King: A Life

by Jonathan Eig

King knew, as he made clear in The Nation, that racism was not merely a southern problem, and he didn’t want to make it easy for people to blame discrimination on a few outspoken segregationists. He understood that some northern white people justified their own racist practices by telling themselves they weren’t as bad as Bull Connor and his ilk. Southern bigots described Black people as genetically inferior, he wrote, while northern segregationists argued that Black people were victims of the culture of poverty who needed better work habits and stronger family values. The results were no less harmful in the North, but they were more visible in places such as Birmingham. A year earlier, when Black students had organized a series of selective-buying campaigns against white merchants, the city of Birmingham had responded by withdrawing support for a surplus-food program that benefited many in the Black community. When a group of merchants agreed to desegregate, Bull Connor and other city officials harassed them, sending city inspectors who cited the businesses for things such as unsafe stairs and inadequate fireproofing.