Part two in Taylor Branch's three-part opus on the American Civil Rights Movement,
Pillar of Fire details the rise of the nation of Islam and the first years of President Johnson's term up to the assassination of Malcolm X. Starting in the oldest of American cities, St. Augustine, Florida, Branch's work ably brings together the disparate elements of the Civil Rights Movement as it burgeoned beyond the March of Washington and spread past the bounds of the SNCC, the SCLC and the NAACP. Throughout the work Branch gives the reader a sense that, at times, the movement was surpassing the abilities of even King, Elijah Muhammad, Bob Moses and Ralph Abernathy to control. Additionally, as President Kennedy exits the scene, struck down by an assassin's bullet, newly sworn-in President Johnson brings his energies and passions to bear on a Voting Rights and Civil Rights Bill.
Not as unified as his first work,
Pillar of Fire nevertheless traces the uncertainty and power of the middle and crucial years of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King has moved beyond being simply a famous preacher and become an institution in and of himself: we see him and those around him beset on all sides by the trappings of fame and prestige. Branch ably characterizes the strengths and flaws of the movement and its people, reminding us that though they may have not been perfect, the generation of leaders and unnamed Americans who ushered in a new age, were something much more resonant, they were human.
