A MERICANS NOW ALMOST UNIVERSALLY THINK OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ii. movement as a war waged between peaceful, supplicating black activists and violent, reactionary white racists. Turn on any news retrospective about the middle ofJanuary, or during Black History Month, and you will likely see scenes from Martin Luther KingJr. 's "I have a dream" speech or the March on Washington juxtaposed against images of whites attacking nonviolent African Americans with fire hoses, billy clubs, and German shepherds. While the factuality of these events cannot be disputed, the binary images ofviolence and nonviolence have come to represent the civil rights movement as a whole. But this is only a part of the story. Many communities witnessed a great deal ofprotests and black activism that did not generate a violent white response. The emphasis on violent confrontations has all but obscured the roles that many local people played in bringing civil rights to blacks across the country. Such a focus has skewed the larger picture of the struggle and left many heroes unsung.1