In this stirring follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Parting
the Waters (1988), Branch recalls the terror, dissension, and
courage of the civil-rights movement at its zenith: the mid-1960s
agitation leading to landmark integration and voting-rights
legislation. With deft narrative skill, Branch shows how the lives
of individuals and the nation as a whole were transformed in such
diverse settings as Birmingham, Ala., where legendary protests
occurred; the LBJ White House; and South-Central L.A., where a 1962
shooting involving police and Black Muslims signaled the start of a
decade of urban tensions. Memoirs, oral histories, interviews, and
recently revealed FBI wiretaps enable Branch to trace the
inexorable momentum of change almost day by day. He also details
the overlapping goals, tactical disputes, and petty jealousies
among and within major movement organizations, including the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, and the NAACP. Straddling a narrative
filled with a novel's-worth of fascinating real-life characters are
two spellbinding, tormented figures epitomizing two poles of
protest: Martin Luther King Jr., unnerved by FBI surveillance of
his philandering, so resentful of Kennedy caution over civil-rights
advocacy that he cracked an obscene joke while watching the
president's funeral, yet winning a Nobel Peace Prize; and Malcolm
X, shattered by his discovery that mentor Elijah Muhammad had
impregnated several secretaries, attempting on the fly to plot a
new course away from the Nation of Islam before his assassination.
Finally, Branch foreshadows the forces and events that were to
stall the movement in the next few years: a Republican Party making
inroads in the South during Barry Goldwater's otherwise disastrous
campaign, the alienation of white liberals from militant blacks,
and the Vietnam War. With a third volume to come, this history is
taking pride of place among the dozens of fine chronicles of this
time of tumult and moral witness in American history. (Kirkus
Reviews)
In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the Civil Rights Movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage.
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