Strict discipline would allow timely evacuation, which would reduce the chances of violence by or upon Negroes wandering strange city streets at night. It would also refute the racial stereotype of imprecision and inbred, self-indulgent tardiness. The planners wrestled not only with logistics but with the weight of perceptions that had accumulated over centuries. Never before had white America accepted a prescheduled Negro political event for national attention. By guilt or aversion, many of the most sympathetic whites retained a subliminal belief pairing Negroes with violence, such that even
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