Book Review
by Darold H. Morgan
The Last Days
by Charles Marsh
New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Charles Marsh is a professor of religion at the University of Virginia. He is also the only child of a well-known Baptist preacher who pastored the largest and most influential church in Laurel, Mississippi, when the Civil Rights movement in the Sixties hit that part of the nation with an intensity of unparalleled proportions. Marsh writes with keen insight and perception. His account turns out to be a volume of rare value, which documents the struggles and conflicts of many people who are caught up in a drama of profound paradox between “Old South” racism and a basic Christian resolve somehow to “do the right thing.”
It is an intensely personal account, which does not descend into a maudlin self-sympathy. The result is a genuinely moving account from an extraordinary perspective of a pastor’s effort to practice genuine Christian ethics in an area and time when racism was so deeply engrained that the biblical issues were all but muted and misunderstood. A product of his times and culture, Marsh’s father grappled honestly but inadequately with these incredible pressures. And obviously, he was far from being alone in that quandary.
Laurel, Mississippi was and is at the center of the Old South. In Marsh’s childhood it was also the home base of the head of the KKK, which at this time was orchestrating a widespread campaign of intimidation, terror, and murder. Marsh’s vibrant honesty about the efforts of his father to maintain his church’s unity in this unexpected vortex and to lead in helping his members take something of a Christian stand on Civil Rights is apparent. That there was an abundance of moral hesitancy and a tendency to defend the status quo in the name of religion and history is also beyond debate.
Interwoven in this story from the pastor’s son are the deeply personal reflections of the family life from both his father and his mother. A by-product of these insertions is the setting: a view of the cultural patterns in the Old South during those years. If there is a weakness in the book, as one considers the original intent, it may be found in learning more about a budding teenager than one may want to know. Yet one must quickly add that the intensity and interest never flags as the young man slowly matures in this southern culture, replete with obvious racial patterns.
Life in the Old South was turned upside down by the Brown vs. the Board of Education ruling in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court officially ended segregation in America’s public schools. The Southern Baptist Convention in its subsequent gathering overwhelmingly approved this action. Despite these decisions, one of the most vicious reactions in American history followed, particularly in Mississippi. There was a revival of the KKK as well as a kindred movement known as the White Citizen’s Council. These two somehow combined to bring about a horrific time of terror throughout Mississippi, which in turn brought a concentrated reaction by civil rights leaders from all over the nation. Both in Mississippi and Alabama dark days followed, with confrontation, police brutality, the destruction of Black churches, marches, the burning of crosses, and murder. Not only was equality of public school education in the forefront, but also the issue of voting rights.
This book directs its major message around one pastor and one church. That the author’s father was not and could not be prophetic in this era is apparent. That his father was extremely sensitive, concerned, caring, and perceptive about the issues is equally obvious. Writing decades after the events, the author easily could have been extremely vindictive and critical, but he did not even hint at such an attitude. He is evenly factual throughout the entire book. The love and respect this son had then and now for his parents is one of the healthiest conclusions about this good and readable volume.
Marsh’s account of his father’s involvement with one of the convicted Klan murderers is graphic and insightful. His description of those now forgotten trials of the Klan leaders, when the FBI’s use of irrefutable evidence as to their guilt forced the Mississippi judiciary to face the truth, is a classic memory. Perhaps the single most moving incident of the pastor’s personal ethical crisis in those days comes in a sad but scorching dialogue he had with one of Laurel’s most respected Black pastors.
This book is important not only because it is a personal account of a gifted young man’s spiritual pilgrimage, but also because it recaptures urgently important events from one of America’s severest moral and civil crises. We are reminded of the painful human price some very good people had to pay to achieve justice. Learning needed lessons in Christian ethics often comes at a high price, but sooner or later it has to be paid.
This is a book you should read. Not only will you enjoy the writing style, but also the stories contained in these pages. The Last Days will cause all of us to remember those times and the difference they have made in American life and values. An obvious conclusion lurks in the shadows—many of the lessons of the sixties concerning racial equality still need to be taught.
