rights leadership by surprise and off guard (Thomas, 1974: 16 17). Weren't things becoming steadily better for blacks? While northern urban blacks did not directly benefit from the overturn of Jim Crow discrimination laws in the South, didn't they benefit from a new culture and politics that made racism less acceptable. Wasn't a rising economy and the War on Poverty offering them more opportunities than they had before? The ghetto riots of the middle 1960s were not only frightening, they were mysterious.
One of the few observers not caught by surprise was the black nationalist leader, Malcolm X (Thomas, 1974: 17). He argued, forcefully, that the lifting of the old system of official discrimination only made the real oppression of inner city blacks, by general white racism and by the economic system, more starkly visible. Black people could now ride in the front of the bus if they could afford the bus fare. The visible hand of Jim Crow, holding black Americans down, was replaced by the invisible hand of economic forces.
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