The Last Days: A Son's Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South - Hardcover

Marsh, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465044182 ISBN 13: 9780465044184

Publisher: Basic Books, 2001

Synopsis

This devastating and uncompromising memoir explores how good Christian folk acquiesced to the terror of the KKK, and how the author's prominent minister father eventually found the courage to share in the vision of a New South. Seeking to come to terms with the haunting memories of his childhood in the deep South-Charles Marsh has crafted a memoir of small-town Southern life caught up in the whirlwind of the Civil Rights movement. As minister of the First Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi, Charles Marsh's father Bob Marsh, was a prominent man who was beloved by the community. But Laurel was also home to Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Mississippi KKK and the director of their daily, unchallenged installments of terror and misery. Bowers was known and tolerated by the entire white community of Laurel. This included Bob Marsh, who struggled to do the right thing while reeling between righteous indignation and moral torpor, only slowly awakening to fear, suffering, and guilt over his unwillingness to take a public stand against Bowers. At the same time, The Last Days examines the collision of worlds once divided-white Protestant conservatism, the African American struggle for civil rights, and late 1960s counter culture-that propelled the dramatic changes in everyday life in a small Southern town.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Marsh is Professor of Religion at the University of Virginia and Director of the Project on Lived Theology. He is the author of Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the award-winning God's Long Summer, and The Last Days. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465044182
• ISBN 13: 9780465044184
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304