Addressing Political Violence: Lessons from the 1960s

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The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, sent shockwaves through a nation already fractured by political division.

This modern tragedy echoes a darker period in American history. The 1960s were marked by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and both Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in the violent year of 1968. That decade saw the country fractured by urban uprisings, bombings, and brutal state-sponsored violence against those demanding their constitutional rights.

The nation pulled back from the brink. As we now face escalating political violence, how did the United States reduce political violence in the 1960s?

The answer reveals a complex and contradictory story of landmark democratic reform paired with covert state repression. What lessons does that turbulent decade hold for a nation once again grappling with violence fueled by political division?

The Decade of Upheaval: Understanding 1960s Political Violence

A Nation at War With Itself

The 1960s were not simply violent; they were a period of sustained, multifaceted civil conflict that surpassed that of nearly all other Western democracies. The decade’s turmoil was not a single phenomenon but a convergence of several distinct, yet overlapping, struggles that played out in the streets, on college campuses, and in American cities.

The violence emanated from those demanding fundamental change to the nation’s social and political order and from those, including the state itself, who violently resisted that change.

The Civil Rights Struggle: Non-Violence Meets Brutal Force

The decade opened with the African American freedom struggle gaining unprecedented momentum through disciplined, non-violent direct action. Organizations like the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee orchestrated sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, boycotts of discriminatory businesses, and voter registration drives in the most hostile parts of the Deep South.

This commitment to non-violence was met with systematic and often state-sanctioned brutality. In 1961, interracial groups of “Freedom Riders” set out to test federal desegregation orders in interstate bus terminals. In Alabama, their buses were ambushed by mobs who firebombed one vehicle and brutally beat the riders with clubs and fists, often while local law enforcement stood by and watched.

In Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, the world watched in horror as Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor unleashed high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs on hundreds of marching schoolchildren.

Personal and Deadly Violence

The violence was also personal and deadly. White supremacists, often with ties to groups like the Ku Klux Klan, carried out a campaign of terror that included bombings and assassinations.

In 1963, NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers was murdered in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi. That same year, a bomb planted at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham killed four young girls attending Sunday school.

In 1964, during the “Freedom Summer” voter registration drive, three CORE activists—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—were abducted and murdered by Klansmen near Philadelphia, Mississippi, an event that shocked the nation.

Public Opinion and Resistance

Despite the moral clarity of these events in hindsight, public opinion at the time was deeply divided. A 1961 Gallup poll found that 57% of Americans believed that sit-ins and other demonstrations hurt the cause of integration. By 1964, after the March on Washington, that number had risen to 74%. This perception gap highlights the profound resistance the movement faced, not just from violent extremists, but from a mainstream white America wary of disruption.

Urban Uprisings: The “Long, Hot Summers”

As the Civil Rights Movement won legal victories against Jim Crow segregation in the South, deep-seated frustrations in the nation’s urban centers boiled over. The “long, hot summers” of the mid-to-late 1960s saw more than 150 cities explode in what were variously called riots or rebellions.

These were not random acts of lawlessness but spontaneous uprisings against the daily realities of police brutality, systemic poverty, and racial segregation in northern and western cities.

The Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles in August 1965 was a turning point. Sparked by a traffic stop that escalated, the uprising lasted for six days, resulting in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and more than $35 million in property damage. Watts signaled a profound break from the philosophy of non-violence for a significant segment of the Black community and previewed the even larger urban conflicts to come.

In 1967, riots in Newark and Detroit were even more destructive. The Detroit riot, one of the worst in U.S. history, left 43 people dead and required the deployment of federal troops to restore order.

The Anti-War Movement and the New Left

Simultaneously, the U.S. government’s escalating involvement in the Vietnam War ignited another front of political conflict. What began as a small advisory presence grew into a massive military commitment, with over 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by the late 1960s. The military draft fueled a powerful anti-war movement, particularly on college campuses.

While the majority of anti-war protest was peaceful, involving teach-ins, marches, and acts of civil disobedience, a radical faction emerged from the New Left that embraced violence as a political tool.

The most notorious of these groups was the Weather Underground, an offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society. Inspired by communist ideologies and frustrated by the government’s intransigence, the Weathermen launched a campaign of bombings against government buildings and symbols of state power. Between 1970 and 1975, the group claimed credit for 25 bombings, including attacks on the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and a New York City police station.

The Shock of Assassinations

Puncturing the decade’s ongoing conflicts were a series of high-profile assassinations that traumatized the nation and created a pervasive sense of instability. The murder of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, sent shockwaves around the world. The assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 silenced a powerful and evolving voice for Black self-determination.

The year 1968 stands as the apex of this bloodshed. On April 4, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis sparked grief and rage, leading to riots in over 100 American cities. Just two months later, on June 5, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, then a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was shot and killed in Los Angeles after winning the California primary.

These assassinations eliminated two of the most prominent leaders capable of bridging the nation’s racial and class divides, deepening the sense that the country was coming apart at the seams.

A Violent Dialogue

The sheer breadth of these events reveals that the violence of the 1960s was not simply random chaos. It was, in effect, a violent dialogue. The strategic, non-violent pressure of the Civil Rights Movement was met with the brutal, often state-condoned violence of segregationists. This official failure to protect citizens exercising their constitutional rights, in turn, fueled a growing disillusionment with non-violence.

The perception that the system was unresponsive to peaceful demands created fertile ground for more radical ideologies to take root, leading to urban uprisings and the revolutionary violence of groups like the Weather Underground. This created a tragic feedback loop, where the state’s failure to maintain a monopoly on legitimate force and protect dissenters from violence effectively radicalized segments of the opposition, ensuring that violence would beget more violence.

The Official Response: Legislation and Investigation

The federal government’s public response to escalating violence was not proactive but reactive, following a distinct pattern of crisis and response. Landmark legislation, which fundamentally reshaped American society, was often passed only after televised acts of violence against peaceful protestors shocked the national conscience and created an overwhelming political mandate for change.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It outlawed segregation in public accommodations, schools, and parks, and banned discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Its passage was a direct triumph for the Civil Rights Movement, whose leaders had spent years organizing, marching, and lobbying for federal action.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, leveraging the political capital of the martyred President Kennedy and the moral weight of the movement, pushed the bill through fierce southern opposition in Congress. The moral imperative for the act was cemented by events that captured national attention, from the 1963 March on Washington to the public horror following the Birmingham church bombing and the murder of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

While the Civil Rights Act addressed segregation, it did not fully dismantle the legal architecture of Black disenfranchisement in the South. For decades, African Americans who attempted to register to vote faced bureaucratic obstruction, poll taxes, literacy tests, economic intimidation, and physical violence.

The turning point came on March 7, 1965, a day that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” As peaceful marchers demanding voting rights crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, they were brutally attacked by state troopers with billy clubs and tear gas. The violence was captured by television cameras and broadcast into the homes of millions of Americans.

The public revulsion was immediate and overwhelming. Eight days later, President Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, condemning the violence and demanding passage of a strong voting rights bill. In a powerful gesture, he adopted the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, declaring, “we shall overcome”.

The resulting Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law that August, was a monumental achievement. It banned literacy tests, provided for federal examiners to register voters in counties with a history of discrimination, and required these “covered” jurisdictions to get federal “preclearance” for any changes to their voting laws.

The impact was dramatic and immediate. By the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new Black voters had been registered. Crucially, the act provided a powerful, non-violent channel for political expression and change. A recent analysis demonstrates that the Voting Rights Act caused a significant decrease in political violence over the next five years. By giving disenfranchised citizens a meaningful stake in the political process, the act encouraged groups to turn to the ballot box to advance their agendas, thereby divesting from violence as a political tool.

The Kerner Commission

In response to the devastating urban riots of 1967, President Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, chaired by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, to investigate the causes and recommend solutions.

The commission’s 1968 report was a landmark document that delivered a searing indictment of American society. It rejected the common narrative that the riots were the work of outside agitators or a criminal fringe. Instead, it concluded that the primary cause was pervasive “white racism” that had created and maintained the racial ghetto.

The report identified a list of grievances that fueled the unrest, with police practices, unemployment, and inadequate housing at the top. Its most famous passage warned that the nation was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal”. To reverse this course, the commission called for “unprecedented levels of funding” for massive federal programs aimed at creating jobs, building housing, and integrating schools.

The political reaction was telling. President Johnson, mired in the Vietnam War and facing a conservative backlash, largely rejected the commission’s findings and failed to act on its sweeping recommendations. The commission’s work stands as a powerful diagnosis of the nation’s ills, but its rejection by the political establishment marked a critical failure to address the root causes of urban violence through systemic reform.

The Pattern of Crisis and Response

This pattern of legislative action reveals a fundamental truth about governance in that era. Transformative change was not proactive; it was a reaction to crises that had become too visible and too violent to ignore. The violence itself, particularly the spectacle of state-sanctioned brutality against non-violent citizens, became a tragic but necessary catalyst for reform.

It created a moral consensus within a public that consumed its news from a handful of television networks, forcing the political system to respond. This raises a critical question for the modern era: in a fragmented and polarized media landscape, where citizens inhabit different realities, can such a national consensus ever be forged again?

The Unseen Response: COINTELPRO and the State’s Covert War

Parallel to the public strategy of legislative reform, the U.S. government pursued a second, clandestine strategy to combat political unrest. This was not a strategy of addressing grievances but of actively disrupting, discrediting, and neutralizing domestic political organizations deemed “subversive.” This was the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO.

What was COINTELPRO?

COINTELPRO was a series of covert and illegal FBI projects that operated from 1956 to 1971. Initially created to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party USA, its scope expanded dramatically in the 1960s to target a wide range of domestic groups.

The program’s explicit goal, as stated in FBI documents, was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities and leaders of these organizations.

Targets Across the Spectrum

The program’s targets spanned the ideological spectrum. It included violent white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, as well as the Socialist Workers Party and groups seeking independence for Puerto Rico.

However, the program’s most intense focus and aggressive tactics were overwhelmingly directed at Black nationalist groups, the anti-war New Left, and even mainstream civil rights leaders who were engaged in lawful political activity.

The Black Panther Party, which J. Edgar Hoover called “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country,” was a primary target. Of the 295 documented COINTELPRO actions taken to disrupt Black groups, 233 were directed against the Panthers.

Even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the nation’s foremost advocate for non-violence, was subjected to intense FBI scrutiny from 1963 until his death. The FBI wiretapped his phones and hotel rooms and, in 1964, sent him an anonymous package containing surveillance tapes of his private life along with a letter threatening exposure and suggesting he commit suicide.

A key goal of the program was to prevent the rise of a Black “messiah” who could unify and electrify the Black nationalist movement.

A Catalog of “Dirty Tricks”

COINTELPRO’s methods went far beyond legitimate surveillance and constituted a veritable catalog of “dirty tricks” designed to destroy movements from within:

Infiltration: Agents and informants were planted inside organizations not just to gather intelligence, but to sow discord, promote paranoia, and provoke illegal actions.

Psychological Warfare: The FBI forged correspondence, planted false stories in the media, and sent anonymous letters to create rivalries between leaders and organizations. For example, the FBI engineered a rift between SNCC and the Black Panthers and fostered lethal conflict between the Panthers and another Black nationalist group, United Slaves (US).

Harassment Through the Legal System: The program used the legal system as a weapon, employing false arrests, perjured testimony, and wrongful imprisonment to neutralize key activists.

Illegal Force: The FBI conspired with local police departments in actions that led to illegal break-ins, assaults, and in some cases, assassinations. The 1969 police raid in Chicago that killed Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark is one of the most infamous examples of this collusion.

Effectiveness and Legacy

By its own brutal standards, COINTELPRO was highly effective. It successfully fostered paranoia, disrupted organizing, destroyed coalitions, and led to the imprisonment, exile, or death of many influential leaders.

The program operated in total secrecy until 1971, when activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and leaked stolen documents to the press. The resulting public outrage led to congressional investigations, most notably the Church Committee, which exposed the shocking extent of the government’s illegal activities against its own citizens.

A Cautionary Legacy

The history of COINTELPRO reveals that the U.S. government did not simply “reduce” political violence; it actively and illegally worked to destroy political movements it deemed threatening to the established order. The state chose to combat domestic dissent with the same counterintelligence tactics used against foreign spies, fundamentally blurring the line between protest and treason.

While the program did target violent white supremacists, its overwhelming force was brought to bear on left-wing and Black power movements that challenged the nation’s political and racial status quo. This means that the relative “peace” that followed the turmoil of the late 1960s was achieved, in part, by the state’s covert and illegal crushing of the most organized and radical elements of the opposition.

This is a profoundly cautionary lesson, demonstrating that a “reduction” in violence achieved at the expense of civil liberties leaves a poisonous legacy of distrust and delegitimizes the very institutions sworn to uphold the law.

The Fractured Present: Violence in the Digital Age

A New Era of Animosity

While the United States today is not experiencing the same scale of bombings or urban uprisings as in the 1960s, the undercurrent of political animosity has reached a similar, if not greater, intensity. A 2024 survey found that over a quarter of Americans believe violence is usually or always justified to advance at least one political objective. Another poll showed that one in five Americans believes political violence can be justified at times.

This simmering acceptance of violence is manifesting in a new and dangerous pattern of political conflict.

From Organized Groups to Lone Actors

A key difference between the two eras lies in the structure of the violence. The 1960s featured conflict between more clearly defined organizations: civil rights groups versus the KKK and state authorities; the Weather Underground versus the FBI.

Today, while organized groups still exist, there is a growing trend of vigilante violence and “stochastic terrorism”—acts committed by unaffiliated individuals who are inspired and radicalized by online rhetoric and political leaders.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, carried out by a lone shooter from a rooftop, is the most devastating example of this trend. It joins a disturbing list of recent attacks and threats targeting officials at all levels of government: the 2025 murder of a Democratic state legislator and her husband in Minnesota by a man with a “hit list” of other officials; the 2022 attempted assassination of the mayor of Louisville; and the constant barrage of threats against federal judges and members of Congress, which have increased more than tenfold since 2016.

This shift makes violence less predictable and harder to prevent, as it can be perpetrated by anyone with a grievance and access to a weapon.

The Great Accelerator: Social Media and the Information Ecosystem

The most critical variable distinguishing the present from the 1960s is the information ecosystem. The rise of cable news and, more profoundly, social media has fundamentally rewired how Americans consume information and interact with politics, creating an environment that is uniquely conducive to polarization and radicalization.

In the 1960s, a handful of television networks served as national gatekeepers, capable of forging a shared reality and, as seen in Selma, a shared sense of moral outrage. Today’s media landscape is decentralized and fractured. Social media platforms, in particular, operate on algorithms designed to maximize user engagement. This business model inherently favors content that is emotionally charged, sensational, and divisive, as posts that express moral outrage or attack a political out-group are more likely to go viral.

This creates several dangerous dynamics:

Algorithmic Amplification: The most extreme and polarizing voices are often algorithmically amplified, giving them disproportionate reach and influence.

Filter Bubbles: Users are increasingly enclosed in “filter bubbles” or “echo chambers,” where their existing beliefs are constantly reinforced and dissenting views are filtered out. This “social network homophily” exacerbates affective polarization—the animosity people feel toward those in the opposing political party.

Disinformation: These platforms are fertile ground for the rapid and unchecked spread of “fake news” and conspiracy theories, which can be amplified by foreign adversaries and domestic “social bots” posing as real users.

The Charlie Kirk Case Study

The aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination provides a stark case study. Within moments, social media was flooded with gruesome videos of his death, followed by a tidal wave of polarized commentary that used the tragedy not as a moment for reflection, but as a weapon to deepen division.

Prominent figures on the right immediately blamed “the Left” as “the party of murder,” while those on the left pointed to the Republican Party’s opposition to gun control. The digital space became a battlefield for competing narratives, each reinforcing the belief within its respective tribe that the other side was not just wrong, but evil and dangerous.

A Fundamental Shift

This reveals a fundamental shift in the relationship between media and violence. In the 1960s, political violence was often a tactic used by marginalized groups to capture the attention of a centralized media and a relatively unified public. The goal was to force the nation to confront an injustice.

Today, political violence is increasingly a product of a decentralized, fractured media environment that rewards extremism and tribalism. The audience is no longer a unified public to be persuaded, but a collection of partisan tribes to be mobilized.

The communication technology itself has become an active participant in shaping political conflict, radicalizing individuals outside of any formal organization and making reconciliation harder by monetizing and amplifying division.

Lessons From the Past, Challenges for the Future

Drawing direct lines between the strategies of the 1960s and the problems of today provides a framework for understanding the current crisis and the paths available to navigate it. The past offers both a model for success and a stark warning against repeating the nation’s darkest mistakes.

The Enduring Lesson of Reform

The most positive and durable lesson from the 1960s is that expanding democratic participation is a powerful antidote to political violence. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 worked. It demonstrably reduced violence by providing a meaningful, accessible, and non-violent channel for citizens to pursue political change. When people believe the system can work for them, they are more likely to work within it.

This lesson is profoundly relevant today. The widespread belief among a significant portion of the population that elections are fraudulent is a known instigator of political unrest. Contemporary debates over voting rights, partisan gerrymandering, and the integrity of the electoral process are not peripheral issues; they are central to national stability. Restoring broad public faith in the fairness and efficacy of democratic institutions is perhaps the most critical long-term violence-reduction strategy available.

The Cautionary Tale of Repression

COINTELPRO offers the opposite lesson: a cautionary tale of the corrosive effects of state repression. While the program may have “succeeded” in its mission to neutralize targeted movements, it did so by systematically violating the constitutional rights of American citizens, creating a legacy of deep distrust between law enforcement and minority communities, and ultimately delegitimizing the government in the eyes of many it was sworn to protect.

This history serves as a crucial warning for modern debates over how to confront domestic extremism. Proposals for new domestic terrorism statutes, the use of advanced surveillance technologies against activist groups on both the left and the right, and the potential for government overreach in the name of security all carry the echo of COINTELPRO. The lesson is that a security-at-all-costs approach can create a backlash, deepen the very alienation that fuels extremism, and inflict lasting damage on the rule of law.

The Leadership and Unity Deficit

A final, stark difference between the eras lies in the capacity for national leadership. Despite the profound divisions of the 1960s, there were moments when political leaders were able to forge bipartisan consensus for the national good. The passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act required significant support from both Democrats and Republicans.

A president like Lyndon Johnson, for all his flaws, could stand before Congress and the nation to adopt the moral language of the very movement that was protesting his policies, creating a moment of national purpose to overcome violent resistance to voting rights.

This capacity for unity seems tragically absent today. In the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, the immediate response from many political leaders was not a unifying call to reject violence, but a retreat into partisan camps to assign blame and score political points. As one analyst noted, it is unclear if today’s leaders are willing or able to make the kind of unifying gesture that President Bill Clinton made after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The modern political and media environment incentivizes and rewards division over unity, making a collective, national response to political violence far more difficult to achieve.

The Path Forward

Ultimately, the 1960s presented the United States with a toolkit containing two distinct instruments for reducing political violence: democratic reform and state repression. The nation used both. The tools of reform, exemplified by the Voting Rights Act, proved to be a sustainable, democracy-affirming solution that channeled conflict into productive political action. The tools of repression, embodied by COINTELPRO, were brutally effective in the short term but were corrosive to democracy in the long term.

The challenge for the United States today is that the political polarization and institutional gridlock fueled by the modern media environment have weakened the collective will to use the tools of reform. At the same time, the technological capacity for surveillance, disruption, and repression is exponentially greater than anything J. Edgar Hoover could have imagined.

The central lesson from the 1960s is that the path a nation chooses to quell violence—whether by expanding democracy or by suppressing dissent—has profound and lasting consequences for the health of the republic. In an age of digital radicalization and fractured politics, the less democratic path has become a dangerously plausible option.

The question facing America today is not whether political violence can be reduced—the 1960s proved it can be. The question is whether the nation has the wisdom and will to choose the path that strengthens democracy rather than the one that weakens it.

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