At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68

America in the King Years #3

by Taylor Branch, Joe Morton (Read by)

At Canaan’s America in the King Years, 1965-68 is the final volume in Taylor Branch's magnificent history of America in the years of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War, recognized universally as the definitive account and ultimate recognition of Martin Luther King's heroic place in the nation's history.The final volume of Taylor Branch's monumental, much honored, and definitive history of the Civil Rights Movement (America in the King Years), At Canaan's Edge covers the final years of King's struggle to hold his non-violent movement together in the face of factionalism within the Movement, hostility and harassment of the Johnson Administration, the country torn apart by Vietnam, and his own attempt (and failure) to take the Freedom Movement north.At Canaan's Edge traces a seminal era in our defining national story, freedom. The narrative resumes in Selma, crucible of the voting rights struggle for black people across the South. The time is early 1965, when the modern Civil Rights Movement enters its second decade since the Supreme Court's Brown decision declared segregation by race a violation of the Constitution.From Selma, King's non-violent Movement is under threat from competing forces inside and outside. Branch chronicles the dramatic voting rights drives in Mississippi and Alabama, Meredith's murder, the challenge to King from the Johnson Administration and the FBI and other enemies. When King tries to bring his Movement north (to Chicago), he falters. Finally we reach Memphis, the garbage strike, King's assassination.Branch's magnificent trilogy makes clear why the Civil Rights Movement, and indeed King's leadership, are among the nation's enduring achievements.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, American History, Politics, Race, African American

ebook

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Taylor Branch is an American author and historian best known for his award-winning trilogy of books chronicling the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and some of the history of the American civil rights movement. The third and final volume of the 2,912-page trilogy — collectively called America in the King Years — was released in January 2006. Branch lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife, Christina Macy, and their two children, Macy (born 1980) and Franklin (b. 1983).

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[William2]

Some notes on a reading that seems especially timely. As MLK said in his paraphrase of Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

1. The book starts with the genesis of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march in 1965. It was originally the idea of the mentally challenged but very popular pastor and roué, James Bevel, in the wake of the shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson by an out of control Alabama State Police force. Later, KKK members go to a black church in Lowndes Country and terrify a gathering of 200 parishioners there to grieve. The writing is vivid, minutely detailed.

2. The animosity of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to MLK’s often freewheeling decision making, which often excluded them, is startling. SNCC, created by now Congressman John Lewis, was in a snit at the idea of a Selma to Montgomery march. Founder Lewis broke with his own organization to march. The pettiness of the motives surprise one.

3. J. Edgar Hoover, closeted queen and founder of the FBI, whom LBJ’s AG Katzenbach believes to be actively senile, calls MLK “the most notorious liar in the country.” (p. 34) I mean, talk about projection.

4. On 7 March 1965 the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march is attacked by state troopers, sheriff’s deputies and so-called possemen as soon as it begins to clear the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The black marchers are hit with billyclubs and brutally tear gassed. There are a lot of injuries. Many marchers race back to Brown Chapel in Selma, the march’s starting point. The are ruthlessly pursued by the peace officers and attacked the entire way.

5. On hearing the reports MLK appealed to clergy nationally to march the following day. ”No American is without responsibility,” King’s wire declared. “All are involved in the sorrow that arises from Selma to contaminate every crevice of our national life.” In response pastors, priests, and rabbis from around the country hop on planes and head to Selma: “800 travelers from 22 states.” (p. 73)

6. That night ABC breaks into its national broadcast of Judgement at Nuremberg starring Spencer Tracey to air the devastating footage from the Pettus Bridge. Forty million viewers have their evening entertainment interrupted. One wonders how many stayed with the movie after watching 15 ghastly minutes of policemen beating nonviolent demonstrators seeking their constitutional right to vote?

7. Branch contrasts the President’s willingness to commit soldiers to protect American bases in South Vietnam with his wallowing in legal entanglements implicit in sending troops into Alabama. The section when Gov. George Wallace visits the White House is a knock out; the almost convivial way the articulate Texan takes the racist governor apart is a marvel. After 3½ hours they tell the press that they’ve had “a frank exchange of views.” (!) (p. 98)

8. Jim Crow south sought to dehumanize African-Americans in a manner similar to the Nazis’ dehumanization of Jewish people—turning them into a degraded other. True, the lily-white south didn’t gas blacks—they needed them to clean their homes and raise their children—but what was lynching but a step in that direction? Slavery was certainly a form of genocide since only a percentage of captives survived the crossing. See work of Eric Foner and others. In fiction there’s the National Book Award winning The Middle Passage by Charles R. Johnson, and Booker Prize winning Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth.

9. “Many [U.S.] senators praised the Selma demonstrators for steadfast commitment to democratic principles. ‘As American citizens, they have faith in America,’” said one Republican senator, “‘and we must sustain that faith.’” (p. 124)

10. Then later, from a flatbed truck before the capital building in Montgomery, “King looked over heads massed down the gentle slope of Dexter Avenue to Court Square.” “‘There was never a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring,’” he said, “‘than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith, pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes.’ King saluted President Johnson’s ‘sensitivity to feel the will of the country’ and his forthrightness to recognize ‘the courage of the Negro for awakening the conscience of the nation....’” (p. 165)

[CoachJim · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest casualties of the Vietnam War was the Civil Rights movement. Prior to the escalation of the war in 1965 the Civil Rights Movement had garnered favorable public attention. Congress was debating and passing laws protecting the Civil and Voting rights of all Americans, and the news media was finally covering the murders, bombings and racial violence in the South. The country had just elected as president Lyndon Johnson who would initiate a domestic agenda that would have rivaled FDR’s. As his programs for a war on poverty and the Great Society were being enacted he found himself trapped in the war he had inherited in South Vietnam. Johnson feared being the president accused of losing Southeast Asia to communism.

This is the final volume of Taylor Branch’s trilogy on Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. It covers the years from 1965 to 1968. These are the last days of King’s life and also when the movement lost its momentum, partly due to the antiwar protests usurping energy for civil rights.

A common theme of Martin Luther King was that blaming the White Supremacists or the Ku Klux Klan was useless. That killing the people who hated would not accomplish anything. It was the hate that must be killed. But what was sustaining such hate? During a memorial service for James Reeb, a slain civil rights worker, King said the blame was wide. He blamed the religious leaders and irrelevant churches that kept “silent behind the safe security of stained glass windows.” He blamed the timidity of the federal government, and the broad apathy of everyday citizens.

The Civil Rights movement grew out of the frustration of Black Americans being denied the rights promised them by the U.S. Constitution. It was hopeless for them to expect complete emancipation from the menial social and economic position into which white Americans had forced them, merely by trusting in the moral sense of the white race. Nonviolence offered a path to force society to judge itself.

However, ultimately this is a history of the struggle for Black Americans to achieve the equal rights promised them by the Constitution. A struggle against the White establishment which chose to not see the injustice, a government that refuses to enforce the laws, and a dark history of the efforts by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to cripple Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. Whether one considers the movement a success or not it must be considered a watershed event in American history. This trilogy is essential for an understanding of American History.

“The American people are infected with racism—that is the peril,” King concluded. “Paradoxically, they are also infected with democratic ideals—that is the hope.”
(Page 746)

[Lee Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished (finally!). Either I'm older (and smarter), or this was the most readable volume in the trilogy. I didn't cry at the very end, but the "Mountaintop" speech did me in, and I'm glad to live in an internet age, since I could immediately go to YouTube and listen to the speech in its entirety.

Anyway, Taylor Branch does an amazing job (and he knows it, too: there are a few troubling, ego-inflating blurbs in the dust jacket puffery and the acknowledgements, but no matter--it's still a great book and I'm still a big fan) covering what I can only imagine were frightening times. This only deepening my love of LBJ. I know a lot of people who lived through those years hate him for Vietnam, but the man you see here, while really screwing up by getting in that war over what seems like fear of being seen as weak, is obviously so plagued by what happens, and really trying to do the right things civil rights-wise, that my heart still breaks for him. And it's even more frustrating to read about King, who is trying to be non-violent while all the people around him are against it, and the movement is collapsing from within and without.

This is a great series of books, and I wish more people would read and love them as I do. They aren't dry, but they aren't page turners, either. Ultimately, they are gratifying through what you learn.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-1968 is the final book in the Pulitzer prize-winning trilogy by Taylor Branch. This book focuses on the years, 1965 through 1968 in America, a time of marked social and political unrest as Martin Luther King continues to maintain non-violence in the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King had a strained and tumultuous relationship with President Lyndon Johnson, as he struggles to pass The Civil Rights Act of 1964 amid growing opposition and demonstrations against the raging war in Viet Nam. This expansive account was meticulously researched and captures the period of violence and unrest in America.

"A sudden roar signaled King's emergence. . . . .'Almighty God, thou has called us to walk for freedom, even as did the children of Israel,' King began in prayer from the steps of Brown Chapel."

"King rolled out citations from prophets and patriots to extol a fused source for justice--sacred and secular, equal souls and equal votes--ending this time with Isaiah and Jefferson: 'Every valley shall be exalted. . .and all flesh shall see it together.' 'We must work to make the Declaration of Independence real in our everyday lives.'"

" Johnson embraced this future. 'America was built by a nation,' he said on Liberty Island. Its founding ideals, 'fed from so many cultures and traditions and peoples,' shaped an outlook of unique experience. Americans feel safer and stronger, he asserted, 'in a world as varied as the people who make it up.'"

"By its visionary conception, and immense effect, the Immigration an Reform Act rightfully joined the two great civil rights laws as a third enduring pillar of the freedom movement."

"'The American people are infected with racism--that is the peril,' King concluded. 'Paradoxically, they are also infected with democratic ideals--that is the hope.'"

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most admirable conclusion to Taylor Branch’s trilogy of these tumultuous years.

Martin Luther King is a major moral force and catalyst in twentieth century American history. He was a guiding voice to the American people. He juxtaposed non-violence against racism and perfidious behaviour. He opposed the Vietnam War even though this jeopardized and eventually ended his relationship with President Lyndon Johnson.

Lyndon Johnson is also presented as a significant figure in transforming America away from discrimination by colour. He passed the Civil Rights Act and a strong Voting Rights Act and took racial discrimination out of immigration laws. All this literally changed the face of America. I felt Lyndon Johnson was, to some extent, dragged into the turmoil of the Vietnam War against “some” of his better judgement. He was warned by diverse people not to tread into this cauldron, where once in, extrication would prove difficult.

Hoover, like in the previous volumes, is an odious figure – running the F.B.I. as his personal fiefdom. He used personal gossip calumny to sway, manipulate and destroy those he disliked. Hoover was less effective with Johnson than with the Kennedy’s.

Stokely Carmichael is a far more sympathetic and rational than the firebrand Malcolm X. Stokely was in Alabama working with the people to help them vote, and he was jailed several times for this.

Martin Luther King was more successful in Chicago then what is generally attributed. He raised the race issue to the entire country and made Americans aware that racial hatred was not just a singular trait of the South. King is a primary force for bringing democracy and human rights to the forefront of America.

The magnificent three volumes of Taylor Branch are essential for understanding the transformation of the United States in the twentieth century.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"At Canaan's Edge" is the final volume of the trilogy of Taylor Branch's masterful telling of the tumult occurring on the social and political scene in the United States in the middle of the twentieth century. The important civil rights-related struggles of 1965 to 1968 are covered. The most troubling ideological element to emerge at this time was the role of violence in resolving civil disputes.

1965 marked a continuation of the Southern-focused strategy of organized demonstrations of massed volunteers and citizens, risking physical retaliation and jailing, under the prevailing leadership of the preacher membership of the SCLC, for the purpose of bringing not only local, but national attention to the usurpation of basic citizenship rights, especially the right to vote, for blacks. The book's first chapters show how Alabama's repression of its minority citizens led to the organizing of one of the seminal events in the Civil Rights Movement, the March, 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, which covered 54 miles over 5 days. The actual march which would witness the attendance of Martin Luther and Coretta King along with all of the leaders of SCLC and SNCC as well as celebrities actually followed an earlier attempt of March 7th, forever to be known as "Bloody Sunday" in which Alabama State Troopers and sheriff's deputies would create a spectacle of tear gassing and beatings of marching participants at the Pettis Bridge in Selma that will remain indelibly in the mind of anyone who has ever seen the newsreel footage of it.

President Lyndon Johnson was following news media and Justice Department reports of what was happening in Selma. The world's reaction to the images of what was happening in the United States no doubt concerned Johnson about the country's image abroad, but he also was personally repulsed by state of affairs in the South. He had devised a great legislative initiative which had been made into law with the Civil Rights Act of the previous year, and he was aware that further Great Society programs needed to get acted on while he was still in favor with the citizenry, as the hard-pressed successor to the late John F. Kennedy. The cold-blooded murder of Selma marcher Viola Liuzzo was part of a continuing series of events that added to the public's outrage over what was happening in the South. It wasn't that Johnson was a greatly skillful Capital Hill manipulator, which he was; he genuinely believed in using the powers of the government to right the racial wrongs of the last hundred years. During 1965, he would savor the success of signing into law Medicare, the Voting Rights Act and the Immigration Reform Act.

Things were changing significantly in the country by 1966, however. Branch seems to be saying that the driving force for a change in the public mood was an increasingly violent climate, both at home and abroad. Voting- and- other Civil Rights non violent movements were continuing to be met with overtly violent reactions from bystanders and the police, while assassins kept adding to the list of martyrs. A decision by King to take the struggle from the South to Northern Cities stretched the resources of SCLC and caused leadership rifts in the organization while not gaining much headway in the objective of ending racial discrimination in urban housing. The ballot struggles of poor people aligned with visiting priests, nuns, ministers, rabbi's, college students and the hierarchy's of the leading civil rights organizations became all but expunged, to use Branch's term, as Huey Newton and Bobby Seale preempted the formerly inoculous black panther ballot symbol of the Lowndes County Alabama Freedom Party and changed the tenor of urban social rebellion to militant black separatism (p. 548). And the American military was incurring heavy casualties as its presence in Southeast Asia increased significantly.

The reference to Vietnam is not coincidental, as Branch weaves his story back and forth between the domestic struggles and the war. King and Johnson would be early fellow-supporters of legislative initiatives to solve racial discrimination, although Johnson would always maintain an arms-length relationship of never letting King confer with him privately on the few occasions when he was invited to the White House. After passage of the Voting Rights Law, however, King came to terms with the fact that he could not support a government which was laying another country in waste while pursuing the colonial domination of the failed French.

By 1967, King was facing a situation in which the resort to violence was becoming an acceptable solution to the country's problems. Highly destructive urban race riots tore apart Detroit and Newark. SNCC was racked with discord as its leadership became more militant. Stokely Carmichael took the lead of the SNCC as he turned his back on his long history of nonviolent action with the organization. He would become one of the leading voices of Black Power, with its recognition of Malcom X's acceptance of violence as a way of life. King's nonviolent tactics were no longer considered to be cutting edge, or effective, even by some who had participated in his movement. And in Vietnam, where Johnson could not find a strategy to convince the North Vietnamese to agree to a cessation of fighting, American battle deaths averaged 770 per month in 1967 compared with 412 the previous year (p. 625).

Branch writes about a fascinating meeting which grew out of this violent climate (pp 662-664). In December, 1967, a forum of a hundred intellectuals met in New York to discuss issues of violence and power. Philosopher Hannah Arendt framed the debate with her assertion, against increasingly popular belief, that a close association between power and violence does not exist. She also threw doubt on classical dogma which assigns violence as essential to natural processes. This position had been contradicted by a "New York Times" survey, showing a shift on Integration among white liberals who were finding black power doctrines to be fashionable. Against Arendt and Noam Chomsky, dissenters insisted that physical rebellion in the form of riots was a legitimate response to humiliation. One of Hannah Arendt's challengers, Tom Hayden of SDS, passionately reflected what Stokely Carmichael was saying to justify action, violent action if necessary, to end the Vietnam War and racism in America in the fastest way possible.

Lyndon Johnson saw 1968 begin with cautiously optimistic military predictions that the worst may be over in Vietnam, as the Viet Cong appeared to be exhausted and battered after suffering much heavier losses than the Americans in battles. The Tet Offensive dispelled that fantasy, and Senator Eugene McCarthy came out of the wings to threaten Johnson as a formidable anti-war candidate in the upcoming Democratic Primary. Johnson was dealt a double blow when the Kerner Commission report on the previous year's urban civil disorders lambasted the government for not devoting enough resources to end poverty. It also nullified, in effect, Johnson's considerable efforts to pass civil rights laws by declaring that the nation was moving toward two unequal societies, one black and one white.

The resulting resignation of the sitting President from the upcoming election, along with his liberal agenda, and the growing shift of former liberals to conservatism (the original neo-conservatives) based on reactions of fear toward the magnitude of black migration to the cities, was not good news to King. He had already been blamed in the media for complicity in the urban riots by opening racial wounds with his speeches. Now, he was proposing a change of the SCLC's focus to fighting against poverty. This change in direction was threatening to some of the organization's leadership, partly because it would no longer be a black movement; it would ally black southern sharecroppers with chicano migrant farmers, white Appalachian and multi-racial poor people, for instance. King's closest advisors were also adamant that resources didn't exist for his proposed march of poor people to Washington, where thousands would set up make-shift camps in the shadow of Congress to shame the government into an awareness of their problems. The Washington march in particular would be delayed numerous times, especially when King decided to offer leadership to the Memphis sanitation workers who were facing repression and harassment in their efforts to organize for even minimum wages and working conditions.

Most distressing for King was the decline of nonviolence as a seriously considered agent of change. He attributed the widespread dismissal of his movement tactics to what he called "enemy thinking" (p. 559), the justification of violence by even religious leaders by walling off groups of people by category. According to this view, the nonviolent civil rights movement was outmoded in a society which was becoming more inured to violence. Naysayers even doubted that the great Birmingham and Selma movements did not produce results worthy of the great sacrifice in exertion and even human life involved. However, as Branch points out, the Birmingham governmental authorities' renunciation of the agreements to integrate facilities was overshadowed by its role in beginning the end of segregation sanctioned by national law, while the continuing brutality and harassment of minority voters in Alabama after Selma was accompanied by democratization of voting rights across the nation (p. 558).

King refused to be relegated to the sidelines in the wake of new and troubling social movement tactics. His involvement in the establishment and running of SCLC and its agendas had always shown his tremendous vision; his skill in this regard continued with his ability to see beyond voting and housing needs to the core of poverty itself. He also never stopped showing his leadership ability, most recently in his refusal to allow his most trusted confidantes to sway him from the direction he wanted to take his organization. I think a key to his leadership ability was his decision always to go where he knew he should go in terms of fighting injustices, and somehow the organization behind him just knew it must follow. Thus with the Memphis sanitation strike. His advisors tried to get him to avoid wasting time and energy in this dispute which was hardly noticed outside of Tennessee, but he forcefully, even angrily, told them that he was not going to waver from what he knew was right.

Branch mentions instances prior to the final trip to Memphis, where King was assassinated, of his having thoughts about his own death. This is not to suggest that his assassination was inevitable, but the knowledge of what had happened to Civil Rights martyrs whose deaths occurred just in the time parameters of this book, including Liuzzo, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Vernon Dahmer, Johathan Daniels and Rev. James Reeb, left no doubt of the risks that King was facing every day. His chances of growing old were slim, but King never wavered from offering his organizational skills, intellect, personal reputation and physical strength to furthering "nonviolent witness for democracy" (p. 559) as the central tenet of the Civil Rights movement.

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 5 out of 5]

“At Canaan’s Edge”, the third and final volume of Taylor Branch’s chronicle of America in the years of Martin Luther King is in many ways markedly different from its equally well written predecessors.
The first volume primarily dealt with King’s rise, the Birmingham bus boycott, and the creation of the SCLC as well as other civil rights groups. While there were numerous setbacks, progress was tangible and things were definitely moving forward under King’s leadership, culminating in 1963’s March on Washington.
Volume two sees the movement stall in the face of retrenched and violent segregationists at all levels of American society. Mississippi sees the Freedom Rides and the bombing of an Alabama church, killing four little girls. Vietnam begins to become an issue as does the interest in King from the FBI as J. Edgar Hoover through extensive and quasi-legal wiretaps attempts to discredit and destroy King and the movement. The volume ends however with Selma and the march over the Edmund Pettus bridge and what would be the summit for King and the civil rights movement.
Here in volume three Vietnam kicks into full swing. Lyndon Johnson becomes increasingly defensive and hostile to King’s criticism of the war. King’s SCLC faces bankruptcy as white benefactors withdraw contributions in response to King’s opposition to the war. Civil rights groups such as SNCC with Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown that once worked closely with King and the SLCC become increasingly militant and unwilling to follow the path of non-violence. King loses support within and without the movement and finds it difficult to gain momentum for new campaigns such as fair housing and fighting poverty. The years 1967-68 will be perhaps the unhappiest and most difficult of his life, culminating in his assassination in Memphis on the balcony of the Lorraine motel.

Looking back on the tremendous achievement of this book and the previous two volumes, (it is perhaps one of the most important histories of America ever written) there are a multitude of things I took away from this remarkable era.
The first was how much of a group effort this was. Of course everyone is familiar with King, and rightly so. He truly was the driving force behind so much of what occurred over this twelve year period. Many are also familiar with Rosa Parks, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Kennedy, John Lewis and others who sacrificed so much. For me however, it was the names, Black and White, that rarely get mentioned that were crucial to the movement on grassroots levels. Bob Moses, Fred Shuttlesworth, James Reeb, Stanley Levison, James Bevel, Hosea Williams, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Homer, Vernon Dahmer, and all those who were beaten, tortured, and killed don’t get the headlines when discussions of the civil rights movements happen, but they were as crucial as anyone for the strides we have made over the last 50 years. In fact, I will confess a kind of sadness in pitting this book down for the final time in that the stories of these courageous people became a part of me. I winced when they were beaten, I laughed when they laughed, I rejoiced when they rejoiced. It’s a credit to Branch that these brave men and women came to life as they did.
Secondly, I marveled that King in the face of overwhelming violence and hostility from segregationists North and South, infiltration and malicious harassment from the FBI (Hoover would in King’s case steadfastly refuse to follow protocol in warning a public figure of any threats received to their life) , and numerous setbacks, somehow managed to continue on for 12 years. Looking back on it, it’s nearly unfathomable that any human being would be strong enough to withstand the pressures that he did. This is not to say that King was a saint. Branch does not shy away from the fact that King carried on multiple affairs with various women (some of which the FBI recorded and threatened to expose if he didn’t commit suicide), and often had grave doubts if he could carry on. There is a poignant moment in September 1967 where King had recently been shouted down by Black militants during a speech. His organization was fracturing and he was finding it difficult to see any progress he or his organization was making. Branch writes:

“Late one night, King literally howled against the paralyzed debate. ‘I don’t want to do this any more!’ he shouted alone. ‘I want to go back to my little church!’ He banged around and yelled, which summoned anxious friends outside his room until Young and Abernathy gently removed his whiskey and talked him to bed. King greeted colleagues sheepishly the next day. ‘Well, now it’s established that I ain’t a saint’, he told newcomers before the retreat ended on Sunday, September 17.”

There are moments throughout the book where King breaks down into inconsolable tears. Moments where King was so disconsolate that aides summoned for Joan Baez to sing a song at his bedside to lift his spirits for the day ahead. These moments rather than showing weakness, show King’s humanity. He suffered and sacrificed, and yet he persevered in spite of knowing that the struggle would kill him in one form or another. Perhaps it is not surprising then that when Kind was killed at age 39, the autopsy revealed that he had the heart of a 60 year old man.
Finally, this finally volume deals extensively with Vietnam and King’s opposition to it. In retrospect where King has become a figure of hagiography, this is a part of his life (much like with Muhammad Ali) rarely talked about. And yet, it may be the most courageous of all the stands he took in his short life. This is not to say that Birmingham, Mississippi, Selma and all the flash points of the civil rights movement didn’t require courage. They certainly did. But it was also a movement that at the very minimum had support across a wide spectrum of the Black community and liberal Whites. Not so for Vietnam. King’s forceful opposition was deeply unpopular across racial lines and even in his own organization where many saw it as a distraction to the more pressing issues of housing, integrated schools, and jobs. What made King the visionary he was however is he saw the interconnectedness of Vietnam, poverty, and civil rights. One could not be dealt with without addressing the others. King’s speech at New York’s Riverside church in 1967 laid out his vision:

“I speak out against this war because I am disappointed in America. There can be no great disappointment where there is no great love.”

“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read, 'Vietnam' "

“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.”

“A time comes when silence is betrayal”

“We are called upon to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls enemies, No document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.”

King immediately felt a backlash. Donations dried up, he was widely condemned in the media and grudging public support for the civil rights movement evaporated overnight as liberal whites were troubled by a lack of patriotism. As Branch writes:

“The call for segregated silence on Vietnam dashed any expectation that King’s freedom movement had validated the citizenship credentials of blacks by historic mediation between the powerful and dispossessed. It relegated him again to the back of the bus, conspicuous yet invisible. King felt cut off even from disagreement, in a void worse than his accustomed fare of veneration or disfiguring hostility, and he broke down more than once into tears.”

King would became a marginalized figure during the last 18 months of his life. Forgotten by many and yet he continued to work for justice, to combat poverty, and even up until the day he died in Memphis, fairness and economic justice. His legacy over time would be rehabilitated and in many respects skewed. Today we remember King as the man famous for the March on Washington and creating a color blind society. This is a vast and inaccurate oversimplification of what he stood for. Rarely do we hear of the radical King. The King who decried America as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. Rarely do we hear of his call for a universal basic income to lift people out of poverty. Nor do we hear of the King who going frustrated with White condescension about non-violence would say:

“They applauded us on the freedom rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause and so noble in its praise that I was saying be nonviolent toward Bull Connor. There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say be nonviolent toward Jim Clark, but will curse you and damn you when you say be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There is something wrong with that!”

This is who King was and we do him a great disservice by sanitizing him to the degree we have, or pretending that were King to advocate these things in 2018, they he would be loved instead of most likely condemned and reviled as he was in 1967.

I don’t know what more can be said about these books or King and all those who struggled to transform America in profound ways. This is essential reading for anyone interested in this era or one of the most remarkable men America has ever produced. Perhaps the words King uttered a month before his death best sums up his life and our aspirations as those who struggle to continue what he began.

“It is well that it is within thine heart. It’s well that you are trying. You may not see it. The dream may not be fulfilled, but thank God this morning that we do have hearts to put something meaningful in.”

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read the first two volumes of this trilogy, I felt obliged to read the third. At times painfully detailed, this work, nevertheless is powerful, passionate and scholarly. The era (for the trilogy) is absolutely Shakespearean. King does not dominate in this book as much as in the first volume. Yet, such wonderful and ghastly characters: James Bevel, the emergent Jesse Jackson, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, and, for me, two stars in Doar and, especially Katzenbach. And always, when he enters the stage, LBJ. So conflicted, larger than life. Indeed, this work talks as much about Vietnam as the Civil Rights struggle. Every one needs to know this story. And for every one that knows this story, read this again. America, just 40 years ago. So hard to believe...but so brutally true.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Civil Rights movement was one of the greatest movements in American history. Like other social movements of the past, a groundswell of people stood up to demand more from their government than they had ever received before. Sadly, like other social movements of the past, the Civil Rights movement would become a victim of its own success as movement leaders either burned out or became more radical after foot-dragging by the federal government. Disagreements within the leadership over tactics and the Vietnam war would also do its part to tear the movement apart. Nobly, though, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., though exhausted by the end, would stick to his principles of nonviolence right up until his tragic assassination. Taylor Branch does an amazing job showing us how the Civil Rights movement reached the pinnacle of its power and influence with the Selma March for voting rights in 1965 and then slowly come apart by the time of Dr. King's death.

In terms of structure, this book occupies a kind of middle ground between the first and second volumes in this series. The average chapter length is about 20 pages or so, with the last chapters being some of the longest. But this volume is not nearly as long in narrative length as the first volume, nor is it as short as the second. While this entire series, including this book, are a tough slog, it is not as daunting as it might seem at first glance. And like the previous two volumes, Mr. Branch gives an extraordinary amount of detail. This series truly is the definitive account of this seminal moment in American history.

This volume starts with the Selma March for voting rights and offers a definitive account of that time. And while Dr. King and his allies would achieve a great victory with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the seeds for the movements slow downfall were visible underneath the surface during the march. Dr. King's allies in SNCC and elsewhere were beginning to doubt his leadership and commitment to nonviolence. And figures like Stokely Carmichael, who would push the movement in a more aggressive direction, would first make their appearances on the national stage. Mr. Branch deals with the myriad of issues, like "Black Power" and the urban riots of the period, deftly with a great deal of nuance. He also documents the movements growing cracks thanks to Vietnam and young leaders' dissatisfaction with the slow pace of integration. All of this would weigh heavily on Dr. King, who slowly but surely becomes more exhausted and less sure of where to go from Selma. His Poor People's March reinvigorated him like previous marches, but, sadly, he would never live to see it through. Indeed, in the last chapters I felt more and more empathy for Dr. King and was deeply moved. This is a testament to Mr. Branch's writing, honed over three volumes and two decades of research.

This is a particularly long book. Casual readers should not pick up this or any of the other volumes in this series lightly. But for the hardcore historian, this is a must read series on the Civil Rights movement and 20th century U.S. history.

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fabulous. I had a reasonably "good" historical education in school, and have read widely since, but knew embarrassingly little (nothing, really) about the civil rights movement.

Here's what I learned from the trilogy: 1. Stokely Carmichael and the other nonviolent workers in the South were saints. I'd never have endured 5 years of Mississippi race violence. I would have lasted maybe 6 months before turning to Black Power. 2. Mississippi is . . . a hellhole from a race perspective. The only thing worse is Chicago. And maybe every single other location in the US and perhaps the world. The human ability to divide into tribes and brutally oppress others is our most disgusting and perhaps will be our fatal flaw.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finishing this final book in Branch's King trilogy took me several months. I greatly enjoyed it but also got fatigued. The first section, discussing Selma, and the final section, discussing Memphis, are both gripping and fascinating. There is, oh course, also a lot of trees in this forest. King's schedule - "and then he went to a speech in Chicago" was remarkably full and did not need to be so meticulously laid out.

[spoko · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find Branch's style too terse; the really significant moments in his narrative almost seem to get less attention than the trivial. It's an important history, and worth such a full retelling. But honestly, you'll appreciate this book more if you're already familiar with the basic contours of the story.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monumental and indispensable. In the last volume of the trilogy, the civil rights movement splinters over non-violence coupled with the mounting horror of the Vietnam War. As a reader who came of age in this period, Branch's week by week account of the last three years of Martin Luther King's life was a sober reminder that despite everything, our current national catastrophe is not the worst in our recent history. Branch limns all of the major figures of the era, from Lyndon Johnson's mounting agony to Stokely Carmichael's mounting rage. Dr. King stays at the heart of the narrative as he is buffeted by forces that often seem beyond his control as he struggles to maintain his commitment to both the Movement and non-violence. There are also names that have been largely lost, martyrs to the cause like Viola Liuzzo, Vernon Dahmer and Jonathan Daniels. These and a host of others --- so many more than one remembers --- gave their lives in the continuing struggle to make the United States live up to its founding ideals.

The spare description of the moment King died is unbearable.

Highly, highly recommend.

[Jaz Boon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The hardest of the three-book series because you know how it ends. A tumultuous ride from the highs of the successes of the VRA and 1964 CRA descends into despair over the Vietnam War and poverty. The last years of King were a battle with depression in addition to unseen forces sabotaging his anti-war and anti-poverty campaigns. The mood had shifted against him, but still he did not compromise his belief in non-violence. That legacy changed America and in many respects the world. Wonderful work by Branch to conclude the series.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who Should Read This Book - People who are REALLY into American history and want a DEEP DIVE into the story of the Civil Rights movement.

What’s the Big Takeaway - I can’t imagine a better, more detailed, history of the Civil Rights era.

And a Quote - “Like America’s original Founders, those who marched for civil rights reduced power to human scale. They invested enormous hope in the capacity of ordinary people to create bonds of citizenship based on simple ideals . . They protected freedom as America’s only story in a harsh world. ‘The arc of the moral universe is long,’ King often said, quoting the abolitionist Theodore Parker, ‘but it bends toward justice.’ His oratory mined twin doctrines of equal souls and equal votes in the common ground of nonviolence, and justice refined history until its fires dimmed for a time” (771)

Okay, first off I will admit I did not read every word in this book. It is just so incredibly detailed; large portions are a day-by-day, even hour-by-hour, history. Unless you’re a major history buff, or a professional historian, I can’t imagine having the energy or desire to dive quite this deeply.

I skimmed and read and worked on getting the big picture. As I told a friend, you can probably find these books at a used bookstore (I did) and they are definitely worth having on your shelf even if you do not read every word.

Branch begins by picking up the story where he left it in the previous book, in Selma. Selma, at least in Branch’s telling, is the high point in the story. In this part of the book, Branch tells an amazing story I never heard before. ABC was showing the television premier of the movie Judgment at Nuremberg which had won two Academy Awards. In the middle of the movie two characters are having a conversation. One argues Hitler did some okay things and the people in Germany did not know about the bad stuff. This character’s husband asks what they could have done anyway, had they known.

At this moment the movie cut off and the news broke in. For fifteen minutes the millions of Americans watching this show were seen footage of the violence against Civil Rights activists going on in Selma.

No longer could people say they didn’t know what was going on here in their own country.

Branch writes, “No one, including President Johnson, foresaw America’s first loss of a war, any more than the day’s tear gas victims pictured Selma as the last great thrust of a movement build on patriotic idealism. It was a turning point. The tide of confidence in equal citizenship had swelled over decades to confront segregation as well as the Nazis, and would roll forward still, but an opposing tide of resentment and disbelief rose to challenge the overall direction of American politics, contesting the language of freedom” (57).


It was sadly amusing to read some of the criticisms of Civil Rights leaders and the movement that we still hear today. King and his supporters were accused of being Communists and Marxists. When the Civil Rights bill passed in 1964 Senators such as Strom Thurmond lamented the federal dictatorship over states rights (p. 227). I say “sadly amusing” because today everyone, on the right and on the left, quotes Dr. King with affirmation. Yet it is common to hear those on the right talk as if the only thing Dr. King ever said was a few lines from his “I Have a Dream” speech. As a recent article said, this is akin to assassinating King a second time.

The truth is, Dr. King was seen as a radical. His opposition to the Vietnam war certainly contributed to this. After Selma though, King’s call for nonviolent action was increasingly opposed. Sometimes we learn about this era, if we learn about it at all, as if King’s movement was unified and he was the unquestioned leader. But from Malcolm X (in the last book) to Stokley Carmichael in this one, his views were challenged. Even those closest to him often argued with him about methods. The point is that as great as these men and women were, they were still normal humans with flaws who didn’t always get along.

Branch summarizes this:

“By the cycles of history, a period of letdown and division was perhaps inevitable, to let the country absorb the enormous changes mandated by the letter and spirit of equal citizenship . .. Nonviolence became passé across the spectrum. Black people discarded it like training wheels to claim the full belligerent status of regular Americans . . . Almost no one honored or analyzed the broader legacy of nonviolent citizens, and King would grow ever more lonely in his conviction that the movement offered superior leadership discipline for the whole country” (558-559).

We also see here the beginning of the backlash in the form of Ronald Reagan. Reagan said he would have opposed the 1964 Civil Rights act as well as Medicare (“socialized medicine”) had he been in congress. But “Reagan hired political advisors to make his test speeches palatable to voter beyond the Goldwater base” (400). A time was on the horizon when it would not be politically expedient to be an obvious racist (like George Wallace). Yet the racist underpinnings were still there and savvy politicians could repackage their ideas to get a hearing.

Branch does not go into detail on the southern strategy of Nixon or this flip of political parties, but we read it happening. Through the 1960s white southerners grow increasingly disillusioned with Democrats as more and more black people support Democrats and from JFK to LBJ. I do wish Branch would have gone a little further in the epilogue to tell the rest of this story, as southern Democrats became Republicans with Nixon and Reagan.

Later Branch tells of how Reagan was asked how he could oppose the new Civil Rights laws and still ask for black votes. Reagan responded: “I resent the implications that there is any bigotry in my nature. . . Don’t let anyone ever imply that I lack integrity!” (480). Sound familiar? Reminds me of our last president who insisted he didn’t have a racist bone in his body while having a long history of being pretty racist. Reminds me of how people will insist they are not racist but oppose bills to strengthen voting rights.

But I digress…

Did you know the NCAA banned the “dunk” in basketball for eight years (1968-1976) “which somehow cushioned the influx of black players” (450). Some of my favorite parts of the book were when Branch took detours into sports, entertainment and culture. It gives the story a wider feel and reminds you that even in a book THIS DETAILED a lot more was still going on.

After Selma, King began to take the movement national. Branch tells of his work in Chicago where, after a riot, King said, “I have never in my life seen such hate. . . Not in Mississippi or Alabama. This is a terrible thing” (511). Often the story of racism in American history frames it as a southern problem. Even the way we tell the story of Civil Rights does this, focusing on the Montgomery bus boycott and Selma and Birmingham. It makes those of us who live in the north feel good. The reality is, this has always been a national sin.

It seems that in addition to opposing Vietnam, another reason King was not seen positively was how he shined a light on the racism not just in the south, but in the north, in his later years.

“Chicago nationalized race, complementing the impact of Watts. Without it, King would be confined to posterity more as a regional figure. The violence against Northern demonstrations cracked a beguiling, cultivated conceit that bigotry was the province of backward Southerners, treatable by enlightened but firm instruction. Already the campaign has ‘shown Chicago what it has known in its secret heart, that it has a terrifying and terrible race problem,’ wrote a Chicagoan for the Washington Post. Editors at the Saturday Evening Post confessed starkly for America at large: ‘We are all, let us face it, Mississippians” (523).

There is a lot more I could say. As I said above, the movement was full of debate. I think my biggest takeaway is what I mentioned above: the real King is much more radical and political than is often remembered. He did not just talk about equality in bland ways but opposed war and advocated for the poor. He saw injustice, poverty and war as all bound together (555). This is why he was in Memphis, supporting the garbage workers on strike, when he was assassinated.

We all need to become more familiar with our history because it still matters today.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I waited a few days after finishing the final volume of Taylor Branch's massive and, despite the problems I'll detail below, history of America in the King Years. But as I've worked through, taking notes for some writing I'm working on, I became more and more convinced that On Canaan's Edge doesn't quite live up to the breathtaking power of Parting the Waters and the solid sequel, Pillar of Fire. To some extent, the problems are inherent in the story--King's arc was from triumph to a tragedy that wasn't simply a matter of the assassination. Additionally, they grow out of Branch's decision to attempt an inclusive history of the era, rather than a purely biographical study. As long as King occupied center stage of a story with a fairly clear center, that didn't present insurmountable problems. By 1968, however, there are probably at least a dozen angles of vision that make at least as much, probably more, sense than King's. The result, formally, is that Branch tends to juxtapose rather than connect, the stories of Vietnam, the Six Day War, the collapse of LBJ's administration, while paying minimal attention to equally important stories such as the rise of the conservative opposition (and the many factors--not just race--which contributed to that rise). Most of the pieces are there, but they don't cohere (any more than the era did). And, sadly, on a sentence by sentence level, the writing's just not as good as it was earlier in the trilogy. Too many places where Branch doesn't provide quite as much context as a foregrounded story demands.

For all of that, the trilogy will remain a central resource for serious students of the African American Freedom Movement, the starting point for any engagement with King's part in the struggle. From the beginning, as evidenced in the Biblical titles, Branch has subscribed to the redemptive version of the Civil Rights narrative. That's true even when he's writing about the hard truth that by 1968, many people who'd been involved thought that no redemption was at hand. I don't subscribe to that version, both because it's too often used to give the U.S. a self-congratulatory pass on having entered a post-racial hallucination (though that's been less true for the last couple of years than it was for the previous couple of decades) and because it overlooks equally important perspectives. For a fuller version of the "Civil Rights" story, supplement Branch with Danielle McGuire's At the Dark End of the Street (on the central importance of women and the struggle against sexual violence against black women); Tim Tyson's Radio Free Dixie (on the centrality of armed self-defense even within the "non-violent" movement); Patrick Jones' The Selma of the North and Thomas Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty on the movement in the North; Charles Payne's I've Got the Light of Freedom and John Dittmer's Local People on the importance of the "organizing"--as opposed to "leadership" tradition; Brenda Gayle Plummer's In Search of Power (on the connection between black America and decolonization; and Peniel Joseph's Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour for a fuller sense of Black Power.

[Dayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a well researched document concerning the final years of one of America's heroes, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

The best summary of this book can be found in Taylor Branch' own writing:

Like America's original Founders, those who marched for civil rights reduced power to human scale. They invested enormous hope in the capacity of ordinary people to create bonds of citizenship based on simple ideals--"We the People"---and in a sturdy design to balance self-government with public trust. They projected freedom as America's only story in a harsh world.

"The arc of the moral universe is long," King often said, quoting the abolitionist Theodore Parker, "but it bends toward justice." His oratory mined twin doctrines of equal souls and equal votes in the common ground of nonviolence, and justice refined history until its fires dimmed for a time.

King himself upheld nonviolence until he was nearly alone among colleagues weary of sacrifice. To the end, he resisted incitements to violence, cynicism, and tribal retreat. He grasped freedom seen and unseen, rooted in ecumenical faith, sustaining patriotism to brighten the heritage of this country for all people. The treasures abide with the lasting promise from America in the King years.
End Branch quote

In juxtaposing King's life and times with the spirit of America today, one can't help but notice a repeat of strategies used by the same vengeful people. Only this time instead of a lone minority in the crosshairs, there are multiple allies in every part of America, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and all of Europe.

For reaching the nadir of this biography, which can bring one's soul to a place of love/God/all-one/BLM/ see the last 20 pages of Chapter 39: Requiem, March 23 to April 4, 1968.

[Frederick Bingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of Martin Luther King's last three years. It chronicles the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965, the Chicago campaigns, the voter registration drives in rural Alabama and Mississippi, King's stormy relationship with LBJ, King's struggle with the issue of the Vietnam war, the Memphis garbage workers' strike, the mountaintop speech and King's assassination. King lived during a turbulent time and this book ably discusses his struggles, within his movement and with allies like LBJ. One of the most dramatic events is LBJ's 1965 speech in favor of the voting rights act which he ends by using the phrase "we shall overcome". King tried hard to keep his movement non-violent despite the efforts of his enemies and allies alike. King got caught up in a couple of riots, in Selma, Memphis and Chicago. The narration was good. It's a little hard to tell from the package, but I am pretty sure the version is abridged. The book itself is long, 771 pages, but the narration is only 8 CDs.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

After I saw "Selma", I realized I needed to finish Branch's trilogy. What a book — it moves quickly through all 771 pages. The breakneck pace helped me feel some empathy for the main characters, especially King and Johnson, who had to react to events they couldn't have enough control over. Johnson's juggling of domestic legislation w the Vietnam war matched King's struggle to expand the fight for domestic civil rights to a fight against that war. I had a lot of sympathy for Johnson's predicament, but he and Rusk and the rest didn't believe in it from the beginning. Hoover — what a bastard.
As other reviewers have said, the last two chapters are especially moving.
It's nice to see that Branch's book has recently been cited to defend "Selma" against Califano and others who think it's inaccurate.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the three books in this series, Canaan's Edge had the busiest and most chaotic narrative arc. At times this made the work seem unfocused, but ultimately it conveyed the sense pressure that MLK, LBJ, and others must have experienced and the depression and vertigo that accompanied it. This installment picks up in Selma and the Voting Rights Act, which was in some ways the turning point in the narrative and last enjoyed success of MLK and LBJ. King struggled to find animating causes and in navigating the politics of poverty and war protest, as well as broad rejection of nonviolence by everyone but him (or so it must have seemed).

All in all, America in the King Years was fantastic. Well worth the time and effort to read them all.

[Scott Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm constantly astonished when I read about the civil rights movement about how much they accomplished despite all the disarray and setbacks. Even as the movement was falling apart and threatened by violence in Memphis in 68, King never gave up hope or his belief in non-violence. I believe that is what sustained him and the movement. How much more would have been accomplished if Johnson had not been distracted and obsessed with the Vietnam war or King had not been hounded by Hoover and the FBI or, for that matter, if King had not been assassinated? This book, in fact the whole trilogy, is eye-opening and makes you wonder about what it will take to move this country forward from this point in the area of civil rights. I almost wish there was a sequel on what happened to the civil rights movement after King's death. In some ways the book falls into the single man theory of history, that individuals make an enormous difference in the course of history, and there is no question that King did make an enormous contribution, but the movement is bigger than one individual. Even though we don't have an MLK today showing us the way, we have plenty of new civil rights leaders and many old ones (like John Lewis) still fighting against discrimination. And we have new civil rights issues and fights like for LGBT rights, transgender rights, etc. And the fight for the poor and against poverty in this country still has a long way to go. Reading this trilogy has helped encourage me in that fight.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am sad that this is only a trilogy. What happened in the rest of 1968? In 69? and 70? and so on. This series is such a detailed account, I feel like my understanding of these pivotal years is greatly enhanced.

Branch is at his best describing big actions like Selma. The details of each day, each hour, is riveting. The research into the firsthand accounts must be tremendous. However, after the book opens with Selma, there isn't another event like it. Most of rest of the book is still good, but it doesn't reach the same heights as it opening section.

I could have done with a summary or recap of the last book. Even though I read it a few months ago, I didn't remember where everything stood, and all the cast of characters.

I was struck multiple times that it was teenagers leading the action. They might never have received the press that MLK or others, but it was teens that were volunteering and taking action.

The book also drives home the sad truth of church segregation. All of these people claiming to follow god, yet they wouldn't even worship with a person of color. It feels like this hasn't changed much in 50 years, as it is white evangelicals leading the bandwagon for Trump.

The most depressing aspect of the book was the escalation of the country's involvement in Vietnam. Everyone knew it was futile, the Army, the CIA, even President Johnson. But they sent more and more people to die anyway, and bombed indiscriminately.

The marches in Chicago were not anything I had heard of before. They too were terribly depressing. It felt like MLK became lost after them. Things went so wrong, that he seemed to lose sight of a way forward. His last months felt more like a whisper.

Overall this trilogy is outstanding. I am so glad I read it.

[Brahm · Rating 3 out of 5]

This rating reflects a READER ERROR (listener; audiobook), I downloaded the abridged version (10 hours) instead of the complete version (34 hours). By the time I realized this I was 6 hours in, and I didn't want to listen to 20 hours of mostly-redundant material just for the sake of completionism.

Still, the main threads of the story were clearly there. This is a terrific trilogy that provides deep insights into MLK and a movement that hugely changed America. Branch is a great writer and the (full length) audiobooks are great - would recommend to anyone looking to fill 100 hours of listening time with something fascinating.

[Bernadette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This last book in Taylor Branch's trilogy is awfully good. I was particularly enlightened by his attention to detail and ability to weave so many desperate strands of the story together. I had also just shown my classes Eyes on the Prize, Episode 6: Bridge to Freedom (1965) and the movie Selma. Reading the book at the same time let me pass on enlightening pieces of information.

[Carol Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think everyone should read this trilogy.

[andré crombie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“‘What do you do when the whole country has a sickness?’”

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review title: And I believe in a promised land

As we come to the last day of the tumultuous year of 2020, I finish reading my last book of the year, which draws a close to the monumental King Years' trilogy by Branch (see Parting the Waters covering 1954 to 1963 and Pillar of Fire covering 1963 to 1965. The conjunction of these events seems significant.

As he moves inexorably toward the certain conclusion of King's assassination, which leaves a sense of foreboding over the history we already know, Branch documents the maturation of the civil rights movement from King's program of nonviolent civil rights actions in the south as it struggles to adjust to the broader context of political activism in 1965 and beyond:

--Civil rights in large northern cities like Boston (with segregated schools), Chicago (legally enforced housing segregation forcing African-Americans into confined slum conditions), and Los Angeles (police brutality during a routine traffic violation stop turned into the Watts riots).

--Growing student protests against the Vietnam War, which SNCC veterans linked to the civil rights actions in the south, but leaders like King were reluctant to support because they feared Johnson would see King's support of war protests as ungrateful in light of his support for civil rights and voting rights.

--The nascent women's rights movement, which highlighted legal and cultural limits on voting, jury duty, and employment as restrictive aa those against African-Americans.

King would bring his movement and his family into the Chicago slums as he tried to expand his message--of spiritual change, political equality and economic need--and method of nonviolence, persistence, and political change through presence to the areas outside of the solid South where racism was just as damaging but much more subtle. "Black power" (the "Black Panther" name and logo originated as a legal requirement for Alabama political parties to have a name and logo on printed ballots) as a movement toward direct confrontation and violence if necessary enflamed white backlash, threatened loss of political allies, and splintered already fragile unity amongst the major civil rights groups.

When urban areas (Watts, Newark, Detroit) erupted in violence in the summer of 67 (triggered at least in part by the same casual police brutality against African-Americans that still exists in 2020), the official commission report that studied the root cause concluded "What white Americans have never fully understood--but what the Negro can never forget--is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it." (p. 705). Yet through the struggle, Branch's history documents King's continued realism--"The American people are infected with racism--that is the peril"--and his persistent hopefulness: "Paradoxically, they are also infected with democratic ideals--that is the hope." (p. 746). In his final public appearance, the night before his murder, Martin Luther King, Jr. preached "I have been to the mountaintop. And I've looked over. And I have seen the promised land." (p. 758).

That we are still waiting at Canaan's edge nearly 60 years later is a hard historical fact, one driven by the events and people Branch documents as his narrative moves through the 1966 midterm elections and towards the 1968 presidential campaign dominated by the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson's stunning decision not to run, and yet another Kennedy assassination. The momentous 1964 party flip that Branch wrote about in Pillar of Fire, as segregationist voters and politicians abandoned the once Solid South Democratic party because of Johnson's support for civil rights to find a new home in the Republican party of Barry Goldwater became a watershed moment in American history. "Johnson saw an adverse trend instead of a fluke. He predicted that most of the new Republicans in Congress would vote with the Southern Democrats while seeking colleagues to replace them. This was the backlash he feared. 'It'll move beyond George Wallace and become respectable,' he told Bill Moyers." (p. 549) The decades have sadly proven Johnson right.

Of all the many political.and civil rights leaders that populate this volume of Branch's history (while King is central, he is by no means the sole focus of the era), not enough credit is given to Lyndon Johnson. A victim of his Texas hillbilly bumpkin self-caricature and the inherited sinkhole of American intervention in Southeast Asia, I have seen him as at best an inconsequential bridge between the Eisenhower-JFK Cold War and the Nixon cynical Seventies. But his four-pronged support for civil rights, voting rights, senior citizen healthcare, and the War on Poverty was heart-felt and hard-fought even if those were not in the long view all unmitigated successes. And while he used that larger-than-life image as a deal maker and log roller, he had a way with words that matched King at his best. Listen to this speech on voting rights:

Rarely are we met with such a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and purpose and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, "What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" (p. 112-113)

That day, marchers in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama were besieged and beaten by police. It was then, and still is, a promised land we have yet to hold.

Was Martin Luther King, Jr. then a failure? The 2,000-plus pages of Branch's trilogy shine a bright light on one man, whom we know from his contemporaries and from FBI reports of dubious accuracy based on wiretaps of even more dubious legality was no saint. His message of nonviolence was lost in the riots and the continued systemic racism of 2020 leaves us still on the outside of the promised land looking in. Yet his consistent message still gives me hope that spiritual and political renewal is yet possible :

Reviewing the movement decade, King concluded that change from its great mandates for equal citizenship was broad but neither swift nor deep. “While this period represented a frontal assault on the doctrine and practice of white supremacy,” he said, “it did not defeat the monster of racism.... And we must never forget that the roots of racism are very deep in America. . . . And the fact is that the ultimate logic of racism is genocide,” he asserted. “If you say that I am not good enough to live next door to you . . . because of the color of my skin or my ethnic origins, then you are saying in substance that I do not deserve to exist. And this is what we see when we see that [form of] racism still hovering over our nation.” (p. 554)

America and Americans have made progress broadly, and yet neither deeply nor swiftly enough, just as King wrote in 1968. But I pray we still have the mind to see that the logic of racism is wrong and the soul to discern that the spiritual cost of racism is infinite in a world populated by billions of people God created equal.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third and final volume of Branch’s magnificent history-biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Like its two predecessors, it is an amazingly successful effort, informative, moving, and strongly convincing. Branch makes the case for King as a unique leader in our history, a social revolutionary, animated like Gandhi, by a consuming belief that non-violence was not just a tactic but a calling for world-change. No other force could effectively challenge racism, poverty, and war. Over half of this volume is spent on 1965, when King and President Johnson (the volume’s other main character) had their last great moments of success. Vietnam sank Johnson and his Great Society programs. It also divided King and Johnson as King’s conscience became increasingly distressed about the escalation of the war and he ultimately became a controversial opponent of the war. King’s commitment to non-violence, his decision to speak up on Vietnam, and to take the civil rights movement north, all led to two-plus stormy and largely unaccomplished years. Young black radicals in SNCC and the cities embraced Black Power and the right to use violence to effect change, insisting that time had passed King by. Moderates, black and white, sided with the Administration on Vietnam, viewing King’s engagement there as a distraction and a meddling in area beyond his expertise. Branch, I’m sure, would argue that King was right—right on Vietnam, right on his commitment to non-violence, and his focus on racism, poverty and war and Johnson was wrong on Vietnam (though courageous and compelling on domestic reform—voting rights, court appointments, immigration reform, medicare, etc.). He also makes the case that the lack of discipline in the anti-war movement and black rebellion not only contributed to the marginalization of King but, if it didn’t fuel, it certainly provided the cover for the backlash that brought us Wallace and Maddox, Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes. America in the King Years is a triumphant work, one of the great works of nonfiction of the last fifty years. It should be read by every U.S. citizen. The narrative is captivating. The characters are rich and diverse. The tapestry of events sewn so well and beautifully that the fourteen years covered by the three volumes come fully to life. Neither history nor biography get much better than this.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I put this, the final book, of Branch’s three-part 2000+ document of MLK and the Civil Rights movement, onto my imaginary list of “Books You Should Read to Understand What is Happening In Your Country Today” however since we live in a country where hardly anyone reads books like this, even among people who read books, it’s also on my list of “Books That Are So Good They Make Me Sad No One Will Ever Read Them” except for that one friend I have on Goodreads who I think is reading everything I give 5 Stars.

[Charlie Newfell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning final book of the Civil Rights trilogy. This deals with MLK during perhaps the most difficult years of his leadership, leading right up to his tragic death. With the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his Nobel Peace Prize and the 1965 Voting Rights act, the momentum of the movement was hard to maintain and focus. The Vietnam escalation and the quickly rising anti-war protests, white racist backlash, the Black Power movement and the riots in LA, Detroit and Newark showed how close the entire country was to violent outbreak. At times King must have believed in his heart that his non-violence philosophy might have been antiquated. If he had lived, he would have seen the Berlin Wall fall without a gun, the "Velvet" revolutions of non-violence in Eastern Europe, and even Tiananmen Square. Perhaps he wouldn't have been surprised after all.

I thought a lot about the depth of his faith, and the realization that he was under constant threat of death, yet he accepted this and his faith and trust in God let him continue. Was he destined to die a martyr? Did this have to happen? With all of the great leaders that die tragically you just wonder what might have been....

And, with all of today's events (like Charleston) it still makes you wonder how far racial relations have come, and when tragedies like this will be part of the past.

In summary, a stunning book, moving, insightful, bringing feelings of anger, sadness and awe.

Invest the time in the trilogy. You will not regret it.