Peaceful Protest vs. Political Violence: Why Some American Social Movements Want to Watch the World Burn Stephanie Stanley A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2020 Reading Committee: Rebecca Thorpe, Chair Mark Smith Lance Bennett Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Political Science ©Copyright 2020 Stephanie Stanley University of Washington Abstract Peaceful Protest vs. Political Violence: Why Some American Social Movements Want to Watch the World Burn Stephanie Stanley Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Rebecca Thorpe Political Science Department This project explains the conditions under which American social movements that begin their mobilization through peaceful, lawful acts of protest become politically violent. To do so, I propose and develop a new, unifying framework called the state legitimacy framework. The state legitimacy framework contends that protest strategy escalation from peaceful, lawful protests to civil disobedience occurs once a movement/ movement faction begins to lose faith in the state’s absolute lawmaking capacity. Furthermore, if and when a movement or movement faction loses faith in the state as a system of governance, it is highly likely to engage in a politically violent protest strategy. There are three factors that shape a movement’s perception of the state’s legitimacy or lack thereof: 1) types of rights claims embedded in the movement’s demands, 2) the movement’s perception of the state’s response to the movement’s demands and its activists, and 3) the movement’s religious and/or ideological commitments. The three cases examined here, the Abolitionist Movement, the Prohibitionist Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement, demonstrate how the state legitimacy framework is both generalizable across American social movements and critical in developing movement-specific causal theories of protest strategy escalation. 4 Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank my academic advisors—Rebecca Thorpe, Mark Smith, and Lance Bennett—for your mentorship, support, and valuable comments on hundreds of pages of dissertation chapter drafts. Your patience and faith in me (as well as this project) have contributed significantly to my development as a scholar and the completion of this PhD program. This project is exponentially better than I anticipated it could be, and that is in no small part because of you all. Your mentorship has extended beyond this project as you have taught me to be a true scholar and instructor, and for all of this I am truly grateful. Thank you. I am also grateful for the marvelous support from the staff members of the Political Science Department, who include Susanne Recorden, Meera Roy, Ann Buscherfeld, and Stephen Dunne. Several faculty members like John Wilkerson, Jamie Mayerfeld, Chris Parker, and lecturers like Larry Cushnie and Scott Lemeiux (and others) have also been great mentors. Many graduate students (Andreu Casas and Jared Stewart, just to name a few) have also made me a better student, instructor, and researcher. All of you have made my seven years in the University of Washington’s Political Science Department a joyful and valuable experience both personally and professionally. Thank you. Next, I would like to thank my friends and family for their unconditional love, support, and encouragement. I am truly blessed to have an amazing group of women in Seattle (the women formally of the Murrays’ CG) who have been my home away from home since I started this PhD program in 2013. I also have an amazing church family in my hometown of Scholls, 5 Oregon, whose pride and enthusiasm for my work has been and continues to be invaluable. My extended family also had faith in me when I didn’t have faith in myself, and I thank you for that. I am grateful for my brother Sam’s words of encouragement and tough love. You never seemed to think I wouldn’t succeed, and that has meant a lot. My in-laws (Annika, the Davis family, Nana, and all) could not be more supportive—thank you! My Grandma Wedgbury’s pride and excitement on my achievements throughout this process has helped me enjoy the ride and see what I’ve done as well as what I have yet to do. Unfortunately, two people who began this PhD journey with me aren’t here to see the end. Grandma Sylvia and my dear friend Dotti, moments like these are a little bittersweet without you. Additionally, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my husband, Jordan. Even though we met after I had already started on this project, he enthusiastically joined me in the completion of this dream. When times got even tougher with the lockdown, he made sure I made it through and followed through with my dissertation. Jordan, you are my rock, my biggest blessing, and I am excited to embark on the next dream together. Finally, the two people I would like to thank the most are my parents, Steve and Carrie Stanley. I know I could not have gotten this far without them. My mom has been (and continues to be) the best person for me to talk to when what is before me seems too hard to overcome and I feel too inadequate to meet the challenge. And her faith in me isn’t based in sugar-coated clichés and isn’t devoid of criticism. Because of this she has helped me stay accountable and encouraged with several short pep talks (and the occasional retail therapy outing). One of the most memorable words of encouragement she has repeated throughout this process is “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” That simple line has turned into the mantra, “just eat the 6 elephant,” which has helped me get over the finish line. For all this and so much more, I could not ask for a better mom. In many ways, I blame my dad for this whole thing. It is because of him that I attended my first college lecture when I was about six (he was a professor at the time) and grew up on talk radio, news, tracking elections, and near-constant current event discussions. After all the grad school papers he’s been kind enough to copy edit, I think I’ve gotten him back (thanks again for that). He has also been a great source of wisdom, encouragement, pep talks (the rip-off-the-band- aid kind), and mentorship. Since childhood, he has challenged me to push myself and find my limits. When this project seemed too difficult to finish, he would say to me “Well, I guess you found your limit.” His thinly veiled reverse psychology worked. I am proud to say that at this point, I believe this dissertation is the best I could write. I also believe that while this may be my current limit, in the future I will able to accomplish more. So, Dad, I don’t think I’m at my absolute limit yet. I’m just getting started. 7 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 Table of Contents 7 Introduction: 8 The State Legitimacy Framework Chapter 1: Abolitionist Movement 52 A “Holy” and “Contractual” Rebellion Chapter 2: Prohibitionist Movement 110 Raising the Bar on the American Social Contract Chapter 3: Civil Rights Movement 162 Redemption or Revolution Conclusion: 226 Reflecting on the State Legitimacy Framework References 244 Appendix A 255 8 Introduction: The State Legitimacy Framework of Protest Strategy Escalation “As a way of interpreting democracy, it is rather like trying to keep a church going without faith. In politics as in religion, loss of faith tends to lead to corruption and surrenders the ground to revivalism.” Margaret Canovan, “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy” Why Turn to Violence in a Democracy? Abolitionists in the early 1830s emerged committed to peaceful and lawful acts of protest. They initially mobilized through nation-wide mailing campaigns to the public, submitted anti-slavery petitions to the state, and debated the merits of self-defense in the face of violent anti-abolitionist attacks. By the end of the 1850s, the movement engaged in the illicit Underground Railroad, Abolitionist-sponsored and executed violence in the Kansas-Nebraska territory and calls for revolution in the wake of Dred Scott. Shortly thereafter, John Brown’s intended slave insurrection in Harper’s Ferry supported by prominent Abolitionist leaders culminated in the bloody American Civil War (Fellman, 1979). Likewise, early Civil Rights leaders in the early twentieth century wanted nothing more than status as full and equal citizens in post-Reconstruction America. Yet, by the late 1960s, part of the movement called for liberation from this political system through revolutionary means (Kang, 2012; Umoja, 2013). Why did these movements which began thoroughly committed to the American state and creed become, at least in part, politically violent? Furthermore, why did the women of the Prohibitionist Movement engage in politically violent property destruction during the mid-point of the movement’s century-long mobilization while the men did not, and then de-escalate their 9 protest strategy to peaceful, lawful acts of protest after a decade of saloon smashing? In short, why do American social movements that emerge committed to the American democratic project and its principles turn to a politically violent strategy that can include calls for revolution in some cases? These questions lay at the heart of project, which is about American social movement protest strategy escalation with a focus on the root causes of politically violent acts of protest. I argue that the key determinative factor that explains an American social movement’s adoption of a politically violent protest strategy is the movement’s belief in the state’s legitimacy, which is comprised of the state’s adherence to popular sovereignty, its fealty to the American social contract, and its ability to extend full political, social, and economic recognition to its citizens.