Parting the Waters

During the past year our country and world have seen an enormous surge in protest energy. From Zucotti Park to Tahrir Square, people have taken to the streets, demanding change. These movements seem viral as they achieve critical mass. But a movement can’t be built on foot soldiers and zeal alone. It takes organization, politicking, and timing. It takes work.

A book I recommend to you all this Martin Luther King Day is Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years. At over 1000 pages, it’s something of a behemoth. But Parting the Waters reads easily as Branch recreates, in extraordinary detail, the development of the civil rights movement and its storied leaders. We learn much about Martin Luther King Jr’s education, life and choices. And learn that the success of the civil rights movement depended not just on Dr. King’s vision, but also on the grassroots organizing by thousands of others.  It’s a fantastic book that chronicles an extraordinary moment in our country’s history—when organization yielded real change.