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second look. He also often swept the floor and cleaned restrooms himself, believing he ought never ask anyone to do a task he would not do himself.

"Forman provided a necessary ingredient in the development of an organizational structure for the southern student movement. ...without a leader like Forman," SNCC historian Clayborne Carson writes, "who was prepared to assume responsibility for fund-raising and directing the activities of a full-time staff, it is unlikely that SNCC could have become a durable organization."

Carson is right - without Forman, there would have been no SNCC, at least not the one that developed in the early 1960s. Without that SNCC, it is doubtful that the movement would have succeeded as well as it did, doubtful that the drive for citizenship rights would have energized and engaged as many people or claimed victory as quickly as it did.

Speculation is easy. In these pages, James Forman spells out the truth, his truth about his life and the times he helped create.

The Making of Black Revolutionaries is an invaluable look into the mind and heart of one of the modern movement's makers; no serious student of the period should be without it.

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(Julian Bond is a Lecturer in History at the University of Virginia and a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Government at American University.)