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mother's boast that she "never gave a drink of water to a white woman/"

It will mean connecting the racial fissures which destroyed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to the long history of black nationalism in America, seeing in Malcolm X a child of Marcus Garvey and grandchild of Henry McNeal Turner and before him, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Paul Cuffe and others.

It means recalling the more radical politics Martin Luther King, Jr. espoused as the movement wore on, including his criticism of war and capitalism and his endorsement of affirmative action.

And it means retelling familiar history from new perspectives, learned from informants who stories were muted and silenced in the past.

One highlight of civil rights history is the protest movement King brough to Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963. Lasting less than three months, the Birmingham movement captured national attention. King skillfully employed youthful demonstrators whose buoyancy and vitality provoked the anticipated - and televised - violent response from local police. King drew and unwilling President into his drama; the President's men helped to make a settlement possible.

A few months later his compelling speech at the March on Washington cemented his place as first among equals in America's civil rights leadership. Like the beatings and hosings in Birmingham, King's Washington speech was broadcast throughout the