What I admired about Joe Black was that he wasn’t just trying to get media attention by spouting off controversial remarks. He was not shy about giving his opinions, however, he picked his “fights” with forethought and ignored the petty stuff.

It is interesting to me that the attitude then seems to have been not much different than now. “Racism? What racism? Everything is just normal here.” I’m guessing it was the same before that too, people assuming minorities were being treated with exactly the right amount of respect and consideration, and that nothing needed to change. The problem now is that there seem to be fewer people who care–there are certainly fewer activists. From what I understand of the sixties much of the public was still an inherently complacent herd; there were just a lot more gadflies.