"Vernon Johns was merely another invisible man to nearly all whites, but to the invisible people themselves he was the stuff of legends." Chapter 1, Forerunner, Vernon Johns, pg. 7

"King began his career at the age of twenty-five, in the year that witnessed the invention of the TV dinner and the microchip, the marriage of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, and the closing of the immigration center on New York's Ellis Island."

Chapter 4, First Trombone, pg. 113

"King would work on his timing, but his oratory had just made him forever a public person. In the few short minutes of his first political address, a power of communion emerged from him that would speak inexorably to strangers who would both love and revile him, like all prophets. He was twenty-six, and had not quite twelve years and four months to live."

Chapter 4, First Trombone, pg. 142

"During a recess, an AP...