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Civil rights: A
work in progress By William McKeen, Ph.D. © Copyright 1999 William McKeen |
Pillar of Fire: Bob Dylan:
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One of the
great things about America is that it is—and always will be—a work in
progress. Franklin Roosevelt was sitting for a portrait when he died, and,
like that painting, the nation remains unfinished.  We're often a
frustrated people because we're a dissatisfied people. Maybe that's
because we know that we will never be "finished."So when we speak of that great social revolution of our century, the civil rights movement, it's wrong to speak of it as if it's over. It continues. It will never be finished. But in the public mind the Civil Rights Movement was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Framing this story of social justice around the man is tempting: it's a complex saga in need of focus and King is the charismatic leader that history—and narrative historians—pray for. But when we do that, we tend to end the civil rights story with King's murder. Yet there's new evidence daily that we are still far from the idyllic society King described, in which people are judged not by the color of their skin but by "the content of their character." King is a majestic protagonist, and that's the strength of Taylor Branch's Pillar of Fire, second volume of his "America in the King Years" trilogy. Yet Branch is able to bring into the story hundreds of other civil rights heroes and readers will understand the mammoth scope of the movement. King isn't just the central character of this book, he's also a window into the world of James Bevel and Diane Nash and Bob Moses and Allard Lowenstein and A. Phillip Randolph and others whose work helped move society closer to keeping the promises of equality made two centuries ago. Branch has a tough job. Writing a movement history requires authors to walk a fine line between showcasing King's strong personality and giving every character due. History often relies on the "great man theory," in which historians use dominant personalities to carry stories  along, overlooking many lesser-known characters who
don't fit neatly into a dramatic narrative.Branch manages to both keep King at the center, and give us the cast of thousands. Pillar of Fire is truly an epic. A decade ago, in Parting the Waters, first volume of the trilogy, Branch kept King at story center, yet drew readers into other areas of the movement that don't pop up in movies of the week. Historian David Chalmers lauded Branch for showing the immense role of the black church in the movement, something other historians had not grasped. Parting the Waters showed the roots of King's involvement, starting with the Supreme Court's 1954 decision outlawing school segregation, and King's organization of the Montgomery Bus Boycott the next year. He carried the story through King's ringing "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963. Pillar of Fire, by its placement in the saga, suffers at times from middle-child syndrome. Branch's final volume will show the national upheavals of the late 1960s, King's clashes with President Johnson on Vietnam, and his ethereal "I've-been-to-the-mountaintop" speech the night before his murder. Bookended by these events, the middle volume could easily be overlooked as the book that had to connect these strong narrative points by covering a lot of ground. Sometimes Branch gets bogged in minutiae, drifting too far from the King saga. Yet he's such a skilled storyteller that he keeps the reader enthralled no matter which directions he goes and whatever character he showcases. And what characters. There's the cornpone-and-always-cagey Lyndon Johnson, who comes out of vice presidential obscurity to surprise the movement with his commitment to social reform. There's
Malcolm X, a changeling who threatens to split the movement and diminish
King's effectiveness. There's soft spoken Bob Moses, one of the
often-overlooked movement leaders, who quietly tries to bring Mississippi
into the United States.It's a great story well told. Branch is a journalist and ghost writer (he did the John Dean Watergate tell-all, Blind Ambition), yet his meticulous work has earned the respect of that toughest of audiences, academic historians. So many books that attempt to cover such ground end up reading as if they had been edited by a shovel—there's no analysis or interpretation, just mounds of material for the reader to sift through. Branch does a great job of sifting. And he's a gifted storyteller, even if the story is unfinished.
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Dr. William McKeen is journalism
department chairman at the University of Florida's College of Journalism
and Communications. McKeen writes frequently for The Orlando Sentinel
book page and has authored several books, including: