Taylor Branch - Parting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-63

Simon & Schuster
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Copyright 1998 by Taylor Branch
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Branch, Taylor.

Parting the waters: America in the King years, 1954-63/Taylor Branch.

p. cm.

Bibliography.

1. Afro-AmericansCivil rights. 2. Civil rights movements
United StatesHistory20th century. 3. King, Martin Luther, Jr.,

1929-1968. 4. United StatesHistory1961-1969. I. Title.

E185.61.B7915 1998

88-24033
CIP

9730496073dc19

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5868-2
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5868-3

We are grateful for permission to quote from "Listen, LordA Prayer in Gods Trombones by James Weldon Johnson. Copyright 1927 by The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright renewed 1955 by Grace Nail Johnson.

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For the Choir of
All Souls Unitarian Church, Washington, D.C.

And in memory of
Septima Poinsette Clark

PREFACE

1. FORERUNNER: VERNON JOHNS

2. ROCKEFELLER AND EBENEZER

3. NIEBUHR AND THE POOL TABLES

4. FIRST TROMBONE

5. THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT

6. A TASTE OF THE WORLD

7. THE QUICKENING

8. SHADES OF POLITICS

9. A PAWN OF HISTORY

10. THE KENNEDY TRANSITION

11. BAPTISM ON WHEELS

12. THE SUMMER OF FREEDOM RIDES

13. MOSES IN McCOMB, KING IN KANSAS CITY

14. ALMOST CHRISTMAS IN ALBANY

15. HOOVERS TRIANGLE AND KINGS MACHINE

16. THE FIREMANS LAST REPRIEVE

17. THE FALL OF OLE MISS

18. TO BIRMINGHAM

19. GREENWOOD AND BIRMINGHAM JAIL

20. THE CHILDRENS MIRACLE

21. FIRESTORM

22. THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON

23. CROSSING OVER: NIGHTMARES AND DREAMS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN SOURCE NOTES

NOTES

MAJOR WORKS CITED IN NOTES

INDEX

Almost as color defines vision itself, race shapes the cultural eyewhat we do and do not notice, the reach of empathy and the alignment of response. This subliminal force recommends care in choosing a point of view for a history grounded in race. Strictly speaking, this book is not a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., though he is at its heart. To recreate the perceptions within his inherited world would isolate most readers, including myself, far outside familiar boundaries. But to focus upon the historical King, as generally established by his impact on white society, would exclude much of the texture of his life, which I believe makes for unstable history and collapsible myth.

To overcome these pitfalls of race, I have tried to make biography and history reinforce each other by knitting together a number of personal stories along the main seam of an American epoch. Like King himself, this book attempts to rise from an isolated culture into a larger history by speaking more than one language.

The text moves from King to people far removed, at the highest and lowest stations. By seeking at least a degree of intimacy with all of themold Mother Pollard and also President Eisenhower, Bob Moses of SNCC and also J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, with the Kennedys and also Kings rivals within the black churchI hope to let the characters define each other.

My purpose is to write a history of the civil rights movement out of the conviction from which it was made, namely that truth requires a maximum effort to see through the eyes of strangers, foreigners, and enemies. I hope to sustain my thesis that Kings life is the best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed postwar years.

The chosen structurenarrative biographical historyhas influenced several elements of style. For example, the word Negro is employed here in narrative covering the years when that term prevailed in common usage. Far from intending a political statement, I merely hope to recreate the feeling of the times, the better to capture the sweep of many changes including the extraordinary one in which the entire society shifted from Negro to black almost overnight. Because of the length of this work, for which I beg the readers indulgence, that shift falls within the span of a second volume.

On another matter of housekeeping, I regret having to leave the record on Stanley Levison slightly ajar. Since 1984, I have sought the original FBI documents pertaining to the Bureaus steadfast contention that Kings closest white friend was a top-level Communist agent. On this charge rested the FBIs King wiretaps and many collateral harassments against the civil rights movement. In opposing my request, the U.S. Department of Justice has argued in federal court that the release of thirty- to thirty-five-year-old informant reports on Levison would damage the national security even now. Almost certainly there is bureaucratic defensiveness at work hereand also, I suspect, some petty spy rivalry with the CIAbut so far the logic of secrecy has been allowed to reach levels of royalist absurdity.