The Last Days: A Son's Story Of Sin And Segregation At The Dawn Of A New South

by Charles Marsh

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.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Poverty, Race, American History, Biography Memoir, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2001

About the author

Marsh is professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia and director of the research community "Project on Lived Theology." He is the author of eight books, including "God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights," which won the 1998 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been picking up copies of books about the late 196os and about Watergate at used book sales and in used book stores for a few months now. This is memoir is one of the books about the late 1960s. Charles Marsh writes about his childhood and early adolescence as a Baptist Minister's son in 1960s Alabama and Mississippi. He spends part of his childhood in Laurel, MI, a town that struggles to come to terms with the KKK and desegregation as his father struggles to come to terms with the Civil Rights movement, desegregation, and the constraints of his pulpit. A trip to California exposes Marsh and his parents to the wider world and allows his father to grow, incrementally expanding his youth ministry and ultimately taking more liberal positions on race relations in his personal life and in his Church.

Reading this book reminded me of time spent with my mother's relatives in Texas small towns. These were people who easily quoted the Bible, discussed details of recent sermons and missionary projects and who would talk about the fact that although my father was a nice man, despite being Jewish, they could not understand what my mother ever saw in him before asking me when I last went to Church. These were the women who taught in integrated public schools but who referred to black people as "niggra's" and were concerned as they bought houses in their neighborhoods. They supported LBJ and adored Lady Bird and her wildflowers. Like Marsh's parents, they were not at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement, but they knew its time had come and were willing to move incrementally forward.

[Amy Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marsh’s account of the Civil Rights era in Laurel, Mississippi is compelling and captivating.

In the early 1960s, Charles Marsh is 10 years old and moves with his pastor father and mother to Laurel, Mississippi so that his father can pastor the First Baptist Church there. Laurel is home to many churches of well-established and financially stable people who live picturesque Southern lives. Church is about the saving of souls from hell and moral purity.

At the same time that the Marsh family moves to Laurel, Sam Bowers, a Sunday school teacher at the Baptist church down the road, calls to order the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and begins a reign of violence and terror in Laurel and it’s surrounding areas.

Marsh’s story follows his family as they are eventually forced to acknowledge the evil of the KKK and choose how they will respond, in the face of losing their lives and livelihood.

I realize I made this sound like an adventure novel, and it is not. It wanders among historical accounts, compelling narrative, and personal musings on fundamentalist sexual development. The story takes a few rabbit trails, but remains a first-hand account of the terrors of living during the Civil Rights Era.

I recommend it to someone really interested in the subject matter. It did give me new insight into the relationship between the Southern Baptist Convention and civil rights, as well as a nuanced understanding for how Bible-believing pastors and church leaders navigated the civil rights movement.

[Caleb Nakhla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda a grind to get through. Weird writing style - didn’t know what was going on chronologically (how old the author was) and he kept jumping around. Also some VERY weird unnecessary details that were so random (you’d understand if you read it).

So though it wasn’t really great on an enjoyment level, it was decent on lessons learned about the culture and time period and life. Makes me wonder what I would do in a position where my life would be at stake to simply say that racism is wrong from the pulpit. Or would I take the coward’s way out, like the author’s dad, who was scared of his congregants and the threats of the KKK. In what ways am I similarly blind to the needs of others and unwilling to sacrifice comfort and reputation as an ambassador of the kingdom? Am I unwilling to associate with others just because of pure hate and fear of man? All questions that arise from reading this book. It’s easy to poop on these ‘60s Christians for not standing up for what the Bible teaches about race, but we probably have so many similar things from Scripture that we neglect out of selfishness.

[Delmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Last Days is a book written by Charles Marsh, who is a professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. Mr. Marsh grew up during the 60's when racial segregation was the norm, and stepping outside the established racial boundaries established by society, especially in the South, was strictly forbidden (and could lead to the loss of a job, and your life). His father was a Baptist minister, and while he wasn't a integrationist, the treatment that black people received in his eyes did not meet the values that he had been taught through the word of God. This book chronicles his transition as well as his community's transition into racial integration.

[Casey Shobe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deeply personal and much less strictly/objectively historical than Marsh’s other work. Enjoyable and interesting. Beautiful at times. This is definitely memoir and colored, perhaps, by nostalgia and his love for his parents.

[Ice · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Days: A Son's Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South offers a compelling new version of an old story: how good people acquiesce to evil, and then find strength to overcome it. At his best, author Charles Marsh (God's Long Summer) recalls the elegiac prose of Southern writers such as Harper Lee. His memoir begins radiantly:

One spring afternoon in 1967, when the warm Alabama air was perfumed with honeysuckle and scuppernong, my father and I were walking along a dirt path through fields of green wiregrass. With his hand brushing lightly against my shoulders, he told me the Lord was calling us to Mississippi, to blessings more abundant than we could ever imagine.

In Laurel, Mississippi, Bob Marsh, a prominent Baptist preacher, took the pulpit of a comfortable congregation in a comfortable town where the leading citizens included Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Lulled by the luxuries of the good life, Reverend Marsh and his congregation initially believed the civil rights movement was a political matter, not a spiritual one. The slow erosion of their prejudice and dawning of enlightenment is precisely and graciously detailed in The Last Days. The book is also a fine and poignantly humorous evocation of many aspects of daily life in a small Southern town in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In a chapter called "The Joy of Fundamentalist Sex," one of Marsh's classmates pulls a pornographic picture from his wallet at the playground at school, and Marsh gazes on the forbidden fruit uncomprehendingly: "All I could figure was a soupy labyrinth of okra spears and woody knots angling over a blond stew."

[Carol Mann Agency]

"The Last Days is, by turns, a harrowing, despairing, hopeful, and humorously mocking coming-of-age story. A good and important book." -- Gerald Early, author of The Culture of Bruising

"An intense journey of faith and redemption." -- Charles Reagan Wilson, Director, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi

"Charles Marsh puts us ringside for one of America’s definitive encounters and we are compelled to take sides." -- Will D. Campbell, author of Brother to a Dragonfly

"He is an engaging writer; he has that necessary eye for detail and ear for the well-turned phrase." -- --Washington Post

"Marsh details his experiences as an adolescent with disarming candor and wit." -- --Kirkus Reviews

"More than a spellbinding account of this horrendous moment in Southern history, this is a stunning portrait of family love." -- Dennis Covington, author of Salvation on Sand Mountain

"The narrative derives its considerable power from the father's confrontation with his own cowardice." -- --The American Prospect

"This devastating addition to civil rights literature will provoke strong and divided reactions from a wide spectrum of readers." -- --Publishers Weekly

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book and a nice writing style. The author paints a vivid picture of the demise of the KKK and of segregation, even if he does use broad strokes. A book of this size doesn't have much room for nuance, but I did find his characters (several of whom I know/knew) to resemble caricatures or types, whose primary function was to illustrate the religious hypocracy and blindness that existed along side the outright racists elements of white Mississippi culture in the late 1960s. The exception is the author's father whose struggle with what it meant to be a good Christian in the Old South revealed someone very human. There was obviously some artistic license taken, but who doesn't do this when writing a first person narrative?

[JimtheDean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was moving.

It has set on my shelves for a number of years...wasn't really sure what it was about. As I began reading I was pulled in. Since the author is about my age, I personally remember elements of his story though my memories are probably from television, news, and such...not personal like that of Dr. Marsh.

I strongly recommend this book. I will/have recommended it to family and friends. I see here not only the story of a young man growing up during the days of the civil rights movement, but a story of faith and the way faith impacts the way we must grapple with the issues of our times.

I'm hoping Marsh has similar books. I'll be looking for another as soon as I'm done writing this review!

[Debora Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very interesting memoir of a boy growing up in a Southern Baptist pastor's home in racist Mississippi in the 60s. One of the interesting things that I am inferring from the book is that the rise of the Christian day school movement in the late 60s and 70s was related at least in part to the federal mandate to desegregate the public schools--under the guise of obeying God in training children--sickening.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read. This is a fascinating insight into the life of a white pastor's family in the deep south in the 1960s. It deftly explores the connections between race and religion while enabling readers to identify with the family drama, social issues, and religious concerns inherent in society-- both then and now.

[Tom Darrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected more.