University of Georgia Press, 1995

If the Montgomery-to-Selma paradigm dominates civil rights history, it is easy to understand why. The Montgomery bus boycott that opened the era thrust the mantle of leadership on Martin Luther King Jr., whose prophetic charisma still defines the period. Ten years later the Selma march, which spurred passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, culminated the hard-fought struggle for full citizenship rights.