"This introduction to the civil rights movement synthesises its history, explaining its origins, development and results as well as historiographical debates ... [The author] outlines the range of white responses to the movement and analyses both northern and southern opinion. He examines the role of the federal government, the church and organised labour, as well as assessing the impact of the Cold War. The book discusses local, regional, and national civil rights campaigns; the utility of non-violent direct action; and the resurgence of black nationalism. And it explains the development, achievement and disintegration of the national civil rights coalition, the role of Martin Luther King Jr and the contribution of many otherwise ordinary men and women to the movement. The insufficiently appreciated National Association for the Advancement of Colored People receives particular attention ... In detailing the struggle between the 1930s and 1980s, [the author] widens the movement's traditional chronology, offering readers a broad-ranging history"--Publisher description.