his agents to inform local police agencies.) Government attention did increasingly turn to issues of civil unrest, but not with the aim of providing social programs to pacify the urban poor. The FBI, CIA, and military increasingly—and covertly—pushed back against the black power and antiwar movements that they feared could inspire a domestic revolution; a homegrown “Tet Offensive,” as historian Gerald McKnight put it.
Developed in response to the 1967 riots, the army’s “Civil Disturbance Plan,” known as Operation Garden Plot, allowed for “Federal forces to assist local authorities in the restoration and maintenance of law and order in the 50 states,” and, until 1971, as many as two army brigades remained on call specifically for this purpose.29 The official plans observe that:
Civil Disturbances which are beyond the control of the municipal or state authorities may occur at any time. Dissatisfaction with the environmental conditions contributing to racial unrest and civil disturbances and dissatisfaction with national policy as manifested in the anti-draft and anti-Vietnam demonstrations are recognized factors within the political and social structure. As such, they might provide a preconditioned base for a steadily deteriorating situation leading to demonstrations and violent attacks upon the social order. The consistency and intensity of these preconditions could lead in time to a situation of insurgency should external subversive forces develop successful control of the situation. Federal military intervention may be required to preserve life and property and maintain normal processes of government.30
The prospect of an American insurgency was not limited to planners in the Pentagon. By the end of 1967, the fear found a voice in the mainstream media. U.S. News & World Report ran an interview with Richard Stanger, a career State Department officer who specialized in studying foreign insurrections. Asked if an “open insurrection [in the United States] is within the realm of possibility,” Stanger answered:
Yes, it is well within the realm of possibility. The evidence is that we are now in a transition. We are passing from mere nuisance demonstrations over civil rights and the Vietnam War to something much more violent and dangerous . . . I fear we have witnessed only a beginning. The demonstrations may well become more violent and the rioting [may] get worse, unless something drastic is done. Invariably violence feeds on itself—and it is habit-forming.”31
Like the biblical prophets he quoted so often in his sermons, King occupied a unique position in a country that seemed on the brink of some kind of sectarian civil war in 1967. His country increasingly turned its back on him the more he called on it to repent of its ways. Appeals to “law and order,” from the likes of presidential candidate Richard Nixon, resonated more with white America than King’s calls for equality and justice. He called on black Americans to remember the philosophy and tactics that won them hard-earned gains in the first half of the decade, even as frustration boiled into violence in their hometowns.
But even as King’s message of nonviolence lost its appeal, and even as white Americans condemned King as an agitator, he retained his esteem as a person within the black community. He remained, by a large margin, the most revered figure in the black community, according to polls. As such he became an almost perfect target of opportunity. The assassination of Dr. King—in as public and dramatic a fashion as possible—could well represent what we now refer to as a tipping point, a single act that could move the nation into widespread rioting and a full-scale white-on-black, black-on-white race war.
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