A nation on fire : America in the wake of the King assassination

In A Nation on Fire, journalist Clay Risen relies on dozens of interviews and reams of newly declassified documents to offer a sweeping day-by-day, city-by-city account of the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination riots, from the looting and burning in Washington to explosions of violence in Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, and 117 other cities, large and small. A few hours after Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at a Memphis motel, violent mobs had looted and burned several blocks of Washington a few miles north of the White House, centered around the U Street commercial district. Quick action by D.C. police quelled the violence, but shortly before noon the next day, looting and arson broke out anew -- not just along U Street, but in two other commercial districts as well. Over the next several days, the immediate crisis of the riots was matched by an equally ominous sense among the nation's political leadership that they were watching the final dissolution of the 1960s liberal dream. For many whites who watched flames overtake city after city -- Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City -- the April riots were an unfathomable and deeply troubling response during what should have been a time of national mourning. To them the rioters were little better than common criminals. But a look at the average rioter complicates such conclusions: they were primarily young (under 25) and male, but most made a decent salary, had a better than average education, and had no previous arrest record. In interviews and testimonies afterward, rioters recalled a sense of release, of striking back at the "system." To say that the riots meant different things to different people would be exceedingly trite if it weren't also exceedingly true. In ways large and small, the King riots solidified attitudes and trends that destroyed the momentum behind racial progress, fatally wounded postwar domestic liberalism, created new divisions among blacks and whites, and condemned urban America to decades of poverty and crime. This book will explain why they occurred, how they played out, and what they meant.

A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination

"A solid and compassionate account of a week that proved a graveyard for the liberal dreams of the 1960s, and a seedbed for the backlash against them."
—Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland and Before the Storm

"A compelling, original history of the tumult that followed Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Clay Risen's sobering account of the riots of April 1968 sheds new light on how the racial divisions of the late 1960s reconfigured liberal and conservative politics and transformed American urban life."
—Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North

"Clay Risen's A Nation on Fire is the long-awaited, definitive account of one of the most important, underreported events of the 1960s. As important for its historical aspect as it is for understanding where we are today, it is an exciting, important document, excitingly told."
—George Pelecanos,author of The Turnaround and The Night Gardener

"America is still coming to terms with the legacy of the 1960s. A Nation on Fire powerfully demonstrates the impact of urban riots on the politics of race and democracy following Martin Luther King's assassination. With clarity and insight, Clay Risen chronicles the tumultuous week in 1968 that indelibly transformed American race relations."
—Peniel Joseph, author of Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America

"Lyndon Johnson got the call a few minutes after 7 p.m.: 'Mr. President, Martin Luther King has been shot.' Within hours, rioting had engulfed Washington, D.C. Before the violence was over, the US Army occupied three major American cities, and National Guard units patrolled a dozen more. The riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, delivered a death blow to the liberal dream of the 1960s, gave new life to the faltering conservative political movement, and launched urban America into a downward spiral from which much of it has never recovered. In an epic narrative, Risen shows how a mere ten days - between Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the 1968 campaign on March 31 to King's death on April 4 to Johnson's signature of the 1968 Civil Rights Act on April 11 - literally rewrote the course of American history, from race relations to urban decline to presidential politics."--Jacket