Finally. All 2,000 pages read of the three-volume King biography/Civil Rights Movement narrative history. Just finished “At Canaan’s Edge” last night, in between gorging myself on that day-long Marx Brothers marathon on TCM yesterday. 🙂

Clearly this trilogy is supposed to be The Final Word on King and The Movement. As far as the often-trod history of 1955 to 1968 is concerned, it succeeds. Branch said his goal was to make narrative history and biography reinforce each other, and it’s clear he took 25 years to do that that well.

Verdict: Collectively, it’s a masterful narrative that weaves in out of the lives of several characters. (Don’t want to read a King biography AND the main books on SNCC and its leaders AND Robert A. Caro’s tomes on Johnson? Okay, then read these 2,000 pages and you’ll be straight.) My only issue with it is that it is a typical white liberal telling of a Great King who tried to save the world of its sins by forgiving whites of their racism. Branch wraps King in the American flag instead of the tradition of Black struggle. Black nationalism? Not a legitimate ideology with a long history, according to Branch’s omissions; it was just an outgrowth of disappointment with the pain that Blacks went through. The author takes pains to show the struggles and sacrifices of whites and Blacks to destroy second-class citizenship, and, to his credit, he does not flinch from showing white racist violence. The trilogy allows you to follow The Movement from the point of view of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover (whose actions against King Branch portrays as minor (!)) and Johnson as well as Malcolm X and several grassroots activists. I’m glad that there are so many other books with other perspectives, because I think (and hope) that the ideology behind Branch’s well-meaning narrative has run its course.