Pilar Of Fire

"Pillar of Fire" takes readers inside the dramas that shook every American institution, from the local pulpit to the Presidency. We disappear with courageous young people into Mississippi's feudal Parchman Penitentiary. We absorb the shock of a single Presidential election in 1964 that revolutionized the structure of partisan politics. We follow Northern rabbis summoned by King, and Mary Peabody, mother of the governor of Massachusetts, into the segregated jails of St. Augustine, Florida. We witness the Shakespearean conflicts between Lyndon Johnson and King and Hoover and Robert Kennedy.

Branch brings to bear fifteen years of research-- archival investigation; nearly two thousand interviews: new primary sources, from FBI wiretaps to White House telephone recordings-- in a seminal work of history. "Pillar of Fire" captures the intensity of the legendary King years, when the movement broke down walls between races, regions, sexes, and religions, and between America and the larger world. Its struggle to rescue and redeem, its victories and defeats, its failings and sacrifices gave rise to opposing tides that still dominate the national debate about justice and democratic government. The story of this movement is an incandescent chapter in America's distinctive quest for freedom

Author: Taylor Branch

Publisher: Simon Schuster

Released Date: 1998

ISBN: 0684808196