Dear Mr. Baggett, I was appalled and saddened by parts of your review of Melanie Morrison’s book, “Murder on Shades Mountain.” Although I commend Ms. Morrison for her quest for racial justice, equality and reconciliation, I was somewhat disturbed that she did not even attempt to interview Nell Williams’ descendants to uncover some larger truths and the
Murder on Shades Mountain: The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham by Melanie S. Morrison (Duke University Press, 2018) By James L. Baggett UPDATED: Victim’s daughter challenges book’s view. Willie Peterson just wanted to pick up some cornbread for supper. On a hot September afternoon in 1931, Peterson boarded a streetcar near his home in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Birmingham and rode to Southside. After visiting his mother-in-law, Peterson walked up Avenue G (now Seventh Avenue South) toward Beamon’s Café. A slightly built African-American man, Peterson suffered from tuberculous and followed his wife’s instructions not to overexert himself. Before Peterson reached the café, three white people in a car — a man and woman in their 20s and an older woman — stopped and began to question him. As the young man held Peterson at gun point, the young woman said, “Yes, it’s him. I know it’s him.” When three police officers arrived, they beat and handcuffed Peterson and drove him to jail. “You’ve got the wrong Negro,” Peterson told the officers. Willie Peterson lived in a time when being the “wrong Negro,” or just any black man in the wrong place at the wrong time, could be deadly. In this new book, Melanie S. Morrison, a United Church of Christ minister and self-described social justice educator, researches and retells a story she heard as a child in Michigan from her Birmingham-born father. Read more. Reading Birmingham: An Introduction Today, BirminghamWatch begins a new feature spotlighting books about Birmingham and Alabama. Read more.
Today, BirminghamWatch begins a new feature spotlighting books about Birmingham and Alabama. Read more.
