This edifying compilation of diverse documents and the rich Lawson/Payne debate is certain to stimulate lively exchanges in and out of classrooms about movement origins, gender and class issues within, and the politics of naming. Debating the Civil Rights Movement is an important book that forces us to rethink the meaning of leadership in, arguably, the most significant movement for social change in 20th century America. Debating the Civil Rights Movement is a passionate dialogue of interpretative difference by two exquisite historians. Steven Lawson and Charles Payne's insightful and provocative essays bracket astutely selected primary documents that challenge us all, students, scholars, and general readers to ask new questions and revisit old assumptions. Lawson and Payne have given to us an uniquely exciting, useful, and yes, unsettling, book.

Darlene Clark Hine, Michigan State University

As President Clinton's recent Initiative on Race makes clear, 'race' has for centuries been a central contradiction within American democracy life. Payne and Lawson carefully document the richly diverse history of the struggle to desegregate American society. This outstanding volume illustrates fully the accomplishments and limitations of the Second Reconstruction. Debating the Civil Rights Movement makes an important scholarly contribution to our understanding of a shared racial history.

Manning Marable, M. Moran Weston/Black Alumni Council Professor of African-American Studies, Columbia University

This splendid analytic treatment of the civil rights era should be required reading for undergraduates and scholars alike.

John Dittmer, DePauw University

A useful, readable, and provocative book from a series that aims to bring important current historiographical and methodological debates into undergraduate classrooms. Debating the Civil Rights Movement is so well done, however, that it is also highly recommended for nonspecialist graduate students and even professors looking to brush up on their civil rights historiography.

Derek Catsam, Ohio University, H-Pol

This splendid volume is the first of a new series that takes a fresh approach to the task of presenting different viewpoints about our recent past. This volume consists of just two essays written from opposing perspectives but comprehensive in their treatment of the subject under discussion. Indeed Lawson and Payne are such fair-minded and careful scholars that many readers may carry away the notion that not as much separates them in their debate as is officially claimed. That the excellence of the essays mutes some of the conflict between them does not diminish the value of this challenging approach to twentieth-century America.

Journal of Southern History

These are both excellent essays. They will make an interesting book, a wonderful book to teach, and a superb learning tool.

Harvard Sitkoff, University of New Hampshire