Parting the Waters: Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement 1954-63 (America in the King Years #1) (1988)

by Taylor Branch

Taylor Branch has written a magnificent history of the early civil rights movement, using the life and career of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a framework.

 

Taylor Branch

Although there is a great deal of information about King's life both public and private, other key players in this great drama also receive extensive treatment.

 

Martin Luther King

Some, such as John and Robert Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover, are well-known.

 

J. Edgar Hoover, sandwiched between the Kennedy brothers

Others have received far less recognition: Vernon Johns, the powerful itinerant country preacher who was a kind of grandfather to the movement;

 

Vernon Johns

Bayard Rustin, whose unconventional lifestyle clashed with political reality in a way that caused much pain to King;

 

Bayard Rustin

Stanley Levison, one of King's closest confidantes and advisors, from whom King was pressured to distance himself because of alleged communist ties;

 

Stanley Levison

Bob Moses, a tireless, courageous worker who toiled for years in the Deep South to register Negroes for the vote.

 

Bob Moses

Branch also narrates events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Freedom Rides with the you-are-there immediacy of an eyewitness reporter and the eye for detail of a novelist. 

The Freedom Riders

This book is a very satisfying and informative read.

MLK