Photographs of My Father

"During his father's rise in the civil rights movement, Paul Spike lived a life typical of a young man in the 1960s, finding his way through a labyrinth of booze, drugs, and girls. At Columbia University, he was active in the 1968 student rebellion and friends with many SDS radicals. That rootless life ended with his father's murder.Critique: Intensely personal, informed and informative, Photographs of My Father by journalist, editor and author Paul Robert Spike is a consistently compelling read from beginning to end -- and one that will be of very special interest for the non-specialist general reader with an interest in the Civil Rights movement. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, Photographs of My Father is unreserved recommended for personal reading lists, as well as community, college, and university library 20th Century American Biography and Civil Rights History collections."

"It shouldn't be surprising that some of us are looking back with hope and trepidation at the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.One of the most remarkable books the movement produced is this 1973 family memoir, newly reissued with an afterword by the author. Paul Spike, an American-born old Fleet Street hand, is the son of the Rev. Robert Spike, a pastor and activist who was found bludgeoned to death by a janitor in 1966 in Columbus, Ohio. The murder of Robert, who was at the forefront of the movement as director of the National Council of Churches (he even had a hand in writing some of Lyndon Johnson's speeches), was never solved, though it was suggested by police that his homosexual activity -- hitherto unknown to his family -- rather than his politics may have played a part.Reading Photographs of My Father is a kind of parallel Godfather II-like experience, except that the chronologies are reversed so that we witness the son's rise, such as it is, through Columbia and therapy alongside the father's fall from lobbying Congress and the White House to dealing with harassment from the FBI. It reminds us that if the past is a foreign country, the recent past can feel like Tristan da Cunha: Northern and Midwestern Republicans forcing Civil Rights legislation down the throats of recalcitrant Democrats in the South; Brooks Brothers-wearing Wasp clergymen with chronic digestive ailments at the vanguard of progressive activism; people taking existentialisms seriously."

"Photographs of My Father has totally consumed the last couple of days of my life, unable as I was to put it down once started. It's absolutely wonderful."

"So unforgettable that I felt my heart was breaking when I came to the end."

"So we not only believe Mr. Spike's story and participate in its comedy, its terror, its extreme pain and ultimate triumph. We also can identify with the author to the point where we understand both his private suffering and the rage he finally vented against the system. For Mr. Spike doesn't whine or exhort or rationalize or rail or ask for sympathy. He simply states how things were with the utmost insight and candor. --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt"

"We don't believe these assassinations are an accident. We believe there is a conspiracy. Too many of our most important leaders have been assassinated. John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, Dr. King, Robert Spike. . ."