Why We Can't Wait

In Chapter Seven, King discusses the aftermath of the campaign in Birmingham. He opens the chapter by recounting the 1938 execution of an African-American boy with the newly-approved method of poison gas. As he was executed, the boy called on African-American boxer Joe Louis to save him, a plea that King sees as indicative of the “helplessness, the loneliness, and the profound despair of Negroes during that period” (133).

By contrast, the events of 1963 reveal that African-Americans now have a sense of their own ability to fight against injustice through nonviolent direct action. According to King, the biggest impact of Birmingham is that African-Americans have now shaken “off three hundred years of psychological slavery and said: ‘[w]e can make ourselves free’” (135). Their actions forced “[w]hite America…to face the ugly facts of life” (135).

This hopeful development did not end setbacks, however. The “partial and grudging compliance” (136) of the May agreementwas greeted with violence. Four little girls were killed when white supremacists bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church during Sunday school, Birmingham law enforcement killed a child in the streets, and several white boys killed a little black boy who was riding his bike. Even worse than the murders themselves was the almost universal lack of response by whites in power.