Why We Can't Wait

Despite expectations of a peaceful and pleasant year to come, in 1963, America’s “social climate” was stormy, erupting into what King calls “America’s third revolution—the Negro Revolution” (2). Civil disturbances driven by “a submerged minority” (2) overtook many cities, echoing European revolutionary movements of the previous century. Their rebellion shook the U.S. on a large scale in businesses, and government buildings, and in the streets.

While the nation had been sympathetic to the plight of African-Americans, there had always been the expectation that African-Americans would patiently and silently bear the injustices heaped on them. When the Negro Revolution came, it was “generated quietly” but attained “a force of frightening intensity” once it arrived (3). King warns his readers that this revolution is not yet at its peak. It is important, therefore, “to understand the history that is being made today” (3).

King then compares his 1958 stabbing with a letter opener by an insane woman with the political situation in the summer of 1963. The surgeon who operated on him explained that the knife was so close to his aorta that if he “had sneezed” while waiting for the surgery to remove it, King would have died (4). “The knife of violence” exercised the same kind of danger to the country in the summer of 1963 (4). King goes on to explain that several forces allowed the country to avert tragedy.

Before one understands how they averted tragedy, it is necessary to understand why the summer of 1963 was so explosive. King identifies Southern attempts to subvert the 1954 school segregation ruling (with the Supreme Court’s acquiescence) with the Pupil Placement Law as one reason for the events of 1963. This law allowed Southern states to continue segregating schools while claiming, through tokenism, that they were complying with the desegregation order. This obstruction caused disillusionment among African-Americans.

The second cause for the revolution in 1963 was the failure of both the Democratic and Republican Parties to live up to the civil rights promises they’d made in their political platforms during the election of 1960. Republicans cooperated with reactionary elements in their own party. The Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, did follow through with his promises to address housing discrimination but did not address the discriminatory lending and banking practices that were at the root of the problem.While Kennedy’s administration believed it was doing all that it could and did do more later, African-Americans were not convinced in the summer of 1963 that they were getting his best.

International events were the third cause. While the U.S. was willing to threaten nuclear war to ensure freedom in other places during the Cold War, it would not do the same for its own African-American citizens. In addition, African countries were liberating themselves from European colonial powers. Their example in ruling and participation in the United Nations, coupled with African leaders’ criticism of African-Americans’ apparent passivity in the face of injustice, inspired African-Americans.

The final reason was the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. While government on all levels made plans to mark the occasion, it was not lost on African-Americans that Lincoln had granted African-Americans only “physical freedom” (12).

In 1963, African-Americans were on a “lonely island of economic insecurity in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity” because of the overlap between segregation and poverty (12). Lacking access to “normal” education and “social and economic opportunities,” African-Americans could not escape this island (13). Unemployment, higher than normal rates of work outside the home for African-American women, and the vulnerability of African-Americans to job loss caused by automation showed the negative economic impact of inequality.

The anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation simply provided an occasion to make the lack of progress in these areas more obvious. However, the reasons mentioned above alone were not enough to explain 1963. “Nonviolent direct action,” while not native to the United States, became a “powerful and just weapon” that allowed the freedom movement to achieve its aims without violence (16).