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Introduction
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Why We Can’t Wait, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History, Progress, and Change
Unity, Community Organizing, and Leadership
Religion, Morality, and Hope
Complacency, Ignorance, and the Status Quo
Summary
Analysis
Many Americans entered the summer of 1963 with the expectation that it would be a peaceful, prosperous season. Soon enough, though, the country entered a tumultuous period of upheaval that Dr. King considers the third revolution in the United States, dubbing it “the Negro Revolution.”
Dr. King refers to the American Revolution and the Civil War in this section. The American Revolution took place between 1775 and 1781, a period in which the original American colonies won independence from the British crown, officially establishing the United States. The American Civil War was fought between 1861 and 1865, as northern states in the Union fought against southern states in the Confederacy, eventually abolishing slavery and dissolving the Confederacy. By couching the civil rights movement in the historical context of these fights for freedom, Dr. King frames the campaign for racial equality as a moral and pivotal fight in the nation’s overall path toward justice.
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Like the French Revolution in 1789, the 1963 push for racial equality largely took place in the streets, as most of the country’s cities became embroiled in a struggle against segregation. White people in the United States had come to see Black people as subservient and submissive, resigned to the many laws and social customs that prohibited them from enjoying the same liberties as white citizens. In reality, though, the Black community had been slowly building up the strength and will to stand up against racism—and in 1963, 300 years of oppression finally brought themselves to bear on the country.
Dr. King underscores the fact that the civil rights movement was a grassroots effort that played out in a very tangible way—it wasn’t some abstract call for equality. Rather, it was a pressing, urgent effort led by the Black community itself. Despite the sense of urgency in the Black community, though, the vast majority of white Americans showed complacency, assuming that the current system wasn’t so bad and believing that Black Americans should simply wait for change. In fact, the country’s ignorance was one of the civil rights movement’s biggest stumbling blocks.
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Several years ago, Dr. King was in Harlem signing books when he felt a sharp pain in his chest. Looking up, he realized he’d been stabbed by a woman brandishing a letter opener. Upon reaching the hospital, he languished in pain for several hours before going into surgery. Later, the chief surgeon told him why he’d had to wait so long: the sharp tip of the letter opener had been touching his heart, so it was necessary to open his entire chest. If he had sneezed just once, the blade would have pierced his heart and flooded his chest with blood. In the summer of 1963, Dr. King writes, the United States faced the same kind of urgency.
If it weren’t for the social revolution that took place in 1963, Dr. King believes that the nation would have descended into horrible violence. Because Black Americans have suffered for so long, though, Dr. King turns his attention to an important question: of all times, why did the revolution come about in 1963?
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It has taken the United States an incredibly long time to achieve desegregation. Even though the Supreme Court determined in 1954 that it was illegal to segregate schools based on race, only 9 percent of Black students in the South had started attending integrated schools by 1963. To put this into perspective, such a pace would mean that total integration in the South wouldn’t happen until 2054.
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White southerners strongly renounced the Supreme Court’s decision to integrate schools. Racists went out of their way to make integration all but impossible, using all kinds of tactics to counteract the Supreme Court’s legal intentions. What’s more, the Supreme Court passed the Pupil Placement Law shortly after its 1954 decision to integrate. The Pupil Placement Law dictated that states were allowed to determine the placement of students based on “subjective criteria.” Although the Supreme Court didn’t fully take back its own decision, then, it ensured that school segregation would continue even though it was technically illegal.
One of the reasons that the Black community organized a revolution in 1963 is that Black people were severely disappointed that the desegregation law of 1954 hadn’t led to any sense of true progress. Furthermore, Black Americans were unhappy with their political representatives, as even progressive candidates who ran their campaigns on the promise of racial justice backed away from such ideas once they took office. President Kennedy, for example, was in the White House for two years before he acted on his pledge to address housing discrimination—and the bill he signed to address this discrimination wasn’t as helpful as it could have been.
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As the Black community stood up against various injustices in the years leading up to 1963, white officials often urged organizers like Dr. King to stop protesting. Instead of marching in the streets, white officials said, the Black community ought to focus on registering Black Americans to vote. Dr. King recognizes the importance of voting, but he was weary at the time of focusing on just one issue.
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Dr. King also notes that any discussion of racial equality should take the bigger picture of international politics into account—after all, the United States has long developed foreign policy based on the idea of preserving freedom at all costs. But as the country fought for freedom abroad, it denied its own Black citizens that very same liberty. Meanwhile, Black Americans watched as African and Asian nations won their freedom from colonization in the aftermath of World War II. By 1963, then, Black Americans were ready for true freedom in their own country.
The 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation was an exciting event, but it also gave Black Americans an occasion to reflect on how little had changed since Abraham Lincoln tried to establish racial equality. Although Lincoln freed Black people from the horrors of slavery, daily living conditions remained bleak and strenuous. By 1963, the majority of Black Americans faced extreme poverty and no clear path to success, especially since the lack of adequate education in most Black communities made it that much harder for Black people to acquire skills that would help them find good jobs.
One of the defining elements of the push for racial equality in 1963 was the focus on nonviolent direct action. Dr. King sees this nonviolence as something that aligns with Christian values—values that are, in his estimation, at the heart of the entire nation. The Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956 proved that nonviolent direct action is an effective tool for addressing injustice. By 1963, then, the Black community was ready to use a nonviolent approach on a large scale. According to Dr. King, nonviolence is a “powerful and just weapon” that “ennobles” whoever uses it. It is the “sword that heals.”
