Pillar of Fire: American in the King years, 1963-65.

America in the King Years, 1963-65

Taylor Branch 

Simon and Schuster, $30, 746 pp.

The civil rights movement was a rare time in American history when ordinary citizens placed their bodies on the line to challenge the nation's conscience. It was democracy at its best. As Martin Luther King, Jr., explained: "We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands." Just as important, the movement was politically adept in its ability to command the moral high ground, to persuade, and to wield power effectively.

Taylor Branch began telling the story of the civil rights movement in his magisterial Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. Here he picks up where he left off, narrating the history of the years 1963-65, when the movement won its two most impressive legislative victories - the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The tales he tells are well-known, and even if Branch fails, at times, to explain the significance of his stories, there is still much to learn from the details.

The biggest national crisis of 1963 - the murder of JFK - transformed the civil rights movement. In Parting the Waters, Branch documented Kennedy's cold, amoral pragmatism as he pressed civil rights workers to stop fighting segregation and focus instead on registering black voters - a callous attempt to get the vote out for Democrats. Moreover, Kennedy gave blacks little protection from lynch-mob violence. Only the hideous attacks of 1963 on innocent black Sunday-school children and others in Birmingham provoked Kennedy to move on civil rights legislation.

It is a great irony of history, but perhaps a deep reflection of how political change occurs, that the Southerner, Lyndon Baines Johnson, not the Northeasterner Kennedy, did the most of any president for civil rights. Unlike Kennedy's technocratic and pragmatic approach to issues, Branch shows how Johnson's firm moral stand on civil rights helped to ensure legislative victory. Knowing that he was handing the South to the Republicans, Johnson never backed down from his desire, in his own words, to "help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the nation." Much of LBJ's moralism, writes Branch, could be attributed to a more relaxed attitude toward the threat of domestic communism - another move beyond the cultural and political stalemate of the Kennedy years.

Of course, LBJ could never completely overcome the most virulent and powerful anti-Communist in Washington - J. Edgar Hoover, the paranoid director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Branch plumbs deep here, exposing the extent of Hoover's threat not only to executive power (Kennedy actually cleared presidential statements through Hoover) but to King. Wiretapping and then sending the incriminating tapes to King, Hoover tried his best to break the civil rights movement. After reading Branch's account of the Hoover-King relationship, Robert Kennedy's assessment of Hoover as "rather a psycho" rings true. Scarier yet is to think that Hoover had held power for fifty years; more amazing still is how LBJ eventually cajoled him into helping out civil rights workers!

If Johnson faced a behind-the-scenes rival for power in Hoover, King faced his own challenge in the rise of Malcolm X. Today, Malcolm X is a hero for black nationalists. Though he moved away from the antiwhite sentiments of the Nation of Islam and journeyed to Selma in '65 in a rare show of support for King, Malcolm X remained a staunch opponent of integration and of King's nonviolent tactics. When Branch turns to this story, he reminds us of Malcolm X's rhetorical skills and rebellious machismo, what Branch calls his "swagger" and "bristling, military posture." "Any man who puts his women and children on the front lines is a chump, not a champ," Malcolm declared during the Birmingham protests. Branch also reminds us that there was little substance to Malcolm X's program. He never offered a clear agenda or a strategic alternative to King's nonviolent, grassroots movement. After all, he was much too busy either getting the goods on Elijah Muhammad's lecherous activities with younger women of the Nation of Islam or dodging assassins. Malcolm X's political weakness and marginal status made King's vision that much more powerful. And it is King's extraordinary vision for America that Branch rightly celebrates:

To hold the belief in justice among equal souls as the key to religious as well as political conviction seemed at once crazy and noble, wildly improbable and starkly human.... King called it a daring "extreme." He hailed luminous extremists in a paired roll call that included Jesus on the pure refusal to hate, Jefferson on equal standing in creation, Amos on the rolling waters of justice, and Lincoln on the crucible of democratic commitment: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free".... If indeed the long arc of the universe bent toward justice, and the universe proved friendly, history's slow triumph over slaughterhouse evil would be a compelling sign not only of benevolent design behind the cosmos but of a democratic bond in human nature. In King's tradition there were no proofs, only witnesses.

In painting his picture of the entire era, Branch also discusses the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964 (and other, lesser-known acts of barbarism), the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party's failure to transform the Democratic party in the South, the urban race riots in Northern cities, and the rise of the political Right in the wake of Barry Goldwater's defeat. Importantly, King's first sense of puzzlement over whether the plight of African-Americans was solely racial or economic is also examined.

Although Branch's storytelling is nearly always provocative, his analysis is less cogent. Something more than narrative skill and a journalistic attention to detail is necessary to explain the meaning of the civil rights movement. For instance, Branch never explains the significant shift in King's tactics that took place during the years 1963-65. Much of this change in emphasis only becomes clear when King's activities of 1963-65 are placed alongside his earlier efforts. In 1955, King believed in struggling within the local community of Montgomery to change the attitudes of local whites - to build, through struggle and nonviolent force, a "beloved community." But by 1963, King was less intent on changing the minds of local Birmingham citizens and more determined to seize media attention and provoke a federal response. Since Branch uses 600 pages to cover but two years of history, broader comparisons of this sort are impossible for him to make. Whatever one thinks of King's changed tactics, they demand scrutiny and analysis, for it is here that one senses a tension between morality and politics - between principles, vision, and the demand for effectiveness - that had an enormous impact on future political activism.

Branch writes that the goal of Pillar of Fire is to establish that "King's life is the best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed postwar years." Unfortunately, his reportage fails to support the thesis. For example, since Branch includes a myriad of characters here, King's life disappears for good chunks of the narrative. More intriguing is how throughout this period (and his entire life), King stands firm for nonviolence and integrationism. Yet at times - as witnessed in the urban riots beginning in 1965 - the nation seems to be coming apart at the seams. In a way, the confusion and conflict within SNCC, resulting in the eventual expulsion of white members from its ranks, seems more emblematic of the state of the American soul than did King's abiding concerns. Branch's evidence suggests that the metaphorical prominence he gives King needs some rethinking.

That said, Branch provides an amazing overview of this period, bringing to life its central characters and conflicts. Even if Branch's explanation of what made these years so crucial remains unpersuasive, we have him to thank for telling these stories with great skill. For in them, America's rich moral struggle to become a better nation continues to live.

Kevin Mattson is author of Creating a Democratic Public (Penn State Press), which explores the Progressive Era struggle for participatory democracy. He is research director at the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy (Rutgers University).