the humblest tasks. He reminded his followers that too many black people lived beyond their means, spent their money on "frivolities," failed to maintain high standards of personal cleanliness, drank to excess, and made themselves objectionable by "loud and boisterous" behavior. "We must not let the fact that we are the victims of injustice lull us into abrogating responsibility for our own lives." ^* If he had been accused of upholding petty-bourgeois values, King would probably have taken the accusation as a compliment. He did not hesitate to condemn rock and roll as "totally incompatible" with gospel music, on the grounds that it "often plunges men's minds into degrading and immoral depths." Andrew Young did not misrepresent the civil rights movement when he described it, "up until 1965 anyway," as "really a middle-class movement," with "middle-class aspirations" and a "middle-class membership." "Even though a lot of poor people went to jail," Young said, "... it was still essentially a middle-class operation."

The movement drew its strength not only from the lower-middle-class culture of Southern blacks but also from the regional culture of the South itself, to which it bore a complex and ambivalent relationship. Since the dominant view of the Southern way of life included a determination to keep the South a "white man's country," the movement might have been expected to swear eternal enmity to everything Southern. Instead it was informed by an understanding that the history of Southern blacks was intricately intertwined with that of their oppressors. Explaining his decision to return to the South after completing his studies in Boston, King spoke not only of a "moral obligation" but of the positive attractions of the land of his youth. "The South, after all, was our home. Despite its shortcomings we loved it as home and had a real desire to do something about the problems that we had felt so keenly as youngsters." In his

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According to David Garrow, Stanley Levison urged King to eliminate this discussion of self-help from the manuscript of Stride Toward Freedom, his autobiographical account of the Montgomery bus boycott. "The section on Negro self-improvement is undesirable," Levison said. "... The goal should be to activate, and organize people toward the main objective rather than appeal for change of character separated from the pursuit of social goals." The burden of Levison's advice, over the years, was consistently to urge King toward a social democratic position.

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