Although the civil rights movement was remarkably united, it’s still the case that many Black Americans were hesitant to participate in the Birmingham campaign, at least in the beginning. By mentioning this hesitancy, Dr. King sheds light on one of the difficulties of community organizing, implying that some people make peace with oppression as a defense mechanism of sorts—by telling themselves that things weren’t so bad in Birmingham, some of the city’s Black citizens had given themselves a way to downplay the pain of racism and segregation. This technique, however, obviously didn’t address the problem, which is why Dr. King wanted to mobilize Black Americans to confront their oppressors.