AmeriKKKa 
Thomas Sugrue
- Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Raymond Arsenault Buy this book
It is canonical in the American classroom, on television and in popular culture to celebrate the black civil rights movement as the triumph of American universalism, the vindication of the ‘American creed’ of egalitarianism, colour blindness and individual liberty against the forces of oppression that long held blacks in a subservient status. Americans remember the struggle for racial equality as a morality play, pitting nonviolence against racist violence, love against hatred. It is a Christian story of redemptive suffering and even martyrdom, as activists sacrificed their bodies to save the soul of America.
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Thomas Sugrue, Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of a history of civil rights in 20th-century America, due later this year.
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