GENER AL INTEREST
Murder on Shades Mountain
The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham mel anie s . morrison
One August night in 1931, on a
Melanie S. Morrison, founder
secluded mountain ridge overlooking
and executive director of Allies for Change, is a social justice educa‑
Birmingham, Alabama, three young
tor, author, and activist. Morrison
white women were brutally attacked.
murder on shades mountain
The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham Melanie S. Morrison
is author of The Grace of Coming
The sole survivor, Nell Williams, 18,
Home: Spirituality, Sexuality, and
said a black man had held the women
the Struggle for Justice and her
captive for four hours before shooting them and disappearing into the woods. That same night, a reign of terror was
writing has appeared in numer‑ ous periodicals. She has a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Ordained in the United Church of Christ, Morrison
unleashed on Birmingham’s black
pastored congregations in Michigan and the Netherlands.
community: black businesses were set
As adjunct faculty, she has taught anti-racism seminars at
ablaze, posses of armed white men roamed the streets, and dozens of black men were arrested in the largest manhunt in Jefferson County history.
Weeks later, Nell identified Willie Peterson as the attacker who killed her
Chicago Theological Seminary and the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She lives in Okemos, Michigan. “I devoured the whole impressive book, often reading late into the night. The ordeal of Willie Peterson in Depression Alabama has until now been a neglected episode in civil rights
sister Augusta and their friend Jenny Wood. With the exception of being black,
history. Melanie S. Morrison’s careful, compelling recon-
Peterson bore little resemblance to the description Nell had given the police.
struction of a tragic double-murder turned judicial lynching
An all-white jury convicted Peterson of murder and sentenced him to death.
unearths profound and, alas, enduring truths about the ways race and ideology deform human decency as well as
In Murder on Shades Mountain, Melanie S. Morrison tells the gripping and
justice.”— DIANE MCWHORTER , author of Carry Me Home:
tragic story of the attack and its aftermath—events that shook Birmingham to
Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights
its core. Having first heard the story from her father—who dated Nell’s young‑
Revolution
est sister when he was a teenager—Morrison scoured the historical archives and documented the black-led campaigns that sought to overturn Peterson’s unjust conviction, spearheaded by the NAACP and the Communist Party. The travesty of justice suffered by Peterson reveals how the judicial system could function as a lynch mob in the Jim Crow South. Murder on Shades Mountain also sheds new light on the struggle for justice in Depression-era Birmingham. This riveting narrative is a testament to the courageous pre‑ decessors of present-day movements that demand an end to racial profiling, police brutality, and the criminalization of black men. “With detail not often found in narratives of anti-black violence, Melanie S. Morrison’s account of Willie Peterson’s officially sanctioned murder—which has almost disappeared from the canon of black struggle—teaches us not only of the destructive power of racism, but also of its systemic nature and the efforts long before the so-called ‘civil rights era’ to resist it. It resonates with the cradle-to-prison-pipeline that plagues much of black life today. Well worth reading.”— CHARLES E. COBB JR., author of This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights
Movement Possible
H I S T O R Y/A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S
March 280 pages, 20 illustrations cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑7117‑5, $26.95tr/£21.99 Available as an e‑book
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