Drawing from experiences growing up in Pine Apple, Greensboro, Evergreen, and Auburn, Alabama, in Ashes at the Altar Cal Logue writes a fictional account of what he experienced, saw, heard, learned, and taught about the civil rights movement accelerating after the Korean War and spreading into towns and cities across the South. Ashes at the Altar reveals the forces unleashed in the white community when, because their A.M.E. Church in "Alpine" has been threatened, African Americans initiate steps to improve conditions under which they have been forced to live.