The sermons in A Knock at Midnight are both deeply moving and a powerful reminder of the greatness of Dr. King. This collection should be read and heard by everyone, especially the young of today who have been fed a Dr. King who somehow only delivered one speech ("I Have a Dream"). As a middle school teacher I found the sermons to be an excellent way for my students to move beyond the platitudes about Dr. King to a much deeper understanding of his life and ministry. To read and listen to these great sermons is an absolutely wonderful experience, but at the same time a sad reminder that today we have no great voice of moral authority like his. Fortunately we do have his words and voice preserved for us and our children.

Notice I refer to the cassettes and the companion book as an EXPERIENCE as I both listened to and read the REVEREND King! Although the media focused on the visible part of his ministry, the civil rights movement, his sermons are profound and awesome in their implications for today as well as their in their powerful delivery during the mid-1950's through 1960's. Although I will cherish both the cassette series and the book, it is through hearing the SPEAKING of Dr. King that really made me breathless! Thank you LORD God for sending us your messenger Dr. King to give us a wonderful earthly ministry for a brilliant and brief time (much like Jesus Christ). Simply awesome!

A fabulous collection of soul-stirring preaching by one of this century's finest preachers. Many people know King as a great political leader, fiery orator, and creative organizer. This collection of sermons will convince the world that King was first and foremost an anointed preacher. His sermons ring with authenticity and resound with relevancy. Kings messages speak profoundly to our troubled times and offer both prophetic insight and divine guidance as we attempt to find our way into the next millinium. This collection of sermons, with their superb introductions and commentaries, is perhaps one of the finest efforts of its kind. It will certainly be a source of pleasure and insight for generations to come.

This book is the second volume of the Library of America's documentary, journalistic history of the Civil Rights Movement. The first volume covers the years 1941-1963 and takes the story up to the March on Washington in August, 1963. The second volume covers a shorter time span, 1963 - 1973, but an equally momentous series of events. Volume II is easily important enough for its own short notice and review here.

The centerpiece of the two volumes is the March on Washington which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Indeed, the 1963 March, led by Dr. King, may be the watershed event of the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. There are three eyewitness accounts of the March presented in this book offering three different perspectives. The 1963 March, and the moment of idealism, justice and peace it has come to represent pervades and suggests worlds of commentary upon the rest of the volume.

The articles in this book have an emphasis on Congressional action. In 1964, following the 1963 events in Birmingham Alabama and the 1963 March, Congress passed the Civil Rights Law which, in time, would effectively end segregation in the South. In 1965, following events in Selma, Alabama and the March from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, Congress enacted voting rights legislation which at long last fulfilled the promise of the 15th Amendment to protect the voting rights of blacks. The events in Selma, and the manner in which they galvanized the nation are well documented in this book.

The story recounted in this volume is marked by assasination, violence and discord. There are two major assassinations highlighted here. The volume describes Malcom X's break from the Black Muslim movement and his assassination in February, 1965. A great deal of space is given to the assasination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1965 and to its tragic aftermath.

There is much space given to the violence that haunted the struggle for Civil Rights. In particular, many articles are given over to the murder of three young Civil Rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Cheney during June, 1964. Their murder involved the FBI in a massive manhunt which ultimately led to the conviction of Klansmen and of local law enforcement officials.

There is a great deal of material in the volume on the riots in Watts and Detroit and with the rise of Black Power and the Black Panther movement.

There are articles in this volume that draw excellent portraits of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, including Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, Bayard Rustin, Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, and, of course, Dr. King.

There are pictures of dusty roads and small towns in the South. Many articles are given to pictures of the South before and after the victories of the Civil Rights Movement. There is a suggestion in more than a few articles that the South may have, given its past, an ultimately easier time of moving towards a unified, racially egalitarian and united society than will the North. Time still needs to tell whether this is will in fact bethe case.

These are two indespensible volumes on the most important social movement of 20th Century America. The Civil Rights Movement is an essential component in the formation of the American dream and the American ideal.

America's largest, most continuous, and most pressing domestic issue has been the treatment it has accorded black Americans. Similarly, the most important and valuable social movement in our country in the Twentieth Century was the Civil Rights movement which began, essentially, in the 1940's with WW II, received its focus with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and continued through the 1950s 60s, and 70s.

The Library of America has published a two-volume history of the American Civil Rights Movement which focuses on contemporaneous journalistic accounts. The LOA's collection centers around the March on Washington in August 1963 which opens the second volume. The publication of the volumes, indeed, was timed to coincide with the 40th Anniversary of the March on Washington. This March is best known for Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech.

The first volume of the series, which I am discussing here, begins in 1941 and ends in the middle of 1963. In consists of about 100 articles and essays documenting the Civil Rights struggle during these momentous years. Given the centrality of the March on Washington to the collection, the volume opens with a "Call to Negro America" dated July 1, 1941 calling for 10,000 Black Americans to march on Washington D.C. to secure integration and equal treatment in the Armed Forces. Philip Randolph, then the President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters" was primarily responsible for this attempt to organize the 1941 march, and he participated prominently 22 years later in the 1963 March on Washington.

The volume documents other ways in which Civil Rights activities in the 1940s foreshadowed subsequent events. For example, there is an article detailing how Howard University students used the "sit-in" technique to desegregate Washington D.C. restaurants beginning in 1942. (see Pauli Murray's article on p. 62 of this volume). The sit-in technique was widely used beginning in the early 1960s to desegregate lunch counters in Southern and border states. There are many articles in this volume documenting these later sit-ins and their impact, as well as the original sit-in organized by Pauli Murray.

Among the many subjects covered by this book are Thurgood Marshall's early legal career for the NAACP, the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown", the lynching of Emmett Till in 1954 and the acquittal of the guilty parties by an all-white Mississippi jury, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which Martin Luther King first gained prominence, of 1956, the integration of Little Rock High School in 1957, the lunch counter sit-ins that I have already mentioned, the "Freedom Rides" the admission of James Meridith to the University of Mississippi in 1962, the Birmingam riots, and the murder of Medgar Evars, Missippi Field Secretary for the NAACP. on June 12, 1962. There is a great deal more, and the articles given in the volume address Civil Rights in the North as well as in the South.

There is an immediacy and an eloquence to this collection that gives the reader the feel of being there and participating at the time. The cumulative effect of reading the book through is moving and powerful. By reading the book cover-to-cover and as the articles are presented the reader will get a better feel for the Civil Rights Movement and Era that can be gotten anywhere else. The book records a seminal Era in our Nation's history and an idealism and a sprit that is difficult to recreate or recapture.

I would like to point out some of the longer articles that the reader should notice in going through the book. I enjoyed James Poling's 1952 essay "Thurgood Marshall and the 14th Amendment" which chronicles Marshall's early career. Another important essay is William Bradford Huie's "Emmett Till's Killers Tell their Story: January, 1956." which recounts the confession to Till's murder of the individuals acquitted by the Mississippi jury. Robert Penn Warren's 1956 book-length essay "Segregation: the Inner Conflict in the South" is reprinted in the volume in full. There is a lengthy excerpt from James Baldwin's 1962 "The Fire Next Time" which recounts Baldwin's meeting with Elijah Muhammad and his thoughts about the Black Muslim Movement. Norman Podhoretz's 1963 essay "My Negro Problem and Ours" remains well worth reading. Probably the most significant single text in this volume is Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" written in 1963. In this famous letter, Dr. King responds eloquently to criticism of his movement and his techniques voiced by eight Birmingham clergymen. The letter is a classic, not the least for Dr. King's writing style.

The book contains a chronology which will help the reader place the articles in perspective, and biographical notes on each of the authors. I found myself turning to the biographies and the chronology repeatedly as I read the volume. The Library of America has also posted excellent study material for this book and its companion volume on its Website.

This is a book that documents American's history and our country's continuing struggle to meet and develop its ideals.

I've used this book as a resource for teaching about slavery in an elementary school class. The thoughts conveyed are not the usual rhetoric presented in most lower level school social studies texts. Until recently children have not been exposed to the idea that slavery existed in parts of the world other than the USA. The long history of slavery - in the world and especially in Africa itself is new to many people. We learn much about slavery that has not before been related to school children, if not adults. The children in my classroom have been very absorbed by the thoughts presented in these pages. This is a must-read for Middle or High School students studying Aftican American history. As a teacher I would be sure to use it in my class.

"Bound for Glory 1910-1930" is part of the "Milestones in Black American History," a 16-volume exploration of the black experience from Ancient Egypt to the present. Each volume focuses on a specific period of African-American history, and this book by Kerry Candaele covers the vast migration of blacks from the rural South to the cities of the North. Fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, racial segregation remained the norm in the South, which remained isolated and economically backward. During these two decades over a million black southerners moved north to escape the constraints of persecution, poverty, and cultural emptiness. Although they also faced racism and discrimination in the North, blacks made significant achievements in World War I, art, music, literature, political, business, entertainment, and sports. The result, Candaele argues, was that blacks forged a new respect for themselves and their African-American identity.

This volume offers eight chapters: (1) The Great Migration overviews the search for a less racist society with greater economic opportunities in the North; (2) Safe for Democracy? looks at the performance of blacks on the battlefields of World War I; (3) After the War looks at how white racists responded to the new racial pride of the blacks; (4) Marcus Garvey and Pan-Africanism focuses on the leader of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and one of the most important black figures between the wars; (5) That's Entertainment looks at not only comedies with Stepin Fetchit and "Our Gang," but birth of both the Harlem Globetrotters and the Negro Leagues of baseball players; (6) Harlem talks about the famous New York community, while; (7) Renaissance looks at the writers and artists, such as Langston Hughes and Louis Armstrong, that created the cultural explosion of the Twenties; and (8) A New Struggle Begins looks at the impact of the Great Depression. This book is illustrated with dozens of black & white photographs, not only of key black figures but also of race riots and lynchings.

These books are marvelous supplementary sources for American History textbooks for which the black experience is usually a relatively minor consideration. Yes, young students will read about familiar names like World Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson, pitcher Satchel Paige and "Duke" Ellington, but they will also learn about World War I hero Sgt. Henry Johnson, author and teacher Jessie Fauset the "midwife of the Harlem Renaissance," and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. Candaele does an excellent telling the story of both these people and the times in which they lived.

"Milestones in Black American History" is a 16-volume exploration of the black experience from ancient Egypt to the present day, with each volume focusing on a specific period of African-American history. "Days of Sorrow, Years of Glory," focuses on the pivotal period in the history of the United States between the slave revolt led by Nat Turner in southeastern Virginia in 1813 and the passage of the controversial Fugitive Slave Act by the U.S. Congress as part of the Great Compromise of 1850. Timothy J. Paulson effectively contrasts the story of bondage in slavery for millions of African-Americans with the efforts of free blacks who produced an impressive array of industrial inventions, novels, music, sermons, newspapers, and political oratory. Paulson covers racist violence in the North, the foundation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, the black bandmaster Frank Johnson, the Battle of Lockahatchee between the U.S. Army and a black-Seminole army, David Ruggles's first black magazine, the "Amistad" and "Creole" slave ship revolts, and more.

"Days of Sorrow, Years of Glory" goes beyond the most famous names in the struggle of black Americans for liberty (Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass) to tell about Norbert Rillieux, William Henry Lane, and Joseph Cinque. I was pretty well versed in the political side of the story in terms of how the nation got from the Missouri Compromise to the Great Compromise of 1850, but Paulson is focusing more on the social side of the struggle. As a result, it is rather surprising to see how much was happening in Black American History in the years before the decade leading up to the Civil War. This book is illustrated with contemporary etchings, drawings, cartoons, and photographs from the period, including a photograph of the Hanging Tree where Nat Turner was executed, the title page of a book written by Frederick Douglass, and a much-reprinted lithograph entitled "The Old Plantation" showing the South's idealized view of slavery. For classes, students and teachers who want more information about American History from the African-American perspective than they will find in their textbooks, this is an excellent series.

What makes "The Gathering Storm 1787-1829" so compelling is that it is about the period in American history where slavery was not in the forefront of American politics. I was thinking about what I thought I knew about this period, and it was basically that after the Federal Constitution institutionalized slavery several generations went by before the Missouri Compromise and the Nat Turner rebellion made slavery the national issue. Of course, this was a naive reduction of American history on my part, which is corrected by Mary Sisson's informative fifth volume in the Milestones in Black American History series. "The Gathering Storm" covers the period from the framing of the Constitution in 1787 to David Walker's "Appeal" of 1829, which urged slaves to revolt and kill their masters. This division allows the next volume in the series to cover the period from the Nat Turner revolt to the Fugitive Slave Law.

"The Gathering Storm" provides unforgettable details about what slavery was like during these four decades when the number of slaves in the United States tripled. Sisson fills this volume with fascinating details about this period: in 1790 New Jersey and Pennsylvania each had more slaves than Tennessee, while in 1829 Cincinnati, Ohio began enforcing an 1804 statue requiring free blacks to post a $500 bond before settling in the city. There are other examples of laws clearly intended to preserve the institution of slavery, such as those forbidding Quakers from buying slaves that they obviously intended to free. But Sisson is also able to put these facts into context by focusing on two significant developments that had immense ramifications. First, the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney spurred the growth of slave-worked plantations that expanded slavery further west in the South. Second, the successful slave result that resulted in the formation of the independent nation of Haiti. Because of the fear of a slave uprising in the United States, abolitionists were able to get a federal ban on the importation of slaves, which had huge consequences for how slaves were treated and valued in the South.

Sisson also presents a series of compelling historical figures, such as Richard Allen, founder of the Free African Society and of the first independent black church in America; merchant-seaman Paul Cuffe and editor John Russwurm, two of the chief proponents of the colonization movement which sought to resettle free American blacks in West Africa; mathematician Benjamin Banneker who surveyed the land for the District of Columbia and produced a series of almanacs; Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey, who planned slave uprisings that unsettled the South; Vincent Oge and Francois-Dominique Toussaint-Louverture, leaders of the slave revolt that created Haiti; and David Walker, the firebrand who advocated violent revolt or predicated the nation would face a bloody civil war. When the volume ends with the Missouri Compromise and Walker's inflammatory "Appeal," it is clear the Civil War is inevitable.

Young students will have an excellent understanding of both the practice and politics of slavery after reading "The Gathering Storm, 1787-1829." I have not been working through the 16 volumes of the Milestones in Black American History series in order, but this is one of the best volumes in this excellent series, which covers the black experience from Ancient Egypt to the present. Although slavery would continue in the United States until the end of the Civil War, it underwent some significant changes through this period. Sisson does a superb job of organizing this material and making this case.

I have a dream that my son want be a black slave that he will be free. And saw my whife and my gran chudern

I reviewed this volume for the Southern Communication Journal and found it to be one of the most comprehensive historical compilations to address the American Civil Rights movement. Kudos to Carson for undertaking such an ambitious project. In an age of sensationalism and revisionist histories, Carson and the rest of the King Papers Project have shown that accurate documentation, rather than speculation, yields priceless insight into King and the Montgomery bus protest, a key event in the American Civil Rights movement.

This volume combines letters (to and from King), speeches, newspaper articles, and other texts to illustrate the King's depth. We see his religious upbringing, as evidenced in the influences of Ghandi and Christianity; his talent as a minister and an administrator, suggested by the National Baptist Convention's invitation to serve them as their president; and his intellectual aptitudes, shown in the strategy he employed in the Montgomery protest. His decision to move toward incremental change (with full equality as a long-term end) is a major reason why the Montgomery movement succeeded. Had he opted for an all-or-nothing, now-or-never approach, he would have encountered greater resistance, and the movement might have ended while achieving little or no progress. Instead, he lobbied for minor changes in an effort to gain momentum for the larger movement -- an approach dismissed by more radical members of the African-American community. For its insights into King the preacher, King the scholar, King the strategic activist, this text is a valuable addition to the legacy of arguably the most influential American of the last century -- and likely the most influential one never to serve as U.S. President.

"Struggle and Love: 1972-1997, From the Gary Convention to the Aftermath of the Million Man March" is the sixteenth and final volume in the Milestones in Black American History series. Actually this volume covers milestones from Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm announcing her bid for the presidency in January 1972 and ends with the death of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown in an airplane crash over Croatia in April 1996. Mary Hull covers a lot of ground in seven chapters.

(1) "Unity Without Uniformity" looks at the convention in Gary, Indiana in 1972 when eight thousand African-Americans delegates with diverse political goals. While they failed to crate a new black political party, let alone a single black political agenda, they were able to create a sense that "All things are possible." (2) "Mixing Southie and Roxbury" examines the forced integration in Boston that began in the fall of 1974 with the busing of students. (3) "To Get Beyond Racism" focuses on the issue of affirmative action, begun during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and challenged by the 1978 Bakke decision that ruled the policy was essentially reverse discrimination. (4) "Rolling Up Their Sleeves" looks at the political success of blacks, from Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition campaign for the presidency to the election of L. Douglas Wilder as governor of Virginia and Carol Mosley Braun to the U.S. Senate. (5) "From 'Roots' to Rap" looks at how African-Americans have transformed the culture of the country from Toni Morrison winning the Nobel prize for literature to Michael Jordan becoming the most famous athlete on the planet. (6) "Criminal Justice" contrasts the "Scottsboro Boys" being found innocent 45 years after their convictions with the Rodney King riots and the O.J. Simpson trial. (7) "Putting the Chain Back Together" looks at the Million Man March in October of 1995 conceived by Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan as a fitting counterpart to the Gary Convention of the opening chapter.

Hull's focus in this volume is on the struggle for leadership and focus among African Americans who have to deal with the desire to build consensus and the necessity of accepting the diversity of black politics. In that regard, the "Unity Without Uniformity" slogan popularized at the Gary Convention holds true. By taking more of an issue-oriented approach than a standard chronology, Hull is able to focus on important themes that establish the current concerns of African Americans. This is certainly appropriate because once you get to the present you are no longer dealing with history, but rather with politics. "Struggle and Love" is illustrated with black & white photographs and underscores that during this period, more so than anytime before, blacks in the United States are able to set their own agendas, cognizant of the cultural and economic problems that continue to exist.

Knowing absolutely nothing about the Black Panthers I picked up this collection one day and read nearly straight through it. I came away with what I think is a fairly good idea of the goals of the Black Panther Party, not the same one I had generally heard or been taught growing up. Instead of them being the black racists many tend to think they are, what would be the equal opposite of the KKK (who, versus the Panthers' few years of existence, have been operating for more than 100 years), I learned that they could be more adequately labeled as classists, in the Marxist-Lenin tradition. As Eldridge Cleaver, one-time minister of information for the Black Panther Party, "You speak of an 'undying love' for black people. An undying love for black people that denies the humanity of other people is doomed. It was an undying love of white people for each other which led them to deny the humanity of colored people and which has stripped white people of humanity itself." I don't see a lot of "hating whitey" there, as Horowitz and other conservatives would have you believe, but more of a gelling together of the dregs of humanity in an attempt to alter its condition, the stance that Malcolm X eventually evolved to, and, later, the Panthers.

Perhaps we as humanity have come a ways, maybe thanks to them, since the Panthers first took up arms, defying the police to beat, shoot or incarcerate them. I say this because eight years ago a similar movement began in the southern highlands of Mexico, another marginalized group taking up arms in order to say,"Take notice, we're not taking it anymore." Instead of being branded thugs and criminals, the Zapatistas captured the hearts and minds of the world and continue their quest for equal rights and protection under the law.

According to their own writings (the real beauty of this book), these guys are not the black KKK or black neo-nazis, contrary to some opinion.

I found the writings of Eldridge Cleaver, a one-time candidate for president, to be some of my favorite.

I'll close with a citation from Julian Bond, which I think sums up what the Black Panther Party was really about: "What the Panthers do more than anything else is they set a standard that young black people particularly want to measure up to...It's a standard of aggressiveness, of militance, of just plain forcefulness, the sort of standard we haven't had in the past. Our idols have been Dr. King who, for all his beauty as a man, was not an aggressive man." Even Dr. King began to take a more aggressive approach before he was gunned down. It's not hate or intimidation, but standing up for oneself as a man.

I recommend complementary readings of the Autobiography of Malcolm X and the Wretched of the Earth.

this Book should Bring People Together.The Black Panthers wanted a Better Today.still to this day we are facing the same Problems of which they spoke on 30 years back.no misguided words here their own words.a must Read for all to Better understanding Voices of Hope&a Better Tommorow for all future Generations.

The Black Panthers Speak is the BEST book out for Americans who want to know what the Panthers stood for. Nobody's interpretation of what the Panthers were about, but only the speeches, letters, and court transcripts of Black Panther members. This book should be read by Americans of ALL ethnicities. Use it to understand that the Black Panthers were a party for ALL people in the struggle for freedom.