Memories of the Movement: Civil Rights, the Liberal Consensus and the March Twenty Years Later

[First paragraph] Identifying and categorizing the relationship between the historical realities of the Civil Rights Movement and the explanatory model provided by the idea of a liberal consensus is far from simple. In one sense, for example, it is clear that the leading proponents of the Movement viewed that relationship very differently from the leading progenitors of the model. Historians have come to different conclusions still, and so indeed have those who have sought to commemorate the Movement subsequent to its demise. Despite - or perhaps because of - those apparent disparities, analyzing the positioning of the Civil Rights Movement within the liberal consensus model is both historically and intellectually rewarding, for it not only offers a significant critique and then partial reassessment of the efficacy of the very idea of a liberal consensus, but also reveals much about the process of commemoration and the development of discourses of race and racism in recent US history.