Includes bibliographical references (p. 413-489) and index.

An American dilemma: "an astonishing ignorance..." -- "A fighting press" -- Southern editors in a time of ferment -- Ashmore views the South -- The Brown decisions harden the South -- Into Mississippi -- The Till trial -- Where massive and passive resistance meet -- Alabama -- Toward Little Rock -- Little Rock showdown -- New eyes on the Old South -- Backfire in Virginia -- From sit-ins to SNCC -- Alabama versus The Times, Freedom Riders versus the South -- Albany -- Ole Miss -- Wallace and King -- Defiance at close range -- The killing season -- Freedom summer -- Selma -- Beyond.

This is the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see, hear, and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial segregation in the South--and the brutality used to enforce it. It is the story of how the nation's press, after decades of ignoring the problem, came to recognize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turn it into the most significant domestic news event of the twentieth century. Drawing on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews, veteran journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff go behind the headlines and datelines to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen--first Black reporters, then liberal Southern editors, then reporters and photographers from the national press and the broadcast media--revealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings and propelled its citizens to act.