Central Michigan University students have been showing respects and practicing humility surrounding the 50th anniversary of many milestones for human rights, whether it’s participating in Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities, or continuing the Civil Rights Movement by protesting against a systemic illness of police violence.

The campus is alive in honoring and continuing the Civil Rights Movement.

All over the country, action is being taken to further the cause for justice. For some outliers, this call to action leads them down a path of violence.

On the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, President Obama gave a resounding speech to honor the history made that day on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He spoke of the acclaimed and the nameless who braved the institution of Jim Crow and stood tall amidst the violence and bloodshed. He commended the tactics of nonviolent direct action that drove the movement. And then he criticized those who took to self-defense. This is where Obama went wrong.

For Obama to assert that the only “right way” to act in the face of violence is through nonviolent passive resistance is to make martyrs out of people who do not want to be heroes, who simply wish to survive.

In his speech, although he didn’t mention the violence of Ferguson, Obama alluded to the backlash of the death of Michael Brown. Obama passively did so by saying, “Veterans of the movement trained newcomers in the tactics of non-violence, the right way to protect yourself when attacked.” This line by Obama concerns me for a number of reasons.

When politician and civil rights leader John Lewis led the march on the bridge in the quiet town of Selma, he knew the risk of what he was getting into, and he accepted this risk. He knew the goal of nonviolence was to make white racists look so evil, so inhuman, to target nonviolent black protestors that it would shock the conscience of the nation. Lewis and Dr. King were right.

However, those who walked on the bridge for freedom did not have a duty to stay nonviolent. When attacked, they had every right to react to defend their lives. But in protest, they did not.

To instruct a populous that faces danger to remain nonviolent is enforcing on them an ideology that they do not have a duty to adhere to. When someone’s life is threatened unexpectedly, they have every right to defend themselves, even if it means resorting to violence.

Malcolm X spoke on this a number of times:

“Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”

Again in another instance:

“I don’t even call it violence when it’s self defense; I call it intelligence."

Dr. King’s tactic of nonviolence was just that, a tactic. It was a tactic to reveal the monster that was the white southern racist. Nonviolence had a purpose to show that the actions of those upholding Jim Crow and institutionalized racism were pure evil.

Nonviolent passive resistance is itself a study, a lifestyle, a concept that takes many years of practice. And while it may be the moral action, I do not think that it is wrong for those whose lives are threatened to take another route to spare themselves.

While those of us at CMU who continue the march to justice do so in a nonviolent manner, I stand firmly in the position that those whose lives are in immediate danger have the fundamental right to defend themselves.

Whether in Selma, Ala. or Mount Pleasant, unless I give myself to the cause of social justice, I will defend myself to whatever end.