King was asking for things that should have been taken for granted, but all the same it was too much for the whites. That evening, Dennis came back to the Gaston and told George and Verena the counterproposals. The store owners were willing to desegregate fitting rooms immediately, other facilities after a delay. Five or six black employees could be promoted to “tie jobs” as soon as the demonstrations ended. The businessmen could do nothing about the prisoners, because that was a matter for the courts. Segregation of schools and other city facilities had to be referred to the mayor and the city council.

Dennis was pleased. For the first time ever, the whites were negotiating!

But Verena was scornful. “This is nothing,” she said. “They never ask two women to share a fitting room, so they’re hardly segregated in the first place. And there are more than five Negro men in Birmingham capable of putting on a tie. As for the rest—”

“They say they have no power to reverse the decisions of the courts or change the laws.”

“How naïve are you?” said Verena. “In this town, the courts and the city government do what the businessmen ask them to do.”

Bobby Kennedy asked George to put together a list of the most influential white businessmen in town, with their phone numbers. The president was going to call them personally and tell them they needed to compromise.

George noted other exciting signs. Mass meetings in Birmingham churches on Monday evening collected an amazing $40,000 in donations to the campaign: it took King’s people most of the night to count it all, which they did in a motel room rented for the purpose. Even more money was pouring in by mail. The movement normally lived from hand to mouth, but Bull Connor and his dogs had brought a massive windfall.

Verena and King’s people settled in for a late-night session in the sitting room of King’s suite, discussing how to keep the pressure on. George was not invited—he did not want to learn things he might feel obliged to report to Bobby—so he went to bed.

In the morning he put on his suit and went downstairs to King’s ten o’clock press conference. He found the motel courtyard crammed with more than a hundred journalists from all over the world, sweating under the Alabama sun. King’s Birmingham campaign was hot news—again thanks to Bull Connor. “The activities which have taken place in Birmingham over the last few days mark the nonviolent movement’s coming of age,” King said. “This is the fulfillment of a dream.”

George could not see Verena anywhere, and the suspicion grew in him that the real action might be elsewhere. He left the motel and went around the corner to the church. He did not find Verena, but he did notice schoolchildren coming out of the church basement and getting into cars parked in a line along Fifth Avenue. He sensed an air of forced nonchalance about the adults supervising them.