serious handicap to America’s claims to lead the
free world in newly independent Africa and else-
where. ‘Whites only’ signs could still be seen
prominently posted in many eating places in the
South. But thousands of African Americans would
no longer accept this state of affairs.
Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister, had
risen to prominence as one of the leaders of the
mass protests in Montgomery, Alabama during
the 1950s. The black churches were the one place
African Americans could gather in large numbers
without being harassed by state laws used against
demonstrations and African American meetings.
The black people in Montgomery, inspired by
King’s doctrine of non-violent militant protest
and unafraid of arrest and imprisonment, achieved
two things by asserting their rights. The black
protest movement gained self-confidence and a
sense of its own strength; it also brought black
protest in the South to national attention. In a
decade when the new magic of television could
carry pictures of police setting their dogs on
unarmed protesters and could convey the deter-
mined mood of black people and their leaders
into millions of American homes, it prompted
localised black protests and brought sympathy
and support from all over the country. The
violence perpetrated by white Southerners on
unarmed civil rights supporters shocked most
Americans. Seeing and not just reading about it
made a considerable difference.
In 1960 four young black students sat down at
an ‘all-white’ luncheon counter in a Woolworths in
Greensboro, North Carolina. They were not
served. Soon sit-ins spread everywhere. What was
new was that the African Americans were taking
the initiative, not just waiting on Congress, the
courts or the federal government to assert and pro-
tect their rights. Black and white segregation on
buses travelling from state to state was already ille-
gal; yet even this right had to be asserted, because
many laws which in theory safeguarded black
people from discrimination were not being
enforced. In 1961, Northern African Americans
1
THE LIMITS OF POWER 579
In Martin Luther King, all Americans, regardless of colour, had a charismatic leader and spokesman for human-
ity. Shown here in Baltimore, shortly after becoming the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
© Leonard Freed/Magnum Photos
