Pillar of Fire

...The arguments put forth by business and the political Right that Europe is becoming economically uncompetitive because of "handouts" to the undeserving, however, also resonates in economies persistently dogged by 13 to 14 percent unemployment...

...What neither they nor Newhouse bring up is that such realignments have a lot to do with the responsibility of national governments to provide social security benefits for people in regions that are not havens of prosperity...

...Wiretapping and then sending the incriminating tapes to King, Hoover tried his best to break the civil rights movement...

...History, argues Newhouse, is passing these outmoded fictions by replacing them with newer forms of collective id entification, based on more pressing current-day passions and interests...

...As Martin Luther King, Jr., explained: "We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands...

...The biggest national crisis of 1963the murder of JFK--transformed the civil rights movement...

...When Branch turns to this story, he reminds us of Malcolm X's rhetorical skills and rebellious machismo, what Branch calls his "swagger" and "bristling, military posture...

...After all, he was much too busy either getting the goods on Elijah Muhammad's lecherous activities with younger women of the Nation of Islam or dodging assassins...

...You must decide which way it's going to be, the shrink tells me after another false cardiac arrest...

...D Kevin Matlson is author of Creating a Democratic Public (Penn State Press), which explores the Progressive Era struggle for participatol 7 democracy...

...Something more than narrative skill and a journalistic attention to detail is necessary to explain the meaning of the civil rights movement...

...My hands lurch above my pillow smack into glass...

...In King's tradition there were no proofs, only witnesses...

...The ritual dance of strike-andconcession of French political life, for example, will have to find its translation in a new pan-European political language...

...It is no surprise that many of the most egregious cases of violence against immigrants come from the south of France and Germany, at the meeting point of the superregion bananas...

...The vast majority of the voters wholeheartedly approve of the governmental benefits and protections espoused by the political Left...

...F o r e i g n e r s - - e s p e c i a l l y those from Africa, the Indian subcontinent, or Eastern Europe--are loaded up with the freight of domestic economic and political frustrations...

...If Johnson faced a behind-the-scenes rival for power in Hoover, King faced his own challenge in the rise of Malcolm X. Today, Malcolm X is a hero for black nationalists...

...For example, since Branch includes a myriad of characters here, King's life disappears for good chunks of the narrative...

...The ritual logic is to send them out in to the desert somewhere...

...The rise of the political clout of the superregions is undeniable...

...Politicians and business leaders from these areas quite predictably chafe at their political and economic obligations to the central governments and poorer regions of their home countries...

...He never offered a clear agenda or a strategic alternative to King's nonviolent, grassroots movement...

...He is research director at the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democ~tcy (Rutgers University...

...Since Branch uses 600 pages to cover but two years of history, broader comparisons of this sort are impossible for him to make...

...In other words, it's like gerrymandering districts by income in order to balance the budget...

...In a way, the confusion and conflict within SNCC, resulting in the eventual expulsion of white members from its ranks, seems more emblematic of the state of the American soul than did King's abiding concerns...

...If indeed the long arc of the universe bent toward justice, and the universe proved friendly, history's slow triumph over slaughterhouse evil would be a compelling sign not only of benevolent design behind the cosmos but of a democratic bond in human nature...

...Tune in every Thursday at 10 PM or Friday at 1 AM (Eastern Time) weekly thin September 25th Only on 0 D Y S S E Y ~--] For channel designations and air times in your zone, call your local cable television company or 0 D Y S S E Y ~]toll-freeatl-888-390-7474 Odyssey is also available on Primestar Channel 84 Marvknoll's Mission of Hope and Healitlg Produced by Maryknoll World Productions and Hispanic Telecommunications Network Maryknoll Missioners ~ Maryknoll, NY 10545 Commonweal 2 3 April24, 1998 vive half slave and half free...

...Commonweal 2 4" April24, 1998...

...Even if Branch's explanation of what made these years so crucial remains unpersuasive, we have him to thank for telling these stories with great skill...

...Moreover, Kennedy gave blacks little protection from lynch-mob violence...

...Unlike Kennedy's technocratic and pragmatic approach to Commonweal 2 2 April24, 1998 issues, Branch shows how Johnson's firm moral stand on civil rights helped to ensure legislative victory...

...Scarier yet is to think that Hoover had held power for fifty years...

...The superregions of Europe are defined precisely by their being the corridors of economic power and prosperity...

...Branch writes that the goal of Pillar of Fire is to establish that "King's life is the best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed postwar years...

...Taylor Branch began telling the story of the civil rights movement in his magisterial Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954--63...

...Unfortunately, his reportage fails to support the thesis...

...King called it a daring "extreme...

...a new weekly series that will change the way you see our world...

...Lying in bed as my own engines rev, I nauseate from the sweat of machinery...

...This political impasse gives way to another, crucial feature of the European political scene that Newhouse underemphasizes, that of racist xenophobia...

...But by 1963, King was less intent on changing the minds of local Birmingham citizens and more determined to seize media attention and provoke a federal response...

...Next time the heart...

...Knowing that he was handing the South to the Republicans, Johnson never backed down from his desire, in his own words, to "help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the nation...

...Not the least of these will be the negotiation of the different political traditions in different countries as the monetary union begins to bite into the political autonomy of the member nations...

...It would be naive, however, to think that it's simply a question of replacing one set of boundaries with another, or even one vision of government with another...

...I plunge through air toward the cruiser that grows too large, too quickly...

...Malcolm X's political weakness and marginal status made King's vision that much more powerful...

...Of course, LBJ could never completely overcome the most virulent and powerful anti-Communist in Washington-J. Edgar Hoover, the paranoid director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

...Any man who puts his women and children on the front lines is a chump, not a champ," Malcolm declared during the Birmingham protests...

...For in them, America's rich moral struggle to become a better nation continues to live...

...Here he picks up where he left off, narrating the history of the years 1963-65, when the movement won its two most impressive legislative victories--the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965...

...I hear the hiss of acetylene torches weld the cockpit locked around me...

...And it is King's extraordinary vision for America that Branch rightly celebrates: To hold the belief in justice among equal souls as the key to religious as well as political conviction seemed at once crazy and noble, wildly improbable and starkly human...

...Importantly, King's first sense of puzzlement over whether the plight of AfricanAmericans was solely racial or economic is also examined...

...Only the hideous attacks of 1963 on innocent black Sunday-school children and others in Birmingham provoked Kennedy to move on civil rights legislation...

...Much of this change in emphasis only becomes clear when King's activities of 1963-65 are placed alongside his earlier efforts...

...In painting his picture of the entire era, Branch also discusses the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964 (and other, lesser-known acts of barbarism), the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party's failure to transform the Democratic party in the South, the urban race riots in Northern cities, and the rise of the political Right in the wake of Barry Goldwater's defeat...

...Yet at times--as witnessed in the urban riots beginning in 1965--the nation seems to be coming apart at the seams...

...The last thought I have before going off is where to strike it...

...The energy that Newhouse sees driving the geographical realignments is principally economic...

...My legs bounce so hard they shake my wife out of her sleep night after night...

...In 1955, King believed in struggling within the local community of Montgomery to change the attitudes of local whites--to build, through strugThe Payload I am going off all the time, even when I sleep or try to stay asleep...

...Otherwise, Europe might well go bananas...

...For instance, Branch never explains the significant shift in King's tactics that took place during the years 1963-65...

...Much of LBJ's moralism, writes Branch, could be attributed to a more relaxed attitude toward the threat of domestic communism--another move beyond the cultural and political stalemate of the Kennedy years...

...La France aux Franr The momentum of Newhouse's superregions is caught up in this ominous dynamic...

...They fantasize about creating new regional entities with their robust neighboring economic partner regions...

...Bombs from the horizon of my dream rip into my head, detonate their drone until there's nothing but fire and noise...

...Though he moved away from the antiwhite sentiments of the Nation of Islam and journeyed to Selma in '65 in a rare show of support for King, Malcolm X remained a staunch opponent of integration and of King's nonviolent tactics...

...Although Branch's storytelling is nearly always provocative, his analysis is less cogent...

...MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY Kevin Mattson he civil rights movement was a rare time in American history when ordinary citizens placed their bodies on the line to challenge the nation's conscience...

...After reading Branch's account of the Hoover-King relationship, Robert Kennedy's assessment of Hoover as "rather a psycho" rings true...

...No amount of redrawing borderlines is going to escape this bind...

...He hailed luminous extremists in a paired roll call that included Jesus on the pure refusal to hate, Jefferson on equal standing in creation, Amos on the rolling waters of justice, and Lincoln on the crucible of democratic commitment: "This nation cannot surJoin us on a journey t o . . . ( he Watch...The Field Afar...

...More intriguing is how throughout this period (and his entire life), King stands firm for nonviolence and integrationism...

...It is a great irony of history, but perhaps a deep reflection of how political change occurs, that the Southerner, Lyndon Baines Johnson, not the Northeasterner Kennedy, did the most of any president for civil rights...

...That said, Branch provides an amazing overview of this period, bringing to life its central characters and conflicts...

...Jorge Pedraza is a professor of French and Comparative Literatmv at Willhmls College...

...Share the adventures of Maryknoll Missioners in distant lands Baguio, Philippines Phnom Penh, Cambodia Bangkok, Thailand Jofio Pessoa, Brazil Pilcuyo, Peru Lima, Peru Sayaxch6, Guatemala Nairobi, Kenya Shinyanga, Tanzania Msange, Tanzania Sherpur, Bangladesh ...Mission in the world...

...Peter E. Murphy gle and nonviolent force, a "beloved community...

...European unification might prove to be another costly or even tragic Grand Illusion...

...The tales he tells are well-known, and even if Branch fails, at times, to explain the significance of his stories, there is still much to learn from the details...

...In Parting the Waters, Branch documented Kennedy's cold, amoral pragmatism as he pressed civil rights workers to stop fighting segregation and focus instead on registering black voters--a callous attempt to get the vote out for l)emocrats...

...Branch plumbs deep here, exposing the extent of Hoover's threat not only to executive power (Kennedy actually cleared presidential statements through Hoover) but to King...

...Just as important, the movement was politically adept in its ability to command the moral high ground, to persuade, and to wield power effectively...

...Branch's evidence suggests that the metaphorical prominence he gives King needs some rethinking...

...This time the head, Big Guy...

...The far Right says out loud what apparently many other Europeans say under their breath: Raus Ausla'nder...

...All of the countries of Europe have shown evidence of the sympathy among disturbingly large portions of the electorate with the politics of scapegoating...

...The political emergence of these regions takes place within the ongoing l e f t / r i g h t , electorate/business deadlock in Europe...

...Whatever one thinks of King's changed tactics, they demand scrutiny and analysis, for it is here that one senses a tension between morality and politics--between principles, vision, and the demand for effectiveness-that had an enormous impact on future political activism...

...Branch also reminds us that there was little substance to Malcolm X's program...

...It was democracy at its best...

...more amazing still is how LBJ eventually cajoled him into helping out civil rights workers...

...Newhouse is right, nonetheless, that in the absence of the comfortable securities of the cold war, Europe is now having to face up to some its most difficult political problems...