Taylor Branch on The 18 Pivotal Moments of the Civil Rights Movement

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Branch-0129.mp3

January 29, 2013

50 years ago this month, standing on the portico of the Alabama State Capitol, where Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as the President of the Confederacy, Governor George Wallace uttered that now famous declaration "segregation now, segregation forever.” The historian Taylor Branch points out in his indispensable new book on the civil rights movement, that just a few years later, Wallace denied ever saying anything that “reflects on a man’s race.”  Taylor Branch has helped us sort-out truth from myth, and to come to terms with the contradictions of history throughout his acclaimed career.  Telling the story of race relations in America has animated Branch for more than 30 years. 

In his latest book, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement, Branch has chosen 18 stories that tell the nuanced and complex history of the movement from the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.  Taylor Branch will be discussing his book tonight at the Central Branch of the Pratt Library at 7:00.  Here, he talks with Tom Hall.