What the military could learn from the civil rights movement
A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and veteran defense correspondent whose bestsellers have chronicled U.S. wars, Thomas E. Ricks was drawn to study the civil rights movement through the war stories of his wife, Mary Kay Ricks.
“We’d be driving along, listening to NPR talking about civil rights, and she’d say, ‘Oh, I knew that guy.’” She was co-president of her Washington, D.C., high school’s chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
“I was reading about it partly trying to understand my wife’s experience, things she said to me over 30 years of marriage,” Mr. Ricks says.
The more he researched, “the more I thought, ‘This is a generation of heroes – this is the greatest generation.’”
He also found himself thinking, “Wait a second – this was a war. I know how to write about this.”
Out this week, Mr. Ricks’ new book,
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