Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963

Summary

Branch opens his sweeping trilogy on the civil rights movement by tracing the years when Martin Luther King Jr. rose to national leadership, from the Montgomery bus boycott through the Birmingham campaign and the March on Washington. He weaves together church politics, federal maneuvering, grassroots organizing, and the lives of ordinary activists to show how a movement took shape. The book stands as a landmark narrative history that treats King not as a lone hero but as part of a vast collective struggle.