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Negroes' goals are not in reach of court decisions any
longer."
It Could Happen Anywhere. Birmingham therefore set off a chain
reaction—uncontrolled. New lunch-counter sit-ins started in Atlanta,
Nashville and Raleigh. The N.A.A.C.P. called for peaceful sympathy
demonstrations in 100 cities. Jackie Robinson, now a vice president of
Chock Full O' Nuts, said he would go to Birmingham to join in the Negro
protest. So did Floyd Patterson. Communism was having a field day.
Gloated Radio Moscow: "We have the impression that American authorities
both cannot and do not wish to stop outrages by racists."
Perhaps most baleful of all, the Black Muslim movement within the U.S.
Negro community took full recruiting advantage of the Birmingham riots.
The Black Muslims do not seek integration; they want total separation
of the races, with Negroes not only independent but, if possible,
superior. Now Malcolm X, top Eastern torchbearer for the militant
movement, could only sneer at Martin Luther King's gospel of
nonviolence. Said he: "The lesson of Birmingham is that the Negroes
have lost their fear of the white man's reprisals and will react with
violence, if provoked. This could happen anywhere in the country
today."
Last week, at the crest of the crisis, a white Birmingham waitress said
to a customer from the North: "Honey, I sure hope the colored don't
win. They've winned so much around the South. Why, you go down and get
on a bus, and a nigger's just liable to sit right down beside you. Oh,
that's hurt Birmingham somethin' awful."
Neither Malcolm X nor the Birmingham waitress represents the majority of
their races. But they do represent and symbolize two fixed positions:
the Negro who looks with eagerness toward a militant solution, and the
unyielding Southerner who hopes not to be further disturbed. There are
many other positions, and there is a long gaping valley of confusion
and diffusion. It is a great uncharted space where leaders follow and
followers lead, for there is no certainty of plan or purpose there.
Negro Author James Baldwin (see following pages) has illuminated this
grey gulf with bolts of intellectual lightning.
Baldwin cries out in hopelessness and helplessness as he gazes across
the gulf. For that gulf cannot be bridged by law alone; the law can
furnish a foundation upon which Negroes can build to achieve their
rights, but it cannot provide education, or cure poverty, or enforce
understanding, or give body to an old-fashioned thing called humanity.
