THE DEDICATION this spring of a memorial in Montgomery, Ala., to the more than 4,400 African Americans who were lynched in this country between the Civil War and World War II has brought renewed national attention to a historical outrage. Melanie Morrison’s Murder on Shades Mountain: The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham reminds us that not all such acts of terrorism and brutality were carried out by white mobs under trees and the cover of darkness. Some were perpetrated in courtrooms in broad daylight.
This meticulously researched book skillfully weaves glimpses of Morrison’s family history into a riveting account of a horrific injustice. On Aug. 4, 1931, three young white women were attacked on a secluded ridge outside Birmingham, Ala. The only survivor, 18-year-old Nell Williams, related that she, her sister, and their friend had been held captive for four hours and “shot by a Negro.” During the largest search party in the county’s history, armed white vigilantes roamed the streets, black businesses were set on fire, African-American men were dragged off trains and out of their beds, with dozens detained, and at least three were murdered.
Almost two months later, on an unusually hot late-September day, 38-year-old Willie Peterson was slowly making his way down Birmingham’s Fourteenth Street to a café. A frail former miner disabled by tuberculosis, he was looking forward to drinking a tall glass of sweet iced tea and picking up some cornbread and collard greens for his sick wife. In the previous weeks, Nell Williams had rejected scores of suspects paraded before her, and pressure was mounting for her to identify the killer of her sister and friend. Spying Peterson, she pointed at him and declared, “I am sure that is the Negro.” Willie Peterson bore virtually no resemblance to the description Williams had given the police, eyewitnesses placed him elsewhere during the murders, and even some of the officials involved in the case had serious doubts. But a court found him guilty of murder and handed down a death sentence.
Morrison—and we—may never have known about this travesty except that her father, Truman Morrison, was in love with Nell’s younger sister, Genevieve. Raised in white privilege and wealth, steeped in his entrepreneur father’s zealous embrace of segregation, he could not hold together that life and his belief in Peterson’s innocence. Shocking those around him, he ended his relationship with Genevieve—the first step on what became a lifelong journey to understand racism and work toward its eradication.
Years later, his daughter picked up the mantle, spending her life as a tireless educator and activist for racial, sexual, and disability justice. And now Melanie Morrison blesses and challenges us with a powerful reminder that all of us with inherited privilege face a similar choice. In the introduction to Murder on Shades Mountain, she writes: “My father believed racism is a white problem and that he, as a white man, would be held accountable by his Creator for what he did or failed to do to confront, name, and mend this deep wound in the soul of America.”
The book ends, as it begins, with a call to each of us to do our own work. In the afterword, poignantly written in the form of a letter to her late father, Morrison states the brutal truth: “The demonization and criminalization of black men remains a national disgrace.” Eighty-seven years after Willie Peterson was targeted on a Birmingham street corner, there is still much work to be done. This book offers inspiration to keep at it.
Joyce Hollyday is a pastor, activist, and author. Her most recent book, Pillar of Fire, is a historical novel that celebrates the extraordinary mystics known as Beguines.
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