Historian Annette Gordon-Reed on The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., the new book by LBJ Professor Peniel Joseph:
"What an era that could see the rise to national prominence of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. In his immensely valuable new book, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Peniel E. Joseph describes this time, roughly from 1954 to 1965, as 'the civil rights movement's heroic period,' aided greatly by the actions of these two men. In these years, King and Malcolm X captured the varied imaginations of African-Americans, approaching the subject of what was to be done about the circumstances of black life in the United States from different premises and vantage points. Their images have fallen prey to cliché: the benign King, who dreamed of a utopian 'beloved community' in which American society would become fully integrated racially, and the more dangerous Malcolm X, who promoted a black nationalism that sought nothing from whites save for noninterference with blacks’ effort to build lives of dignity.
"The Sword and the Shield shows the reality to have been far more complicated."