ABSTRACT
Sometimes we in the United States like to tell ourselves comfortable myths about the origins of progressive social change. In one story, for instance, we like to think that politicians ultimately decided to abolish Jim Crow segregation because they were swept up in a broader cultural transformation happening across our country, being spurred on by the eloquence and wisdom of civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While there certainly is truth in the idea that changes in people’s thinking and attitudes can instigate broader changes in the priorities of governments, sociologists who have studied the Civil Rights Movement argue that the story is much more complicated. For example, conventional narratives of the Civil Rights Movement overlook the real person of Dr. King by glossing over the fact that he wasn’t simply on a mission to promote “diversity” in American institutions and did not only challenge legally codifi ed racism, but also sought to challenge the ways that racism was embedded in the U.S. economy (Dyson 2001). Dr. King was also a strong critic of the Vietnam War and expressed a vision for the fundamental transformation of the United States in order to achieve justice, peace, and equality both at home and around the world (King 1967).
