Hard upon this surge of internal strength radiated the national news that a thousand Negro children had marched to jail in two days, and before the far-flung American public could begin to absorb such a troubling novelty, violence, the universal messenger, was racing toward their living rooms with pictures of water hoses and dogs loosed on children. Marshall’s pain, like the stridency of Birmingham’s white leaders, revealed an underlying defensiveness, and their appeals to the welfare of Negro children drew them toward King’s ground.
