As I understand, this is the chronology. The Civil Rights marches were a purely southern thing in its infancy.
At that time, northern Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender were trying to tell southern blacks to sell everything and move up north. Southern blacks had gotten their land in blood. Yes, many moved up north (The Great Migration) but most stayed because they were part of the soil so to speak.
In the mid 1950s its was southern Blacks. Then northern Blacks. THEN whites , in the '60s mainly, when it was already on TV and when they marched they weren't going to get the same treatment as the first marchers did. Selma was 1965. Whites weren't around in '55, '56 like that. Blacks were taking the heaviest beatings alone.
And those white varied. Catholic priests were very prominent, 54 miles to freedom: Catholics were prominent in 1965 Selma march so were protestant clergy and basic white liberals. Many Jews did march. We have to understand that the Holocaust was very fresh. 1960 is only 15 years after 1945. There were 1000s of Jewish immigrants who still had tattoos from the death camps with their camp ID number on it. By this time, though, the movement was already well underway.
Anyway, what this narrative leaves out was how it was a wide cornucopia of whites. They came SEVERAL YEARS in, when the heavy lifting was already done.
