Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in David and Goliath, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Convention and the Status Quo
Hardship and Resilience
Conviction, Morality, and Empathy
Summary
Analysis
The most famous photograph of the civil rights movement, Gladwell asserts, is of a black teenage boy getting attacked by two police dogs. It was taken on May 3, 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama during a confrontation between nonviolent black activists and the city’s police force, which was following the orders of a racist man named Eugene “Bull” Connor, the public safety commissioner. The picture was taken by a member of the Associated Press and circulated widely throughout the country, inviting widespread criticism of the Birmingham police. A year after the picture was taken, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed in Congress—an act that, according to many people, was all but “written in Birmingham.”
Gladwell’s interest in this picture is tied not only to the attention it garnered, but also to the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed only a year after its circulation. Because the photograph depicted a harrowing scene in which it seemed that a young black man was in danger for no reason, it incited anger throughout the country. Gladwell’s implication here is that the photograph contributed to the nation’s eventually legal condemnation of citizens having their rights abused. Therefore, the picture itself becomes evidence of the fact that terrible things—in this case, racism and violence—can lead to positive change.
Themes
Before the picture of the young black man getting attacked by police dogs was published, Martin Luther King, Jr., visited Birmingham. The civil rights movement, Gladwell says, wasn’t going well for the reverend, since he’d spent the past nine months organizing protests against segregation in Albany, Georgia to no avail. Although the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1954, segregation was still in full effect throughout the South. In Birmingham (which was one of the most dangerous places for black people in the South), Dr. King told his followers that he suspected not all of them would survive their efforts to end segregation. The reverend and his followers, Gladwell notes, were underdogs and were at a severe disadvantage in their struggle against racism. However, Gladwell upholds that the black community had always been underdogs, which meant they knew how to fight giants.
Gladwell applies his theory of underdogs to the black community during the civil rights movement, suggesting that the horrors of racism put people like Dr. King in a unique position from which to challenge the status quo. Under this interpretation, the black community at the time knew what it was like to face hardship and, as a result, was capable of great resilience.
Themes
Gladwell considers the figure of the “trickster hero” that prevails in many “oppressed cultures.” In particular, he looks at African American slave tales about Brer Rabbit, a cunning rabbit who manages to dupe Brer Fox time and again. Gladwell points out that many of these stories were popular among slaves because they celebrated the ability to outsmart individuals in positions of power—something that resonated with slaves who wanted to sabotage their masters by undermining them in subtle, creative ways. Gladwell then suggests there are several kinds of “desirable difficulty.” The first is the difficulty that comes from struggling with something like dyslexia. The second is the difficulty that comes from surviving a traumatic event like a bombing. And the third, he says, is “the unexpected freedom that comes from having nothing to lose.” After all, “the trickster gets to break the rules.”
Gladwell makes it clear in this section that he doesn’t just think the black community is capable of rising up against racists because they’re used to hardship, but also because they have very little to lose. Having faced adversity for a very long time in the United States, the leaders of the civil rights movement have no reason to shy away from trying to make things right. This, Gladwell argues, is a “desirable difficulty,” one that might take an unfortunate situation and achieve a positive outcome. What’s more, it has become rather clear that playing by society’s conventional rules has done little to help the civil rights movement, which is why Gladwell references Brer Rabbit’s trickster ways, intimating that it might be beneficial for certain members of the movement to change the way they challenge racist authorities.
Themes
Gladwell describes Wyatt Walker, a Baptist minister who works with Dr. King in 1960 to push back against segregation. In Birmingham, both Walker and King know they won’t be able to beat racism using traditional tactics. Luckily for them, though, Walker is a trickster like Brer Rabbit, which is why Dr. King asks him to find a way to incite a crisis in Birmingham, wanting to trick the racist Bull Connor into doing something the civil rights movement could use against him. Unlike Dr. King (who’s so morally principled that he once helped protect a white man from his security guards after the man tried to attack him), Walker is willing to sometimes “alter [his] morality for the sake of getting a job done.” And when it comes to facing Bull Connor, he knows he’s not up against a “moral situation.”
Wyatt Walker’s acknowledgement that Bull Connor isn’t a moral man underscores the value of trying new tactics that might not align with how people normally try to bring about social change. Because the individuals taking part in the civil rights movement have almost nothing to lose, it makes sense that Walker might want to break from convention and use “trickster” strategies to challenge racism in Birmingham. In turn, readers see once again that certain disadvantages can force people to think outside the box in ways that lead to positive outcomes.
Themes
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Dr. King knows his and Walker’s efforts in Birmingham must succeed, because the civil rights movement might flounder otherwise. Walker’s main plan is to stage a number of large marches with the intention of forcing the police to make multiple arrests, thereby packing the jails to capacity and forcing Bull Connor to stop responding with force to the civil rights movement. However, this plan proves more difficult than Walker expected, since people are hesitant to join the marches for fear of losing their jobs. After days of recruiting, Walker assembles only 22 protestors. Despite this, something unexpected happens: because so many people know about the impending march, they come outside to watch, but Walker and his protestors are slow to begin. This gives onlookers time to come out to the streets, making the march look significantly larger than it really is.
It makes sense that it would be hard to rally people to march in such a dangerous city and at such a volatile time, especially if the end goal is to crowd the jails. But when multiple people come to watch the protest, Walker gains an opportunity to use his “trickster” ways—if he can’t put together a band of protestors large enough to pressure the Birmingham police, he can at least trick people into thinking that the movement is larger than it really is. This, readers can see, is the kind of inventive thinking that ultimately helps underdogs effectively challenge “giants.”
Themes
The following day, the newspapers print stories about the large protests that took place the day before. Reading this, Walker realizes that the press misinterpreted the circumstances, assuming that any black person on the streets was a protestor. Taking note of this, Walker starts delaying all of his marches, giving spectators time to flock to the streets. Even when they only have 12 people marching, then, the press reports that they have 1,400. Walker partially attributes this to the fact that the white people running the press are blind to the difference between a black protester and a black bystander. Whereas “underdogs have to be students of the nuances of white expression,” people in power think they don’t need to pay close attention to those they believe are in positions of inferiority.
Walker’s realization that white people think they don’t need to pay attention to the supposedly powerless black people of the civil rights movement is critical, since it highlights the ways in which authority can lead to complacency and ignorance. Indeed, the press’s inability to distinguish black protestors from black bystanders not only reveals the white journalists’ racism, but also accentuates the notion that underdogs can sometimes benefit from the very circumstances that put them at a disadvantage in the first place—if, that is, they manage to capitalize on these circumstances in inventive ways.
Themes
After a month of marches, Walker and Dr. King decide to up the ante by reaching out to politically active minors. Because part of their movement entails teaching children nonviolent resistance, they pass out flyers instructing young people to meet them at their church, adding that the kids shouldn’t ask for permission. A popular local DJ also puts out a call that attracts many schoolchildren, using code to communicate that anyone who comes should be prepared to spend several nights in jail. It works. Children come in great numbers, marching out of the church holding hands, singing songs, and eventually getting into police cars to be hauled off to jail. At one point, a police officer by the church asks Shuttlesworth—who has also been involved in the planning—how many more children he has inside the church, and he lies by saying, “At least a thousand more.”
The idea to send children to the picket line is certainly unconventional, but Dr. King and Walker are desperate to ensure the civil rights movement maintains its momentum, fearing that a lull would destroy all of their previous efforts. In other words, their desperation opens them up to new ideas that they might otherwise discount. What’s more, when Shuttlesworth lies to the officer, he slyly tricks him into thinking that the movement is even stronger than it really is, once again using “trickster” tactics to prevail.
Themes
The next day, even more children skip school to protest. This time, the authorities are ready with water cannons and police-force dogs. Walker actively wants the police to use these crowd control methods, knowing the Birmingham police department will look terrible if they turn such vicious resources on mere children. And soon enough, when the protestors are about to cross the line separating “black Birmingham” from “white Birmingham”, Bull Connor orders the firemen to turn on their hoses, sending children flying against nearby walls. He also sics the dogs on them, leading to the now-famous photo of a black teenager with an apparently peaceful expression on his face getting attacked by a large German shepherd.
The civil rights movement strategically chose to put children in a somewhat unsafe position, hoping that the white authorities would do exactly what they end up doing. In this way, they use their opponents’ own power against them, turning that power into a disadvantage since the entire nation sees the heartlessness of the local Birmingham government and speaks out against it. Once again, then, readers see that an advantage isn’t an advantage in all circumstances, especially when a clever rival finds ways of using power against people in positions of authority.
Themes
Dr. King and Walker receive harsh criticism for putting children in harm’s way. The parents of these children assemble in the church while their teenagers are in jail, and Dr. King tries to console them by telling them not to worry, saying that the kids will have ample time to catch up on their reading while waiting for their release. This does little to calm the parents’ fears, but Walker and King don’t dwell on this, since they ultimately achieved what they set out to do: they incited national anger toward the Birmingham police. The only way for them to do this, Gladwell argues, was by tricking Bull Connor into showing force. Tricksters, Gladwell upholds, aren’t tricksters “by nature,” but “by necessity.”
Walker and Dr. King’s tactics of inciting anger across the nation are similar to Jay Freireich’s willingness to put terminally ill children through discomfort in order to find a cure for childhood leukemia. Unsurprisingly, their decision to call upon young people makes people uncomfortable. But this, Gladwell upholds, is what it takes for them to triumph over the racist Bull Connor.
Themes
Gladwell points out that the things society deems acceptable are often closely tied to the ways in which powerful people exclude or oppress underdogs. But there are other ways for underdogs to succeed, and this often requires people to manipulate certain circumstances. If people look closely at the picture of the dog mauling the teenager, for example, Gladwell says they will perhaps notice that the leash the police officer is holding is taut, suggesting that he’s trying to keep the dog back. They might also notice that the teenager’s knee is raised. Apparently, the young man grew up with dogs and knew to raise his knee to protect himself—he is, according to Gladwell, kicking the dog, not giving himself over to the attack. And yet, the picture tells a different story, one that altered the national conversation surrounding the civil rights movement.
The narrative that Walker helps create surrounding the civil rights movement is in keeping with reality: the treatment of black people in Birmingham, Alabama is inhumane. In order to properly spread this message, though, he has to think creatively. That the picture at the center of this conversation doesn’t depict exactly what it seems to ultimately indicates that it’s often necessary to use whatever resources are available, even if this means changing the rules of convention. This, at least, is Gladwell’s argument. However, it’s worth noting that while it is perhaps true that the teenager is in the process of kicking the dog, this doesn’t mean the circumstances surrounding the picture itself are any different than how they appear. After all, the teenager is surely only kicking the dog because it’s jumping at him, meaning that the police truly are using unnecessary force. All the same, Gladwell’s primary point about using giants’ own force against them remains intact.
Themes
