"As an introduction to the subject, this book is outstanding . . . The civil rights movement challenges historians to chronicle the transformations that occurred over three decades [and] few have accomplished this task more satisfactorily than Harvard Sitkoff . . . The Struggle for Black Equality stunningly conveys the passion and anguish of the civil rights movement for those too young to remember and to those who prefer not to forget. From Brown to Bakke, Martin Luther King, Jr., to Malcolm X, and Montgomery to Memphis, the author vividly portrays the many currents flowing into the river of black protest—the individual and social, local and national, practical and philosophical. He skillfully charts the ebb and flow of Afro-American militancy alternating between optimism and despair, and concludes that a third Reconstruction must arise to remedy the economic and institutional ills carried over from the past. Readers will not find 'value-free' history in the pages of Sitkoff's book, for the author seeks to engage his audience, hoping to shatter its complacency. In doing so, he refrains from preaching, and while he never equivocates in his judgments, he carefully presents a balanced treatment."—Steven F. Lawson, University of South Florida, The Public Historian
