Murder on Shades Mountain

Autorentext

Melanie S. Morrison, founder and executive director of Allies for Change (www.alliesforchange.org), is a social justice educator, author, and activist with thirty years' experience designing and facilitating transformational group process. Morrison is author of The Grace of Coming Home: Spirituality, Sexuality, and the Struggle for Justice and her writing has appeared in numerous periodicals. As a keynote speaker at national and regional conferences, she addresses racial, disability, and sexual justice. In 1994 Morrison founded Doing Our Own Work, an antiracism intensive for white people that has attracted hundreds of participants across the country. 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 pastored congregations in Michigan and the Netherlands. As adjunct faculty, she has taught antiracism seminars at Chicago Theological Seminary and the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She lives in Okemos, Michigan.

Klappentext

Melanie S. Morrison tells the tragic story of the murder and attempted murder of three young women in 1930s Birmingham, Alabama, and the aftermath, which saw a reign of terror unleashed on the town's black community, the wrongful conviction and death sentencing of Willie Peterson, and a black-led effort to free Peterson.

Inhalt

Introduction 1
Part I. Danger in the Magic City

1. August 4, 1931 15
2. A City Beset by Fear 25
3. Reign of Terror in the Black Community 34
4. Fear, Loathing,and Oblivion in the White Community 45
   Part II. Trials and Tribulations
5. The Arrest: September 23, 1931 55
6. Attempted Murder 67
7. Grand Jury Testimonies 76
8. The NAACP Comes to Life 85
9. Mounting the Defense 94
10. House of Pain 113
11. "A Temporarily Dethroned Mind" 116
12. "An Outrageous Spectacle of Injustice" 119
13. A Tumultuous Year 122
    Part IV. Never Turning Back
14. Staying on the Firing Line 131
15. Charles Hamilton Houston 134
16. A Lynching in Tuscaloosa 142
17. Moving the Case Forward 150
18. No Negroes Allowed 162
19. A Flood of Letters 168
20. A Multitude of Regrets 172
21. Grave Doubts as to His Guilt 178
22. Jim Crow Justice 185
    Epilogue. The Community That Kept Faith 193
    Afterword. Letter to My Father 197
    Acknowledgments 203
    Notes 209
    Bibliography 233
    Index 241