“The Negroes,” Niebuhr said, “will have to exercise patience and be sustained by a robust faith that history will gradually fulfill the logic of justice.” Niebuhr’s call for gradualism, patience, and prudence during the decade when Willie McGee (1951), Emmett Till (1955), M. C. “Mack” Parker (1959), and other blacks were lynched sounds like that of a southern moderate more concerned about not challenging the cultural traditions of the white South than achieving justice for black people.
