ABSTRACT
The problems that King had confronted throughout 1967 showed little sign of abating as the year neared its close. The hostile, coordinated press reaction to his Riverside speech against the Vietnam War was proof of his rift with the Johnson administration. The violent July disorders in Newark and Detroit revealed not only the unwillingness of many African Americans to rely on King’s nonviolent protest methods, but also how the deteriorating ghetto conditions fed the culture of violence from which King still hoped to redeem the United States. The fragility of SCLC’s financial position, the low morale of its field staff, the wrangling between King’s lieutenants, and the open antipathy between moderate civil rights organizations, like the NAACP, and the militant Black Power groups, eagerly reported by the media, compounded his difficulties.
