“Byron Williams’ groundbreaking narrative beautifully demonstrates that we are the descendants and beneficiaries of the year of hope and hostility.”—Tavis Smiley

“For 50 years, 1963 has hidden in plain sight. We have been content to define the year by the tragedy in Dallas, but Byron Williams forces us to revisit this year that has greatly influenced our politics as well as our culture. Don’t miss the powerful book.”
—Princeton Professor Cornel West

“1963 was really the year that changed things,” says Byron Williams, the author of 1963: The Year of Hope & Hostility. Several books discuss the events that Williams, a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, explores in his book, but none have viewed them through the lens of a 365-day odyssey that chronicles this watershed moment in American history and culture. None have focused with laser-like precision on the major events of that year. In 1963, Williams, the pastor of the Resurrection Community Church in Berkley, California, examines who we were fifty years ago and its impact on who we are today.

Williams explores 1963 through the prism of the three most influential individuals of that year: President John F. Kennedy, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Governor George Wallace.

It was the year that Martin Luther King wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. It was the year that King gave the keynote address at the March on Washington.

It was the year that Medgar Evers was killed and four young African-American girls were killed at the Sixteenth Baptist Church. It was the year that Governor George Wallace infamously proclaimed “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever” and stood in front of the classroom doors of the University of Alabama and endeavored to blocked two African-American students from admittance.

It was the year that ended with the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The dream that was Camelot was drowned in the blood shed that tragic day in Dallas.

In this penetrating and provocative history of this critical year, Byron Williams examines three key moments: the dramatic events of the Kennedy administration, George Wallace’s rise to power, and Martin Luther King’s rise to prominence as he forged the civil-rights movement into an unstoppable force in American politics and culture.

Williams explores the significance of the events of 1963 and the impact they have had right down to the present day, including:

• Kennedy’s transformation as a political leader from his early unsuccessful handling of the Cold War, as evidenced by the Bay of Pigs incident and his initial encounter with Khrushchev, to his successful handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech as well as his evolving awareness of the importance of the civil rights movement at home.

• Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. A universally recognized masterpiece of American political oratory, Williams explains why it is the most important document written during the Civil Rights Movement.

• King’s March on Washington and the intricate political maneuvering and planning behind the monumental rally for civil rights.

• The assassination of President Kennedy and the impact of the assassination on our political culture.

• How Bull Connor, the notoriously racist Commissioner of Public Safety, unwittingly did more to advance civil rights agenda in a single blunder than King could have hoped for, his eight hard years of putting his life on the line in the name of civil rights notwithstanding.

• How Bull Connor’s attack against African-American children with fire hoses and attack-dogs set the stage for the upcoming March on Washington and proved to be an integral part of the momentum for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

• Governor George Wallace’s rise to power from his progressive beginnings as a pro-black liberal Democrat (he was once endorsed by the NAACP) to a Southern bigot whose famous (and infamous) inauguration acceptance speech, “Segregation now… segregation tomorrow …segregation forever,” was one of the most influential speeches of 1963, thus helping to set the tone for the year that would be a contest between hope and hostility.

1963 is forever associated with the assassination of President Kennedy. Yet, says Byron Williams, many other monumental events also occurred that year that continue to have a profound impact on not only our history but also our daily lives and especially our commitment to our stated democratic principles and beliefs.

In this groundbreaking historical look at 1963, Byron Williams also investigates how the transformative events of 1963 were dependent upon actions in previous years and were sometimes decades in the making. As Martin Luther King shared with civil rights leader Jack O’Dell, the facts alone do not reveal truth. Instead, it is within the interrelated nature of facts where truth most often emerges. The events that Williams has judiciously selected from 1963, though they have been presented for fifty years as unrelated, are a collection of interrelated facts that tell a profound truth about who were then, paving a methodical trail that leads to who we are today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Byron Williams is the pastor of the Resurrection Community Church in Berkley, CA and a columnist for The Huffington Post and the Bay Area News Group (where his work was considered for a Pulitzer Prize). He is also the author of Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections on the Iraq War. He has written for The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The San Francisco Chronicle, Tikkun, Christianity Today, and The Guardian (UK). He has also appeared on CNN, ABC, MSNBC, NPR and Fox.