Class Reading

Like I said earlier, this isn’t a typical book-a-week graduate class I’m taking. We’re reading parts of many books simultaneously. But I’m reading ahead a bit when I can so I’ll talk about each book as I finish. Here’s the first:

Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters is essentially a story of the early Civil Rights Movement that primarily focuses on Martin Luther King while simultaneously placing the movement in the larger context of American history. It begins by setting the stage in Montgomery, where King would arrive as preacher and leave as the famous leader of the Montgomery bus boycott. The early part of the book also provides an excellent biography of King. The book continues with the emerging Civil Rights struggle, focusing on the sit-ins and Freedom Rides before moving to more concentrated efforts in Mississippi, Albany, Georgia and Birmingham, which Branch claims changed everything as King’s fame became irrevocable. The book culminates with the March on Washington, though the last chapter covers the aftermath and winds down anticlimactically for such a grand undertaking.

Parting the Waters is definitely not a history of America as the subtitle implies, though it tackles a panorama of events. At its best, the grand research leaves no stone unturned, which can be simultaneously enlightening and overwhelming, as are all encyclopedic offerings. For example, the passages regarding the FBI’s interest in King are fascinating but the in-depth background of seemingly every minor character distracts from the overall flow. At its best, the prose is touching and dramatic, humanizing history in ways few authors can. In the end, Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters is a powerful retelling of the early Civil Rights Movement that, while it might not challenge any established assumptions, should stimulate anyone not daunted by its sheer volume.