We Shall Overcome

Of the leaders of the civil rights movement, no other figure approached the significance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His speech at the 1963 March on Washington has come to symbolize the hardships and victories of an entire era. But in revering the memory of a great man, we sometimes lose sight of the many local and less glamorous struggles, both personal and social, and the world against which they were fought. In We Shall Overcome, America's leading scholars and activists from the civil rights years speak on a fascinating range of experiences surrounding King and his era, from his early personal religious conversion to his impact on the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa; from his place in the history of the African-American church to the rise in Third World liberation struggles.The impressive group of contributors—including John Hope Franklin, David Garrow, Coretta Scott King, Nathan Huggins, Mary Frances Berry, Cornel West, Aldon D. Morris, Howard Zinn, and others—gathered in October 1986 at a conference in Washington, D.C. This book consists of their presentations, specially prepared for publication, with added personal statements about their relationships to Dr. King and the movement, and about their own lives. The result is not only an important, wide-ranging work of history, but a moving testimonial to a great leader.