ABSTRACT
The leadership of Martin Luther King (1929-1968) in the civil rights struggle is identified with the method of non-violent direct action. For King it was not merely a tactic but arose from his appreciation of the spiritual force of Gandhi's ideas in the campaign for Indian independence and from his conviction of the persuasive and essentially religious power of redemptive suffering, expressed in the American context through non-violence. Nonviolence also guaranteed that purity of spirit would suffuse the means to a pure end since it offered a disinterested Christian love even towards opponents. King and his associates were not devoid of hard, tactical calculations but his style of leadership expressed his religious vision.
