Few historical events lend themselves to such a sharp delineation between right and wrong as does the civil rights struggle.

In Delaying the Dream, Keith M. Finley, explores gradations in the opposition, by examining how the region's principal national spokesmen - its United States senators - addressed themselves to the civil rights question, and developed a concerted plan of action to thwart legislation: the use of strategic delay.

Prior to World War II, Finley explains, southern senators recognized the fall of segregation as inevitable, and consciously changed their tactics to delay, rather than prevent defeat, enabling them to frustrate civil rights advances for decades. As public support for civil rights grew, southern senators transformed their arguments to limit the use of overt racism and appeal to northerners. They granted minor concessions on bills only tangentially related to civil rights, while emasculating those with more substantive provisions. They garnered support by nationalizing their defense of sectional interests, and linked their defense of segregation with constitutional principles to curry favor with non-southern politicians. While the senators achieved success at the federal level, Finley shows, they failed to challenge local racial agitators in the South, allowing extremism to flourish.