In the century between the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln and the "I have a dream" speech of Martin Luther King Jr, the United States sought both to rebuff and to redeem the promise of "liberty and justice for all". The story of slavery and the bloody civil war that abolished it has been told, but the story of the struggle for liberty and justice by and for all African Americans in the half-century following the end of Reconstruction has been largely overlooked. In this narrative, Ronald White portrays the people, their ideas and their ongoing struggle for racial reform in the United States from 1877 to 1925 - a vital prelude to the modern civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr.