Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

One Man's Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal

Tue, October 7, 2025
Dinner Program
Nicholas Buccola

In the mid-1950s, Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as the leaders of two diametrically opposed freedom movements that changed the course of American history—and still divide American politics. King mobilized civil rights activists under the banner of “freedom now,” insisting that true freedom would not be realized until all people—regardless of race—were empowered politically, economically, and socially. Goldwater rallied conservatives to the cause of “extremism in defense of liberty,” advocating radical individualism. In One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal, Nicholas Buccola, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, tells the compelling story of Goldwater and King’s dramatic decade-long debate over the meaning of an all-important American ideal, one in which we can clearly discern echoes of the current American zeitgeist.

The Dr. Jules K. Whitehill Professor of Humanism & Ethics and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, Nicholas Buccola specializes in American political thought. His previous books include The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America (Princeton University Press, 2019) and The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty (New York University Press, 2012). He is the editor of The Essential Douglass: Writings and Speeches (Hackett, 2016) and Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy (University Press of Kansas, 2016).

His essays have appeared in scholarly journals including The Review of Politics and American Political Thought as well as popular outlets such as The New York Times, Salon, The Baltimore Sun, and Dissent.

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Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711

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