In his influential book Stride toward Freedom, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. argued that the United States had displayed "a schizophrenic personality on the question of race." In making this statement, he linked the double consciousness that black people experienced on a daily basis to the broader American body politic.The United States, King wrote, "has been torn between two selves-a self in which she has proudly professed democracy and a self in which she has sadly practiced the antithesis of democracy:' This bipolarity had plagued the United States since the birth of the Republic. King recognized in the civil rights movement, and in the federal government's and some white people's responses to it, the awakening of America to its finest and democratic self. For many blacks, the willingness of the Supreme Court to begin dismantling Jim Crow, the readiness of the Congress to debate new civil rights legislation, and the ability of local governments to address civil rights issues represented the coming victory of black liberal reform over American racism.