Our understanding of the “good” has expanded beyond thelone-dreamer theory to embrace other activists, like King’s partner inBirmingham, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Yet the evil segregationist archetypeis fixed in the popular mind as the villainous housewife of “The Help” or thecretinous mob of “Django Unchained” — nobody we’d ever know, or certainly everbe. But the disquieting reality is that the conflict wasbetween not good and evil, but good and normal. The brute racism that todayseems like mass social insanity was a “way of life” practiced by ordinary“good” people. According to the Southern community’s consensus of“normal,” those fighting for rights now considered mainstream were“extremists,” and public servants could rationalize plans to murder men likeShuttlesworth, confident that they were on the right side of history.
