The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement

Summary

Taylor Branch,author of the acclaimed America in the King Years trilogy, presents theessential moments of civil rights history in clear context and gripping detail.

The King Years delivers riveting tales of everyday heroeswho achieved miracles in constructive purpose and yet poignantly fell short.Here is the full sweep of an era that still reverberates in national politics.Its legacy remains unsettled; there are further lessons to be discovered beforefree citizens can once again move officials to address the most intractable,fearful dilemmas. This vital primer amply fulfills its author’s dedication:“For students of freedom and teachers of history.”

This compact volumebrings to life eighteen pivotal dramas, beginning with the impromptu speechthat turned an untested, twenty-six-year-old Martin Luther King forever into apublic figure on the first night of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. Five yearslater, minority students filled the jails in a 1960 sit-in movement, and in1961, the Freedom Riders seized national attention.

Branch interpretsKing’s famous speech at the 1963 March on Washington then relives theBirmingham church bombing that challenged his dream of equal souls and equalvotes. We see student leader Bob Moses mobilize college volunteers forMississippi’s 1964 Freedom Summer, and a decade-long movement at last securesthe first of several landmark laws for equal rights. At the same time, thepresidential nominating conventions were drawn into sharp and unprecedentedparty realignment.

In “King, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Nobel PeacePrize,” Branch details the covert use of state power for a personal vendetta.“Crossroads in Selma” describes King’s ordeal to steer the battered citizen’smovement through hopes and threats from every level of government. “Crossroadsin Vietnam” glimpses the ominous wartime split between King and PresidentLyndon Johnson. As backlash shadowed a Chicago campaign to expose northernprejudice, and the Black Power slogan of Stokely Carmichael captivated a worldgrown weary of nonviolent protest, King grew ever more isolated. As Branchwrites, King “pushed downward into lonelier causes until he wound up among thesanitation workers of Memphis.” A requiem chapter leads to his fatefulassassination.