ABSTRACT
American democracy has lately been placed on trial by the civil rights movement. The Negro's campaign exposes the mutually supportive character of the two foundation principles of the American political system: popular control of government and limited power to govern. The meager description of the Negro's strategies and tactics is none the less sufficient to show how he resorts to both the populist and the pluralist demand-response systems. The Negro seeks the support of government. Indeed he seeks to force the officials of government to fulfill their acknowledged obligations and enlarge their conceptions of obligation. The plausibility of the superficial judgment is challenged when one contemplates the possibility that lawlessness is a consequence of selective enforcement of the law as well as personal dislike for law. The white man's countercampaigns, of course, are even further removed from revolutionary implications; they are wholly directed to preservation of the present system.
