If you just talk about the 1960s there really was only one effective way and that was non violent civil disobedience. And the most effective gender were women. Rosa Parks became a leader because "the time was right." By that time, many of the colored "were part of the family." The most effective blows were cast against the middle class and the lower middle class who needed or wanted the colored as servants, as paid companions, as laborers such as gardeners. So when the "uprising" came, the whites were not threatened; they were inconvenienced more than anything. Rosa Parks didn't really disobey her orders nor her place in life. She just bent the rules a bit. She walked to work for one thing. Many of the colored choose that way. Just boycott the buses. It meant that the city of Birmingham, for example, lost a lot of money because they had to run empty buses. Voting didn't show itself to be as effective as civil disobedience. Yes the colored had the vote. They even had guarantees that came with the vote. In 100 years the vote had really done them no good. There were laws that were created that got them nothing with the vote.

Violence was met with violence. Violence was there for people that had no patience. See anything to do with the Klan. The KKK was not easily intimidated.

So if non violence was so effective, why was it not tried before? I don't know about you, but I can just imagine what would have happened had the slaves tried it before the civil war. They would have had the skin whipped off their backs. After the civil war was no better -- in fact a lot worse. There were many ex-slaves and too few jobs. The "gentry" could pay what they liked for the jobs they needed doing by untrained uneducated labor.