Unequal: A Story of America: Chapters 8–10

Malcolm had already earned a reputation as an eloquent speaker, someone who understood the struggles of Black people in the North.

A brutal police attack on a Black man in the largest African American neighborhood in New York City was not unusual. What was unusual was that a court of law held them accountable this time.

“Our war against oppression in the North is often like a battle against evanescent shadows,” one Northern civil rights activist remarked.

Instead, racial discrimination happened in ways that attracted less attention outside of Black neighborhoods, from inferior schools and crowded, decrepit housing, to companies that refused to hire or promote African American workers.

Instead, racial discrimination happened in ways that attracted less attention outside of Black neighborhoods, from inferior schools and crowded, decrepit housing, to companies that refused to hire or promote African American workers.

When the store windows were broken in the Black community, immediately it was made to appear that this was being done not by people who were reacting over civil rights violations, but they gave the impression that these were hoodlums, vagrants, criminals.

In 1967, with the fires in Detroit still smoldering, President Lyndon B. Johnson commissioned a group of experts to investigate the reasons behind the uprisings in America’s cities.

After exhaustive research and on-the-spot interviews, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders—dubbed the Kerner Commission after its chair Governor Otto Kerner Jr. of Illinois—published a damning report in 1968, drawing conclusions that were not so different from Malcolm X’s own.

“What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget,” the report declared, “is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

“What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget,” the report declared, “is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

When she recovered, she learned that the white doctor had sterilized her against her will, an experience so common among Black women that it was dubbed a “Mississippi appendectomy.” Involuntary sterilizations were a racist practice forced on Black women, to prevent them from having children; it is likely that doctors performed several hundred thousand of these procedures, without the consent of their female patients.

Eastland regularly preached against “the illegal, immoral and sinful doctrine of school desegregation.” He viewed civil rights activism in the South as “subversive activity.”

They tossed her in a dank jail cell.

Their grassroots pressure pushed the white power structure to its limits and forced it to reveal to the world the ugly violence that kept white supremacy in place.

Martin Luther King Jr. organized a new march in Selma two days later and sent a message to clergy from around the nation to join him. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister from Boston, flew to Selma that very evening and marched with King and hundreds of other protesters on Tuesday.

In the space of four years, people like Fannie Lou Hamer forced the US government to do something it had steadfastly avoided: to extend the right to vote to all Americans.

As spring approaches each year and high school seniors wait for their acceptance letters, a subtle brand of racism seeps into school hallways and social media threads.

Wealthy, mostly white “legacy" applicants (the children of alumni) receive preferential treatment.

Its bucolic campus, lined with white-columned buildings and manicured grounds, seemed a world away from the Attala County Training School that Meredith had walked miles to attend as a teenager.

Built by the enslaved, and reminiscent of an antebellum plantation, Ole Miss was the training ground for the state’s business and political elite.

Built by the enslaved, and reminiscent of an antebellum plantation, Ole Miss was the training ground for the state’s business and political elite.

The same was true across the South, where only a tiny handful of Black students had managed to force their way through the segregated gates. Meredith, a military veteran who had served his country with distinction, wasn’t ready to accept that disparity.

Bell, one of the architects of Critical Race Theory more than two decades later, said that he “learned a lot about evasiveness, and how racists could use a system to forestall equality.”

Bell, one of the architects of Critical Race Theory more than two decades later, said that he “learned a lot about evasiveness, and how racists could use a system to forestall equality.”

He also said that he “learned a lot riding those dusty roads and walking into those sullen hostile courts in Jackson, Mississippi. It just seems that unless something’s pushed, unless you litigate, nothing happens.”

He also said that he “learned a lot riding those dusty roads and walking into those sullen hostile courts in Jackson, Mississippi. It just seems that unless something’s pushed, unless you litigate, nothing happens.”

By prevailing in the nation’s highest court, Meredith had changed the rules of the game.

Kennedy, a Massachusetts-born liberal, had little interest in leading the way in the fight for equality, but he had publicly committed himself to civil rights.

Neither Governor Barnett nor President Kennedy relished this particular face-off, but thanks to Meredith, they couldn’t avoid it.

As a result, Meredith now found himself nose to nose with the rabidly segregationist governor of his home state.

“Gentlemen, my conscience is clear,” Barnett said.

At one point in the planning, his advisers even discussed sending in an entire Marine Corps division—a force large enough to subdue a small country.

The mob grew more brazen, lighting fires and shattering windows.

Twelve marshals lie broken and suffering along the blood-spattered corridors inside, nearly obscured now and then in the swirling clouds of tear gas.

Late that night, a deputy informed Katzenbach: “That’s not a riot out there anymore. It’s an armed insurrection.”

The rioters never figured out that Meredith had been secreted into his dorm room through a side entrance to the university, flanked by armed guards.

“We had slavery, Jim Crow, the failure to hand out forty acres and a mule; we had housing policy, veterans’ policy, redlining. The new culprit is higher education,” he said. “In the end higher education is part of the problem, not part of the solution."

A debilitating form of arthritis made it painful for him to move, yet somehow he radiated energy.

Earlier that year, the North Carolina legislature and governor had launched a radical program aimed at changing the way the state government functioned.

They cut taxes for the wealthy, reduced programs for the poor, slashed funding for education, threw up hurdles to voting, and even repealed the Racial Justice Act of 2009, which allowed death row inmates to challenge their convictions if they could prove that racial bias was involved.