God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights

Charles Marsh thinks historians who argue the civil rights movement was about rights have made a big mistake. In God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights, he takes a different stance. He says the civil rights movement was about God. Marsh defends this controversial thesis with five profiles of civil rights leaders (ranging from cotton fieldworker and political activist Fannie Lou Hamer to the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, Sam Bowers), each of whom understood their work in fundamentally theological terms. Marsh's fluid, engaging prose aims to persuade readers that the ongoing fight for civil rights is best understood in spiritual terms and to arm believers with a clear understanding of the ultimate stakes of this country's continuing struggle with racism. --Michael Joseph Gross