- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (14 Feb 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0465044190
- ISBN-13: 978-0465044191
- Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 13 x 2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,254,005 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Last Days
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
This uncompromising, heartbreaking memoir explores how good Christian folk acquiesced to the terror of the KKK and how the author's father, a prominent Baptist minister, eventually found the courage to share in the vision of a new South.. The Last Days is something entirely different in the literature of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. This uncompromising, heartbreaking memoir shows how people struggled with the actual processes of integration. Seeking to come to terms with the haunting memories of his childhood and adolescence in the Deep South, Charles Marsh has crafted a gripping story of small-town Southern life caught up in the whirlwind of the civil rights movement and its fallout.
About the Author
Charles Marsh teaches religion at the University of Virginia and is Director of the Project on Theology and Community. He is the author of Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the award-winning God's Long Summer. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
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 wire grass. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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 wire grass. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Last Days by Charles Marsh, 26 Mar 2001
By Dinah Miller Md - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Last Days: A Son's Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South (Hardcover)
Last Days, by Charles Marsh, is a memoir about the author's boyhood days in Laurel, Mississippi in the late 1960's. The author's description of his own emotional life during this period is moving-- often endearing, sometimes funny, and occassionally painful. What makes this memoir exceptional is the skill with which Dr. Marsh artfully weaves his feelings into the landscape of his own religious life and the community's distress in the midst of the Civil Rights movement. We are guided through the horrifying crimes of the KKK and the trials that followed (Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers is from Laurel and this makes the setting all the more salient), as well as the beginnings of desegregation in the schools-- more than a decade after Brown vs. the Board of Education. All this (and more) is placed in the context of the younger Marsh's relationship with his father, a charismatic and successful Baptist minister. The book gives the sense that the author is using it as a mechanism to come to terms with his father's role as a community leader during this particularly ugly period in American history. By the end, his father is clearly on the side of good, and the author closes by leaving the impression that he, a youngster in his camp bunk, had come to a peaceful resolution. My sense, however, was that if he indeed had found such peace, he would never have been compelled to write such a powerful memoir. The book is nothing short of absorbing. I found it difficult to put down. My only complaint is that at times the author refers to people and events I'd never heard of, though I was able to follow the storyline without actually going to look any of them up. I am pleased to say that I did get all of the references to The Beverly Hillbillies. Last Days is a short book with a number of complex agendas, both personal and historical. It was an ambitious task for a writer to take on, and Charles Marsh does a laudable job in meeting this challenge.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Warm Family Memoir of the End of Jim Crow, 10 Aug 2001
By R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Last Days: A Son's Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South (Hardcover)
In 1968, in the little town of Laurel, Mississippi, the Jaycees wished to honor an exemplary citizen and one of their own, Clifford Wilson, a man of many civic accomplishments. The ceremony was at a special banquet, and the Reverend Bob Marsh, a local Baptist preacher, was asked to present the award. Wilson got a bronze plaque, and gave an acceptance speech promising continuing service to the people of Laurel. There were photographs and smiles, and the satisfied crowd went home. An hour later, Clifford Wilson was arrested for the murder of a black man named Vernon Dahmer; others of his Klan buddies were also arrested. They had burned down Dahmers house and fired into the flames as he tried to defend his family. Reverend Marsh was disgusted that he had been fooled into recognizing Wilson. Charles Marsh, the Reverends son, tells the story of his fathers shame in _The Last Days: A Sons Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of the New South_ (Basic Books). The author moved with his family to Laurel in 1967, and was there for some of the most vile acts of racism, but was also there when the schools were integrated, so this is a valuable and unique memoir of a time when enormous changes were occurring in the south. Neither liberal nor bigot, the Reverend Marsh confronts his hypocrisy and makes a difference._The Last Days_ is a loving look at a father who was a devoted minister, and a mother who was a devoted ministers wife, trying to make sense out of a confusing time of turmoil. The time does seem so distant now, and it is instructive to have the author give us details of the period. The Rev. Marsh stayed and did his part to help. It would make a good TV movie if he had been more of an Atticus Finch from _To Kill a Mockingbird_, and it would be dramatic if he stood on the church steps in a climax to confront the men in white hoods and robes. Marshs heroism was parceled out in smaller steps, such as the time in 1970 when a girl from his church brought a friend, a black girl, to the service. The deacons wanted to eject the unwelcome visitor, but Marsh would not permit it; and then they insisted on an apology to the congregation, but Marsh did not give one. He did, however, work to keep the community from being split by integration.
_The Last Days_ is not just about growing up in a time of changing race relations, but also is simply about growing up. There is a fondness for family within these pages that makes the racial chill and terror stand out starkly. The author has admiration for his parents who in some of the nations most turbulent times... held on tight to the Old Story and refused incivility the final word. Family members ought to be very proud of this son and his fine book. The Klan was not triumphant, and healing was begun; a harrowing and unforgettable story ends in redemption and hope.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A warm and honest memoir, 15 Feb 2002
By H. Rex Hammock - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Last Days: A Son's Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South: Purity and Peril in a Small Southern Town (Paperback)
Marsh grew up in Mississippi during the 1960s, the only child in a family who were neither racist nor vocal civil rights advocates. Theirs is a story rarely heard because it is not one of dramatic heroism or tragedy. Yet it's the real-life story of many of us who grew up in the deep south during that era.Marsh has a gift for remembering the humorous detail. His story-telling skills are sharp and biting. We can see Laurel, Miss., close-up through a child's eyes. Yet those things we see are presented with the clarity gained from decades of maturity and reflexion.
I know a couple of people who are contemporaries of the author, who grew up in his hometown and church. After I told them how much I enjoyed the book and how the book makes Laurel seem like a nice place, they seemed dumbfounded. They said that folks in Laurel were upset with how the town is presented. I can understand why they might be upset by some of the events and people Marsh recalls, but I never perceived any hostility the author has towards Laurel. Rather, the majority of people and the town itself serve as a pleasant balance to the few evil people and events which take place.
Not quite told with the wit and timing of a Ferrol Sams fictionalized memoir (Run With the Horsemen, for example), The Last Days still mines an earlier South (although Sams' era is the 30s-40s) and discovers treasures in the most humble of places: the home, the school, the church, the playing field. Another book that comes to mind is Homer Hickam's Rocket Boys (October Sky) with its deep yet subtle insight into the relationship (good and bad) of father and son.
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