One August night in 1931, on a secluded mountain ridge overlooking Birmingham, Alabama, three young white women were brutally attacked.
This riveting narrative is a testament to the courageous predecessors of present-day movements that demand an end to racial profiling, police brutality, and the criminalization of black men..
Murder on Shades Mountain also sheds new light on the Struggle for Justice in Depression-era Birmingham.
The travesty of Justice suffered by Peterson reveals how the judicial system could function as a lynch mob in the Jim Crow South.
Having first heard the story from her father--who dated Nell\'s youngest 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.
Morrison tells the gripping and tragic story of the attack and its aftermath--events that shook Birmingham to its core.
In Murder on Shades Mountain, Melanie S.
An all-white jury convicted Peterson of Murder and sentenced him to death.
With the exception of being black, Peterson bore little resemblance to the description Nell gave the police.
Weeks later, Nell identified Willie Peterson as the attacker who killed her sister Augusta and their friend Jenny Wood.
That same night, a reign of terror was unleashed on Birmingham\'s black community: black businesses were set ablaze, posses of armed white men roamed the streets, and dozens of black men were arrested in the largest manhunt in Jefferson County history.
The sole survivor, Nell Williams, 18, said a black man had held the women captive for four hours before shooting them and disappearing into the woods.
One August night in 1931, on a secluded mountain ridge overlooking Birmingham, Alabama, three young white women were brutally attacked
