A newcomer could ascertain the identity of a town's true leaders – which storekeeper was respected, which farmer was listened to other farmers – only through endless hours of subtle probing of reticent men.

that quality in me. And I know it wasn’t only logic that made me think: I’m never going to write about a crucial election, a pivotal moment in my subject’s life, and say that no one’s ever going to know if it was really stolen or not until I’ve done everything I can think of to find out if it was stolen or not.

Luther King gave people “the feeling that they could be bigger and stronger and more courageous than they thought they could be,” Bayard Rustin said — in part because of the powerful new weapon, non-violent resistance, that had been forged on the Montgomery battlefield.