PARTING THE WATERS: AMERICA IN THE KING YEARS 1954-1963
by Taylor Branch; Simon & Schuster; 1,064 pages; $24.95
In the summer of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech to a crowd of 250,000 that had massed in Washington to support passage of civil rights legislation. It was a high moment. The Georgia preacher's cadences rolled over the Reflecting Pool like God's own truth; the Washington Monument loomed like Mount Sinai. As Mahalia Jackson chimed in, King concluded with the resounding hope that blacks and whites would join hands to sing, in the words of an...
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