Murder on Shades Mountain

"One August night in 1931, on a secluded mountain ridge overlooking Birmingham, Alabama, three young white women were brutally attacked. The sole survivor, Nell Williams, age eighteen, said a black man had held the women captive for four hours before shooting them and disappearing into the woods. 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. Weeks later, Nell identified Willie Peterson as the attacker who killed her sister Augusta and their friend Jenny Wood. With the exception of being black, Peterson bore little resemblance to the description Nell gave the police. An all-white jury convicted Peterson of murder and sentenced him to death. In [this volume], [the author] tells the gripping and tragic story of the attack and its aftermath - events that shook Birmingham to its core. Having first heard the story from her father - who dated Nell's youngest sister when he was a teenager - [the author] scoured the historical archives and documented the black-led campaigns that sought to