A collection of excerpts and essays by a variety of writers examines the history of the civil rights movement, its leaders, and its long-term implications for affirmative action and racial relations in America.

Includes index.

Inheritors of slavery / Richard Wright -- North toward home / Willie Morris -- Notes of a native son / James Baldwin -- A pageant of birds / Eudora Welty -- I know why the caged bird sings / Maya Angelou -- Opera in Greenville / Rebecca West -- America comes of Middle Age / Murray Kempton -- American segregation and the world crisis / William Faulkner -- The moral aspects of segregation / Benjamin E. Mays -- The cradle (of the Confederacy) rocks / Carl T. Rowan -- Parting the waters : America in the king years / Taylor Branch -- Prime time / Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -- Letter from the South / E.B. White -- Segregation : the inner conflict in the South / Robert Penn Warren -- Travels with Charley / John Steinbeck -- Liar by legislation / Hodding Carter -- Harlem is nowhere / Ralph Ellison -- An interview with Malcolm X / Alex Haley -- Wallace / Marshall Frady -- Mystery and manners / Flannery O'Connor -- The Negro revolt against "the Negro leaders" / Louis E. Lomax -- "I have a dream ..." / James Reston -- Capital is occupied by a gentle army / Russell Baker -- Bloody Sunday / John Lewis -- Mississippi : the fallen paradise / Walker Percy -- This quiet dust / William Styron --When Watts burned / Stanley Crouch -- After Watts / Elizabeth Hardwick -- The brilliancy of black / Bernard Weinraub -- Representative / Charlayne Hunter-Gault -- The second coming of Martin Luther King / David Halberstam -- Martin Luther King is still on the case / Garry Wills -- "Keep on a-walking, children" / Pat Watters -- "We in a war, or haven't anybody told you that? / Peter Goldman -- Radical Chic : that party at Lenny's / Tom Wolfe -- Choosing to stay at home : ten years after the march on Washington / Alice Walker -- A hostile and welcoming workplace / Ellis Cose -- State secrets / Calvin Trillin -- Grady's gift / Howell Raines.