"In this passionate account of Jim Crow–era injustice, educator and activist Morrison exposes how courtrooms 'could function like lynch mobs when the defendant was black.'... Morrison, who is white, shares this painful story with clarity and compassion, emphasizing how much has changed since the 1930s, how much white people need to 'critically interrogate' the past, and how much 'remains to be done' in the fight for justice." — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"The author deserves praise for identifying Peterson’s trial as an important precursor to the 1960s civil rights movement. Audiences will be enthralled and angered by this all-too-familiar account of a criminal justice system that was and remains biased against black Americans." — Karl Helicher, Foreword Reviews
"Morrison digs deeply into period newspapers and archives to uncover this story of injustice long overshadowed by the more famous Scottsboro Boys trial. A thoughtful look into a tale of prejudice and stolen justice that will find many readers who are interested in African American history, the early civil rights movement, and Southern history." — Chad E. Statler, Library Journal
"Morrison’s book is an ultimate tribute to a man who is seldom mentioned in the Civil Rights Movement, but was a true civil rights hero and who despite torture and mental cruelty always proclaimed his innocence." — Bill Castanier, Lansing City Pulse
"A straightforward, thoroughly researched nonfiction account of yet another disgraceful episode in Alabama racial history."
— Don Noble, Tuscaloosa News
"An important and timely book.” — James L. Baggett, Birmingham Watch
“A detailed, meticulously researched, riveting account.” — Joyce Hollyday, Radical Discipleship
“A compelling read. . . . Murder on Shades Mountain is a reminder that ‘the civil rights movement was not born in the 1960s’ and that its work is far from complete.” — The Real Deal
“Murder on Shades Mountain is an outstanding case study that should find an audience among laypersons and among students at the undergraduate and graduate levels.” — Brent M. S. Campney, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books
"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, Sojourners
"iI shifting attention from Scottsboro's sleepy courthouse square to Birmingham's industrialized and highly stratified terrain, Morrison offers fresh perspective on the structural violence that undergirded white supremacy." — Jason Morgan Ward, Southern Spaces
"Recounted in painstaking detail by Morrison, this near century-old case emerges as a precedent for contemporary discussions of racism in the criminal justice system, reaffirming how firmly rooted racial profiling and the criminalization of blackness are in American culture." — Ladee Hubbard, TLS
"Morrison succeeds admirably in moving the literature beyond Scottsboro, which has garnered the lion’s share of historians’ attention. Morrison is at her best when she unearths legal records to explain how the criminal justice system was stacked against Peterson. . . . In Morrison’s hands, the Jim Crow justice system avoids caricature and emerges as a living, breathing system in which injustice is that much more evident and pernicious. . . . Compelling and beautifully written." — David A. Varel, Journal of Southern History
“I devoured the whole impressive book, often reading late into the night. The ordeal of Willie Peterson in Depression Alabama has until now been a neglected episode in civil rights history. Melanie S. Morrison’s careful, compelling reconstruction of a tragic double murder turned judicial lynching unearths profound and, alas, enduring truths about the ways race and ideology deform human decency as well as justice.” — Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
"With detail not often found in narratives of antiblack violence, Melanie S. Morrison's account of Willie Peterson's officially sanctioned murder—which has almost disappeared from the canon of black struggle—teaches us not only of the destructive power of racism but also of its systemic nature and the efforts long before the so-called 'civil rights era' to resist it. It resonates with the cradle-to-prison pipeline that plagues much of black life today. Well worth reading." — Charles E. Cobb Jr., author of This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible