"In the 1960s, a nation that had prided itself on its political stability found its political system no longer equal to meeting the demands for change. A people who had taken for granted a collective commitment to public order was suddenly stunned by the fragility of its institutions and the assaults upon the values they represented. This is the story of how Americans for the first time took to the streets by the thousands, sometimes by the tens of thousands, to resolve disputes once left to the established governmental process. Fire in the Streets is the dramatic account of the sequence of events, the range of ideas, the diversity of personalities and the nature of the explosive confrontations which made up the richness and complexity of the period. And it is about how political change effectuated during the decade has remained permanent"--Book jacket.