BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Even the prime minister of Uganda registered an official protest against the fire hoses and "snarling dogs" of Birmingham, Alabama during a May, 1963 correspondence with President John F. Kennedy, writes Taylor Branch in his latest book on the civil rights movement.
In The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement (Simon & Schuster), Branch focuses not on the events in Birmingham during the pivotal April and May of 1963, but what happened after Martin Luther King, Jr. led marches and demonstrations helped end segregation in the city.
"Birmingham is such a complex story that I really picked the aftermath of Birmingham, not the development of the Birmingham campaign, the 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'," said Branch in an interview.
Rallies of support as far away as Birmingham, England and Havana, Cuba were held after King, the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth and others got city leaders to agree to dismantle some segregationist laws. And, Prime Minister Milton Obote of Uganda registered an official protest over the treatment of protestors in Birmingham when President Kennedy sent a message on May 21, 1963 to a summit conference of the independent African nations, Branch writes.
In the book which was published this month in hardcover, ebook, and enhanced ebook editions, Branch identifies 18 moments from the Civil Rights Movement, and placed each in historical context with a new introduction.
Those, of course, include events from Birmingham of 1963 and what happened to movement leaders and the world after the demonstrations ended.
"Birmingham had suddenly changed King from a tireless drone on the speaking circuit to the star of a swarming hive," Branch writes. Also, "intelligence reports noted that the Soviet Union broadcast 1,420 anti-U.S. commentaries about the Birmingham crisis during the two weeks following the settlement - seven times more than at the worst of the Ole Miss crisis, nine times the peak during the Freedom Rides."
Branch speaks widely on the events of the 1960s and recognized as one of the authoritative voices of the civil rights movement.
He is best known for his landmark history of America and Martin Luther King during the civil rights era. The trilogy's first book, Parting the Waters, America in the King Years, 1954-63, won a Pulitzer Prize.
The King Years is meant for general readers but designed as a teaching tool for the digital age, Branch said. "It's shorter so that people can get a sense of the full scope of the movement in an economical way," he said.
The book begins with twenty-six-year-old Martin Luther King's first public address on the first night of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott which helped propel the Baptist preacher into a national civil rights figure.
Also covered are the March on Washington and the Vietnam War, along with well-known figures such as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the Kennedy brothers, and President Lyndon Johnson and little known forces behind the civil rights movement such as Diane Nash and student leader Bob Moses.
The book is new for readers and also the author, one of the preeminent voices on the civil rights movement.
"It's new for me in a sense that they have a very young actor reading the audio book that you can listen to, Leslie Odom Jr. who was one of the pilots in "Red Tails" and he's star of "Smash," Branch said.
The enhanced eBook comes with additional videos and music throughout the text, which includes film of Walter Cronkite interviewing President Kennedy, King discussing his early plans for the Birmingham campaign and tracks of Freedom songs.
"You even click when it describes Lyndon Johnson talking on the telephone in the middle of the Democratic convention about to have a nervous breakdown, you can literally hear him talking on the phone," Branch said.
Branch said he became convinced by teachers that in the digital age he needed a doorway that would make the book more accessible to students and new readers.
"Each chapter reflects a different choice about what can be economically delivered to a modern reader that is still salient that still will communicate to them something that they can still feel and understand why and why it still has echoes and in the present," he said.