Why We Can't Wait

The city of Birmingham, Alabama, is the focus of the events described in this volume. Located in the South and described by King as “a community in which human rights had been trampled so long that that fear and oppression were as thick in its atmosphere as the smog from its factories” (42), Birmingham represents the racism of the South. King makes this point even more obvious by identifying Birmingham as arch-segregationistBull Connor’s city in the title of ChapterThree.

Birmingham also serves as a symbol of the complicity of the entire nation in segregation. King makes this point when he reminds the reader that U.S. Steel, a powerful business interest in Birmingham, is in the North, but refuses to do anything to about racist practices in Birmingham because the company benefits from inequalities in the labor market (138).

King also represents Birmingham as a place where nonviolent direct action succeeded in opening paths to greater liberation, thus making it into a symbol of the power of nonviolent direct action in the book. 

Although the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, is not directly recounted in the book, King describes the significance of his assassination in detail in the concluding chapter of the volume, “The Days to Come”: “We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy.