This is inaccurate. Great strides in civil rights have been made through non-violent campaigns to change minds. We've had a slow, civil change to fighting our battles in the court of public opinion rather than on the dueling grounds.
Appeals to tradition aren't effective, we don't need to make the same mistakes as our ancestors.
This isn't really true, a lot of the changes made by JFK and LBJ were in response to widespread rioting. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was largely in response to the riots that happened after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.
Appeals to tradition aren't effective, we don't need to make the same mistakes as our ancestors.