Taylor Branch

Taylor Branch makes the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the primary focus of this first volume,
while he illuminates the faith and strength of the many brave, daring, and controversial men and women who supported,
inspired and sustained him. That Dr. King did not always do the same for them is an example of the author's extensive
research, sparing no one, Black or White, male or female, rich or poor, Baptist or Atheist, radical or conservative - from the Kennedys to King -
to examine
fault show more lines, evil, and greatness.

From Vernon Johns and Stanley Levison to Robert Moses, Bayard Rustin, and John Lewis, all are heroes!

Taylor Branch moves with understated eloquence and honesty as he relates how kids were risking their lives
in pursuit of FREEDOM while their rich religious elders and the liberal establishment in Washington created
a violent farce for white racists to gloat over. They could continue to murder, then sue the survivors for creating a disturbance.

Questions: Did MLK ever help those men he was imprisoned with? He gave them a promise.

Why did Eisenhower do so little to help?

and, most important, would Dr. King have sent his own children out to face the deadly hoses and the snarling dogs?
The "Children's March" that saved The South could so easily have turned into the Bull Connor/George Wallace Children's Massacre.

Would King and the other pacifist leaders have confronted the men who sent that little girl rolling down the street?

How did the rich northern Baptist churches justify themselves when so many African Americans in the South
faced lives of near-starvation, poverty, and no schools, doctors, or hospitals?

The author 'parts the waters' is so many ways, revealing the lame and dangerous excuses the Kennedys offered for their refusals
to send in the desperately needed federal forces to end and prevent the violence and murders of those merely seeking to register to vote.
Where was the promised "Voter Protection?!?"
And why did the Baptist leaders waste so much time and money on ridiculous confrontations
like the Taylor Preacher fracas? Again, Taylor Branch spares no fools.

What could be improved are the confusingly marked photographs, notably the first set. show less

A monumental work in scope, research and importance. Although Martin Luther King, Jr. is the central figure, the book isn't exactly a biography of MLK, it's more a biography of a movement that changed the United States and became an inspiration for many other social movements. The work and sacrifices of hundreds of people is chronicled within this book, which can be a little daunting especially when you consider that at over 900 pages of text and another 150 or so of notes, references and show more the index, this is only the first book in a trilogy. Lucky for us, the writing is clear and the stories of the struggle are filled with drama, poignancy, and political gamesmanship.
Although incredible gains have been made in the 70 years since the time this book covers, this book still resonates as many of the issues still exist. Black people are incarcerated more easily and more subject to police violence, voting rights are being attacked and, in general, the administration currently seems to agree with many that somehow civil rights went too far.
In terms of the book, my only complaint is that the chapters are too long. I wish the author could have figured out a way to break them up into more digestible chunks. Even so, I look forward to reading the next book in the trilogy. show less

Most of this book was as thorough and well-researched as the first in the trilogy. There were two significant issues, though.

First, the beginning of this book (at least 20% of the text) repeats time covered in the first book. There's enough new information that the reader can't skip it altogether, but enough repeated that reading gets pretty tedious.

Second, this book does not do a good job of explaining Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, or the Nation of Islam. None of them were substantially show more introduced in the first book (despite being active in that time period) and they don't receive enough background in this book. In particular, their role in the civil rights movement and their goals seem to receive less attention than their internal power struggles. show less

Written with "skill and passion" by an admirer of King, Brach's thesis is that King is the central figure of US history in the 50s and 60s. Present here in a compelling biography with all of his strengths and his weaknesses, King's representative status is only matched by the Kennedys who appear in the second half of the narrative as a politicized foil to the sincere convictions of King. At various points in the narrative, it becomes clear that the Kennedys are over their heads in the world show more of racial politics and John, at least, is portrayed as much more comfortable in foreign policy than in race matters. The Kennedys' attempts to "manage" the civil rights movement to their own political advantage almost leads to serious bloodshed in the context of both the Freedom Rides and the admission of James Meredith to Ole Miss.

Clayborne Carson, in reviewing the book for the Journal of Southern History, casts the main theme of the book as a struggle between civil rights activists and the national liberal leadership:

No previous work has revealed so clearly the contrast between, on the one hand, the worldview of activists transformed by their experiences in the expanding southern struggle and, on the other hand, that of national liberal leaders, who consistently misunderstood the political implications of mass black activism, seeing it merely as a bothersome and potentially dangerous manifestation of discontent rather than as an effort to achieve constantly redefined racial aspirations. (p. 562)

Branch provides an intimate portrait of the Kennedy Justice Department, an organizational which Harris Wofford was relatively insignificant and Burke Marshall was chosen to head the Civil Rights Division because of his lack of Civil Rights experience. Kennedy became a reluctant convert to the civil rights cause only after events had moved him against his own personal apathy and resistance to take up the cause.

Amongst the other portraits of national leaders, J. Edgar Hoover comes through as the ultimate bureaucratic politician. Using his finely tuned political intelligence organization, Hoover was able to influence national policy while claiming for his G-Men the ability to stay above the fray as the civil rights of blacks were violated in the South. Building on the work of David Garrow, we see Hoover as the vindictive and petty man who guarded his bureaucratic power against all challengers.

Starting the book with a highly engaging portrait of Vernon Johns, MLK's predecessor in the Montgomery pulpit, the book it is also a sensitive portrait of the black church and its role within the movement. Branch shows that the church was a real source of strength for the movement but also that the movement was riven by the conflicts within the Church, as King's moderate activist wing sparred with conservative fundamentalists.

In his second volume Pillar of Fire, according to William Chafe, the central role of King is lost amongst a welter of detail. James Findlay makes the same point about this second volume, noting that the work is the worse for this loss of King as the central thread to the book. More fundamentally, John Dittmer in reviewing the second volume for Reviews in American History, faults that volume for missing the importance of local people. Missing from this account of "old-fashioned" race history are the accounts of Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash Bevel along with anyone else not "deemed important enough to have their telephone conversations taped." show less