At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68

“Unfulfilled Dreams,” clinging to the Bible’s message of consolation when King David of Israel realized he would never live to see a temple built in Jerusalem: “You did well that it was in your heart.” King identified with crushed hopes. Bullets had ended Gandhi’s hope to witness independent India, he said, and “Paul never got to Spain.” People con

By its visionary conception, and immense effect, the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 rightfully joined the two great civil rights laws as a third enduring pillar of the freedom movement.

“The American people are infected with racism—that is the peril,” King concluded. “Paradoxically, they are also infected with democratic ideals—that is the hope.”

King himself upheld nonviolence until he was nearly alone among colleagues weary of sacrifice. To the end, he resisted incitements to violence, cynicism, and tribal retreat. He grasped freedom seen and unseen, rooted in ecumenical faith, sustaining patriotism to brighten the heritage of his country for all people. These treasures abide with lasting

At a far pole from accountable public trust, or constitutional duty, Hoover corrupted the FBI to wage political war.

Martin Luther King glumly observed from Birmingham’s Thomas Jefferson Hotel that “white Alabamians are desperately grasping for a way to return to the old days of white supremacy.”

“The first conclusion I offer is that the most deep-seated and destructive of all the causes of the Negro problem is still the prejudice of the white man,” wrote Bundy in a lofty but introspective president’s report. “Prejudice is a subtle and insidious vice. It can consume those who think themselves immune to it. It can masquerade as kindness, sym

How long? Not long! Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. How long? Not long! Because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

No one, including President Johnson, foresaw America’s first loss of a war, any more than the day’s tear gas victims pictured Selma as the last great thrust of a movement built on patriotic idealism. It was a turning point. The tide of confidence in equal citizenship had swelled over decades to confront segregation as well as the Nazis, and would r