That at the heart of this phenomenon was not just any preacher but Martin Luther King gave his name a symbolic resonance that spilled outside the small constituency of civil rights. Before, King had been a curiosity to most of the larger world—unsettling and primeval in meaning, perhaps, but as remote as the backseats of buses or the other side of town. Now, as a historical asterisk, a catalytic agent in the outcome of the presidential election, he registered as someone who might affect the common national history of whites and Negroes alike.
