Strange career

Fifty years ago, C. Vann Woodward wrote a slim volume that changed our understanding of the segregated South and became, in Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, 'the historical bible of the civil rights movement.' Not all historians, however, saw it that way.

JIM CROW COUNTRY. A sign at a Greyhound bus station in Rome, Ga., in 1943. (Photo / ©Corbis)

By Clay Risen

July 17, 2005

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MARCH 25, 1965 was a warm, cloudy day in Montgomery, Ala., and though it looked like rain, 25,000 people had gathered in front of the state capitol to listen to Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his closing speech for the Freedom March, which had begun several days and 58 miles before in Selma. (Full article: 1843 words)