Thread by @haroldpollack

25.King also knew his audience. Though he certainly hoped to change hearts, he wasn't expecting to change the hearts of Birmingham’s white elite. He was trying to defeat them. He wasn’t relying on changing the hearts of white people across the northern states.

26.The moral clarity of his cause helped, too. At some level, many white Americans understood that, even if they also nitpicked the civil rights movement’s confrontational tactics+consistently preferred the slower, less decisive+discomfiting path to dismantling official racism.

27.(King+others had markedly less success dismantling other, less bald+official forms of racism+segregation. That story haunts us to this day.) epi.org/publication/th…

28. King understood bystanders+potential allies harbored their own racial anxieties+fears of chaos. His folk would have been justified to defend themselves against racist groups+against violent police. Even justified violence would have been bloody+would have failed politically.

29. He remained hard-edged, demonstrating that segregation was untenable, that mass action by African-Americans+their allies would ensure this was so. He was forcing the hands of lukewarm allies like John Kennedy+(ironically less lukewarm) Lyndon Johnson.

30.King showed on the ground that the alternative to genuine reform was international shame in a time of Cold War, internal strife+damage to their own coalition. There was another thing, too. If Kennedy+LBJ couldn’t accommodate King, there was always Malcolm+others in the wings.

31.As @gregggonsalves pointed out, nonviolent action is partly persuasive, but it’s partly coercive+hard-edged, too. It’s designed to make life difficult for perpetrators of injustice+for bystanders who might intervene.

32. But what about the specific case before us: Opposing, resisting+defeating President Trump.

****Stay tuned****