Atlanta Author...Taylor Branch

While prize-winning author Taylor Branch was a student/football player at The Westminster Schools (Class of 1964) and, later, studying at the Univerrsity of North Carolina (1968), the United States was divided by the war in Vietnam and the civil rights movement.

In his new book, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 – the third and final volume in his definitive history of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement – two photographs capture that era and form the basis for the story Branch unravels and reveals:

• In one, King and others at the beginning of the Selma March in 1965 were getting leis placed around their necks by people who had traveled from Hawaii for the historic event;

• In the other, Marines landing in Vietnam later that same month had leis placed around their necks by young Vietnamese women happily welcoming them to their country.

“It’s a great send off on something very historic and close to the core of democracy,” Branch said before beginning a book tour this month. “I follow these two things through the book, tracking the violent and non-violent paths of democracy in Vietnam, Selma and Chicago.”

Branch grew up and reached out during this conflicting time. After high school, he worked on voter registration drives in the Deep South and, working alongside Bill Clinton, volunteered on George McGovern’s presidential campaign. During the 1970s in Washington, D.C., and New York, he wrote and edited for Esquire, Harper’s and The Washington Monthly and has had his hand in a number of prominent books: ghostwriting Blind Ambition for John Dean, writing Second Wind with Bill Russell and his own novel, The Empire Blues.

Since the early 1980s, the epic story of Martin Luther King Jr. has consumed him as a scholar and historian and author. Branch has maintained a close friendship with Clinton, and assisted him with an oral history that became the basis for the former president’s memoir, My Life.

Branch, who now lives in Baltimore and works out of a home office, said his new book “translates right to today: that [Vice President Richard] Cheney thinks the way to bring democracy to Iraq is with soldiers....What I think it shows is that if you go about pursuing democracy and freedom the right way, it tends to have ripple effects – for foreigners, women, old people and, of course, the South....Non-violence is not a matter of catching up with people,” he added. “It’s being ahead .... To give it up is not a step forward, it’s a step backward.”

Branch recently filled over 30 large file boxes of his papers, more than 1,000 recorded interviews, computer files and phone conversations to donate to UNC. “An archivist came and got them,” he said. “Now I’m staring at blank walls, and I have to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. It won’t be another magnum opus!”

“After being cooped up all these years,” Branch said he’s looking forward to the book tour – which starts on the King holiday with appearances on the Today show and on National Public Radio – and “selling the book through the cold weather when there’s not any baseball to watch.” After that, he said, “music is still a great passion...or I might do a Clinton memoir.”

Taylor Branch will be at book signings for At Canaan's Edge:

* Tuesday, Jan. 31, at the Carter Center Library, 8 p.m.
* Wednesday, Feb. 1, at Barnes & Noble at The Peach in Buckhead,  7:30 p.m.