthroughon the issue of housing discrimination. Coercive per-suasion can be combatted if whites become sufficientlyunited in anger to impose their majority power againstthe Negro. Or it can be rendered unnecessary if be-lief differences between the two races can be bridged.Negroes are at present unwilling to rely on the goodwill and compassion of whites. So long as fear of goingto hell remains less compelling a motive for "power-vulnerable" whites than loss of income or the threatof removal from office, advocates of coercive persua-sion will find enthusiastic supporters.

TEMPLE UNIVERSITYOF THE COMMONWEALTH SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF SPEECHCOLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

Undergraduole and Graduate Program*leading to Bctchetor of Arit, Mofter ofAtH, Doctor of Philosophy degree*:

• Rhetoric and Public Address • Speech Education• Dromatie Theory • Speech and Hearing Science• Speech Pathology • Audiology • GeneralSemantics • Linguistics and Communication Theory

FaciliHei: Speech and Hearing Center andcooperative progroms with the TempleUniversity Health Sciences Center.

Speokers Union — Debate, Oiscuiiion,Student Speakers Bureau. |

FOR IttfORMATION WRITE:

Chairman, Department of SpeechTemple University

Philadelphia, Pa, 19132

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VOLUME 15, NUMBER 1, FEBRUARY, 1967