“The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past.”

“By confining the civil rights struggle to the South, to bowdlerized heroes, to a single halcyon decade, and to limited, noneconomic objectives, the master narrative simultaneously elevates and diminishes the movement. It ensures the status of the classical phase as a triumphal moment in a larger American progress narrative, yet it undermines its gravitas. It prevents one of the most remarkable mass movements in American history from speaking effectively to the challenges of our time.”

The Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Mar., 2005), pp. 1233-1263.