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Pillar of Fire : America in the King Years 1963-65
by Authors:
Taylor Branch
Paperback Description: Pillar of Fire is the second volume of Taylor Branch's magisterial three-volume history of America during the life of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Branch's thesis, as he explains in the introduction, is that "King's life is the best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed postwar years," but this is not just a biography. Instead it is a work of history, with King at its focal point. The tumultuous years that Branch covers saw the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the beginnings of American disillusionment with the war in Vietnam, and, of course, the civil rights movement that King led, a movement that transformed America as the nation finally tried to live up to the ideals on which it was founded.
Timeline of a Trilogy
Taylor Branch's America in the King Years series is both a biography of Martin Luther King and a history of his age. No timeline can do justice to its wide cast of characters and its intricate web of incident, but here are some of the highlights, which might be useful as a scorecard to the trilogy's nearly 3,000 pages.
King
The King Years
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63
May: At age 25, King gives his first sermon as pastor-designate of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
1954
May: French surrender to Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu. Unanimous Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board outlaws segregated public education.
December: Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott, which King is drafted to lead.
1955
October: King spends his first night in jail, following his participation in an Atlanta sit-in.
1960
February: Four students attempting to integrate a Greensboro, North Carolina, lunch counter spark a national sit-in movement. April: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is founded. November: Election of President John F. Kennedy
May: The Freedom Rides begin, drawing violent responses as they challenge segregation throughout the South. King supports the riders during an overnight siege in Montgomery.
1961
July: SNCC worker Bob Moses arrives for his first summer of voter registration in rural Mississippi. August: East German soldiers seal off West Berlin behind the Berlin Wall.
March: J. Edgar Hoover authorizes the bugging of Stanley Levinson, King's closest white advisor.
1962
September: James Meredith integrates the University of Mississippi under massive federal protection.
April: King, imprisoned for demonstrating in Birmingham, writes the "Letter from Birmingham Jail." May: Images of police violence against marching children in Birmingham rivet the country. August: King delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech before hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington. September: The Ku Klux Klan bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church kills four young girls.
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65
November: Lyndon Johnson, in his first speech before Congress as president, promises to push through Kennedy's proposed civil rights bill.
March: King meets Malcolm X for the only time during Senate filibuster of civil rights legislation. June: King joins St. Augustine, Florida, movement after months of protests and Klan violence. October: King awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and campaigns for Johnson's reelection. November: Hoover calls King "the most notorious liar in the country" and the FBI sends King an anonymous "suicide package" containing scandalous surveillance tapes.
1964
January: Johnson announces his "War on Poverty." March: Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam following conflict with its leader, Elijah Muhammad. June: Hundreds of volunteers arrive in the South for SNCC's Freedom Summer, three of whom are soon murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. July: Johnson signs Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. August: Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing military force in Vietnam. Democratic National Convention rebuffs the request by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to be seated in favor of all-white state delegation. November: Johnson wins a landslide reelection.
January: King's first visit to Selma, Alabama, where mass meetings and demonstrations will build through the winter.
1965
February: Malcolm X speaks in Selma in support of movement, three weeks before his assassination in New York by Nation of Islam members.
March: Voting rights movement in Selma peaks with "Bloody Sunday" police attacks and, two weeks later, a successful march of thousands to Montgomery. August: King rebuffed by Los Angeles officials when he attempts to advocate reforms after the Watts riots.
March: First U.S. combat troops arrive in South Vietnam. Johnson's "We Shall Overcome" speech makes his most direct embrace of the civil rights movement. May: Vietnam "teach-in" protest in Berkeley attracts 30,000. June: Influential federal Moynihan Report describes the "pathologies" of black family structure. August: Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act. Five days later, the Watts riots begin in Los Angeles.
January: King moves his family into a Chicago slum apartment to mark his first sustained movement in a Northern city. June: King and Stokely Carmichael continue James Meredith's March Against Fear after Meredith is shot and wounded. Carmichael gives his first "black power" speech. July: King's marches for fair housing in Chicago face bombs, bricks, and "white power" shouts.
1966
February: Operation Rolling Thunder, massive U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, begins. May: Stokely Carmichael wins the presidency of SNCC and quickly turns the organization away from nonviolence. October: National Organization for Women founded, modeled after black civil rights groups.
April: King's speech against the Vietnam War at New York's Riverside Church raises a storm of criticism December: King announces plans for major campaign against poverty in Washington, D.C., for 1968.
1967
May: Huey Newton leads Black Panthers in armed demonstration in California state assembly. June: Johnson nominates former NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. July: Riots in Newark and Detroit. October: Massive mobilization against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C.
March: King joins strike of Memphis sanitation workers. April: King gives his "Mountaintop" speech in Memphis. A day later, he is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel.
1968
January: In Tet Offensive, Communist guerillas stage a surprise coordinated attack across South Vietnam. March: Johnson cites divisions in the country over the war for his decision not to seek reelection in 1968.
Average Customer Rating:
Keeps the Fire Aflame...Pillared Story of the Shaping of America
Taylor Branch has certainly done better work with his first Pulitzer Prize winning Civil Rights movement work, "Parting the Waters,' but that doesn't mean you should be brushing aside this good history writing in "Pillar of Fire." There's a quote out there...that I can't seem to find right now...that says something to the effect of, "If we don't learn from history, we will find ourselves repeating mistakes already made." In the realm of social justice and American Civil Rights history there is no finer capturing of our society's mistakes and the heroic struggle undertaken by civil rights movement leaders than the history written by Taylor Branch on the subject. The entire trilogy should be required reading for all liberal arts majors (all other under grad majors for that matter) as an education in the important history that shaped the America we know today.
"Pillar of Fire," captures just three years of the Civil Rights movement from 1963-1965, but they were chock-filled with pivital and formative events. Highlights from Branch's book are the FBI-wrangling led by J. Edgar Hoover, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, assassinations of Malcom X and Medgar Evars, the mission creep of Vietnam, and the beginnings of tying in the civil rights movement protest to a larger anti-war protest movement. My criticism, though minor may it be, of "Pillar of Fire," is that whereas Branch's first work, "Parting the Waters," read like a deftly crafted geniusly written page turner of a suspense novel, "Pillar of Fire," comes across more like a traditional history book. Branch's writing genius lies in his ability to bring together seemingly disparate events while mixing in elements of pop culture and everyday life to give you a good feel for the "sign of the times," at that time. Where Branch was able to tie in the events in America pre-1965 and do it with panache in "Parting the Waters," his efforts in "Pillar of Fire," aren't so focused. Call it a sophomore slump if you will, but "Pillar of Fire," got a little too bogged down in White House and Capital Hill wankerings and didn't focus on the immediacy of the drama of what was happening on the street down South during those years. Don't let this deter you from reading "Pillar of Fire," though...its just a minor Branch-ian misstep.
Where Branch's work really shines is his recounting of the odd and gangster and cult-like machinations of the Nation of Islam. He also captures the juxtaposition of Malcom X's approach to Civil Rights versus MLK's non-violent warfare approach quite nicely. In hindsight it seems MLK's method of bringing about social justice change through sacrifice and love proved more lasting and effective. Also of interest is J. Edgar Hoover's odd fixation on MLK's personal life and using that to try to bring down the man and the movement. If people are concerned about the "Patriot Act," today infringing on personal rights and intelligence oversight...just read what America was like in the 60's with the Hoover-led FBI getting into everybody's business.
All in all, Branch's "Pillar of Fire," is a high quality read and well-written piece of history...a history that is integral to the fabric of America today. The Civil Rights movement was nothing short of a revolutionary and/or civil war in America and the re-telling of this history reveals it as such. Run, don't walk, to get a hold of all of Branch's books from Amazon to get up to speed on all things Civil Rights movement.
--MMW
Indispensible about Malcolm X
I have been writing, studying, and speaking about Malcolm X since a year or so after he died. I have had the privilege to work with and learnt about Malcolm from people who worked with Malcolm politically, people who he asked to publish his writing and whose views he has recommended. I have read too many books about Malcolm to believe. I think this book provides the best actual picture of the time line of Malcolm X's life in his last years, the ferocity of the physical and political assault launched against him, and the facts of Malcolm'x struggle to break through to world and national politics.
In saying that, I am saying branch produces good documented history and doesn't pretend to offer much interpretation, which is OK.
After all these statements about this book and others, the best thing to read about Malcolm X is the serious of books printed in Malcolm's own words published by Pathfinder Press in cooperation with Malcolm's family, a publishing project begun my Malcolm himself while he was alive. Read him in his own words, not someone else's opinions.
There is one book about rather than by Malcolm that I recommend. Pathfinder's Malcolm X, the Evolution of a revolutionary by the late George Breitman, the editor that Malcolm selected to edit his books. George was a long time revolutionist, a fighter for Black rights since the 1930s, but also an incredibly scrupulous editor, and very judicious. Too many people try to put their own words in Malcolm's mouth. GB never did that and takes a reasoned view of the motion Malcolm went through in the period since he left the Muslims.
If someone knows better books about Malcolm X published in recent years, contact me, I will check them out!
This book isn't bad in charting what was going on in the civil rights movement at the time in a very honest way that seems rare in this era of self-serving hagiagrophy of King and others of his ilk.
Doesn't Quite live up to Parting the Waters
Branch's first book of his King trilogy "Parting the Waters" is a massive and impressive work on the civil rights movement. Pillar of Fire doesn't quite live up to it. Branch's style of impressive, almost smothering detail, which worked so well in Waters seems almost rambling at times in Waters. His coverage of the origins of the Vietnam war, while historically significant, seems out of place in the context of a civil rights history. Still Pillar of Fire is an good work in an impressive trilogy.
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DVD's
Keeps the Fire Aflame...Pillared Story of the Shaping of America 
Indispensible about Malcolm X 
