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Title: The Class of '65
Subtitle: A Student, a Divided Town, and the Long Road to Forgiveness
Author: Jim Auchmutey
Narrator: Adam Verner
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
Language: English
Release date: 04-14-15
Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 9 votes
Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences
Publisher's Summary:
Being a student at Americus High School was the worst experience of Greg Wittkamper's life. Greg came from a nearby Christian commune, Koinonia, whose members devoutly and publicly supported racial equality. When he refused to insult and attack his school's first black students in 1964, Greg was mistreated as badly as they were: harassed and bullied and beaten.
In the summer after his senior year, as racial strife in Americus - and the nation - reached its peak, Greg left Georgia. Forty-one years later, a dozen former classmates wrote letters to Greg, asking his forgiveness and inviting him to return for a class reunion. Their words opened a vein of painful memory and unresolved emotion, and set him on a journey that would prove healing and saddening.
Members Reviews:
Outstanding
This book reads with a suspenseful intensity that makes it impossible to put down. It begins with the founding of a pacifist, Christian commune in southwest Georgia named Koinonia (Greek for fellowship). But as their views of racial equality become known, local racists dynamite their market, try to kill their founder and shoot at their children playing outside. The story escalates into the heart of the civil rights struggle; a story that is not as well known as Selma, though it should be. King, Abernathy, John Lewis and SNCC are all there. But the power of this story is that we feel it personally through a boy living out nonviolence in the high school crucible. And then in the story of his classmates who had the courage to seek forgiveness.
I enjoyed this book
I enjoyed this book. I was able to see history from the eyes of an average young man who was an extraordinarily man. I would most definitely recommend this book to anyone any age. It tells of the civil rights movements from a average man perspective, but this average man was already an outcast of the normal because of his faith or his parents faith and living style. The time may be set in the 1960's and before but the life lessons can still be taught today. even though the social society has changed we still have a long way to go. I would recommend this book be read as a learning tool in the classroom today, where "bullying" is still a concern to many.
Also teaches that life will continue after high school and what you do in high school can be reflected back on years later.
Thumbs up to the author for a great job on telling Greg's story. Thumbs up to Greg for teaching us how we should treat one another.
Jim is a very good story teller
This is a very important book- important for those of us who lived through the events and times described in the book but also important for anyone who lives in a time when discrimination, marginalization of "the other", and verbal hostility widely exist in a culture (and this is our time and any time!). Jim is a very good story teller, so it is an easy book to read. But what a powerful experience it is to remember the stories of the civil rights movement, the larger than life figure of Clarence Jordan and the lives and people caught up in those changing times.