This was a decade of role reversal. The North, heretofore vital, languished, while the traditionally passive South burst with dynamic vigor. The North at best stood still as the South caught up. Civil rights leaders had long thought the North would benefit derivatively from the Southern struggle. They assumed that without massive upheavals certain systemic changes were inevitable as the whole nation reexamined and searched its conscience. This was a miscalculation. It was founded on the belief that opposition in the North was not intransigent, that it was flexible and was, if not fully, at
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