This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "David and Goliath" by Malcolm Gladwell. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.
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What is Project C? Why was it so important to the American Civil Rights Movement and America’s history? And what can we learn from it?
Project C (“C” for confrontation) was a series of Birmingham sit-ins, marches, and boycotts organized by civil rights leader Wyatt Walker.
Learn how Project C made the fight for equality in America so visible and urgent that the government could no longer ignore it.
The Origins of Project C
When the conventional way doesn’t work, try something unconventional. For instance, the leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement had to play by their own rules with Project C because society’s didn’t work for them.
Martin Luther King, Jr., and many Civil Rights activists, came from a community that had been enslaved and oppressed for hundreds of years. Being an underdog community for centuries was a clear disadvantage to its members. But it also taught them how to operate as underdogs and win. African Americans were not respected by the societies they sought to transform. They couldn’t lose a respect they never had. This made them freer in their strategies than their opponents.
Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement like Wyatt Walker, the executive director of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, took inspiration from the “trickster” tales passed down through generations. Walker’s strategy for fighting racism in Birmingham is a powerful real-world example of the use of trickster techniques to outsmart Goliath.
The Purpose of Project C
The last stage of Project C was a series of marches devised, in part, to fill up the jails with protesters. Jailing marchers was one way the local government sought to smother the “civil rights problem,” but what would public safety commissioner Bull Connor do when all the jails were full? He would have to deal with the protesters directly. This was the genius of Project C.
The success of Project C depended on getting Bull Connor to fight back. The hope was that if they could get Connor to blatantly mistreat protesters, the news coverage would generate sympathy for the movement across the nation and in the government.
Connor didn’t want King’s marchers to cross into “white” Birmingham, and he would do anything in his power to keep them from doing it. Walker and King knew this about Connor. They also knew that Connor was itching for a fight. Project C was classic Brer Rabbit—figuring out what the enemy wanted more than anything and then using that knowledge to bait him.
As tricky as it was, a version of Project C had already failed at least once. Walker and King had just come from Albany, Georgia, where their campaign was a disaster. The Albany police chief, Laurie Pritchett, was not only a strong Goliath but a smart one–he saw what Walker and King were up to and refused to take the bait. He dealt with them in a friendly and respectful way. Pritchett even bailed King out of jail. Instead of directing sympathy toward the civil rights protesters, the lack of confrontation in Albany made Pritchett and his community look good.
Walker couldn’t fail again so soon after the Albany debacle. He was depending on Connor being a different kind of foe than Pritchett.
Three Tricky Tactics of Project C
Project C Trick #1: The March with Imaginary Protesters
Many Blacks in Birmingham worried (justifiably) that they would lose their jobs if they marched with King. Walker couldn’t get people to show up.
This first trick was actually a felicitous mishap: Walker and his 22 marchers were scheduled to march at 2:30, but were delayed until 4. By the time they started marching, thousands had shown up to watch the demonstration. The next day, confused journalists reported that eleven hundred demonstrators had marched. Inspired by this unexpected success, Walker scheduled future marches for the late afternoon, when many people were leaving work and available to form an audience. The papers continued to report that thousands were demonstrating in the streets, when only a couple dozen of the crowd were actual protesters.
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- Why being the underdog can actually be an advantage
- Why you shouldn't be afraid of powerful giants
- Strategies to get an edge when you're overpowered
