To Redeem the Soul of America is a history of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and its role in bringing about a second reconstruction in the South-one that made good the promise of the first. Peering beyond the towering figure of Martin Luther King, Jr. to reveal the full workings of the organization that supported him, Adam Fairclough shows that by sacrificing a certain amount of effi-ciency in favor of flexibility, by thinking on its feet, the SCLC was able to learn from its errors and make the most of its opportunities. The SCLC excelled during the 1960s in the one activity that mattered the most in the struggle against segregation: the skillful use of non-violent direct action. Members of the SCLC out-sang, out-marched, and out-prayed their white oppressors. And, as Adam Fairclough re-veals, they also out-thought them.

"Fairclough succeeds in capturing the fear, the exhilaration, the sense of moral ascendancy that energized the early years of the civil rights movement. We see in vivid detail how King and the SCLC placed themselves at the cutting edge of the struggle for the liberation of black Americans-and, in a real sense, all Americans"-Los Angeles Times Book Review.

"An uplifting and informative account of the movement and, particu-larly, of the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Adam Fair-clough's grasp of his subject is impressive, and his treatment a model of its kind"-Boston Globe.

"Fairclough's fine study should prove useful to those seeking a gen eral understanding of the crusade that King led and exemplified. He does a convincing job of demonstrating that SCLC pursued its objec tives in a remarkably rational way and that its effectiveness owed much to King's pragmatic leadership"-George M. Fredrickson, Times Literary Supplement.

"Fairclough's splendidly researched, cogently articulated study may well represent the finest single piece of published scholarship on the American Civil Rights Movement"-Choice.

ADAM FAIRCLOUGH is a lecturer in history at St. David's University College, University of Wales.