King: A Life

by Jonathan Eig

“It is hardly a moral act,” read the article, “to encourage others patiently to accept injustice which he himself does not endure … We southern Negroes believe that it is essential to defend the right to equality now. From this position we will not and cannot retreat.”

south, the establishment used its power to maintain segregation and inequality, building highways, for example, that destroyed, relocated, and isolated Black communities, funneling those communities at times into public housing developments that became clusters of poverty. When opposition arose, government agencies tied the critics up and drained their resources with costly legal maneuvers.

It was a sign of King’s greatest flaw as a leader, an ironic flaw for a protest leader, Rustin said: he hated conflict.

Nixon blamed voter fraud. He blamed the press. He blamed the Eisenhower administration for failing to help King. And he blamed Black voters whose minds had been changed, as he put it, by “a couple of phone calls.”

In the big picture, the FBI was more focused on exploring King’s ties to alleged communists than on protecting him or any other civil rights leaders from violent threats. In the even bigger picture, as King had been pointing out for years, America’s system of justice denied Black people equal access to protection under the law.

“There is a great deal of hypocrisy in the North, and the southern white man is more honest in coming right out and saying openly what he feels about the Negro,” he told Susskind. “The North must be eternally vigilant. It must not become complacent, because if this happens many of the subtle types of discrimination will continue to grow and develop

“Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence,”