Failing to launch a career in journalism, I worked for thirty years as a labor relations administrator for hospitals and not for profit organizations and taught at the College of St. Elizabeth in Convent Station, New Jersey and Rutgers University.

 

While working full time I visited the Deep South frequently to pursue research on white activists who’d worked for the Southern social justice movement. I published From Selma To Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo in 1998, Freedom Walk: Mississippi or Bust in 2003, and Journey Toward Justice: Juliette Hampton Morgan and the Montgomery Bus Boycott and The Hand of Esau (a study of Montgomery’s Jewish communities), in 2006. All my books (so far) have been about Alabama and Alabamians. Montgomery has become a second home. 

 

In 2013 I retired from my position as Assistant Town Administrator for the Town of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York and I currently live in New York City where I continue to write, serve as a volunteer lecturer with “Lincoln Towers University,” a program of the local Project Hope Senior Center, and enjoy performances at the Metropolitan Opera and the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival.

 

Recognition:

2011 Ochillo Golden Pen Award from the Southern Conference on African American Studies for

        “African American Amusement Parks in the Jim Crow District of Columbia.”

 

2007 Awarded National Best Book (Religion/Judaism) USA Book News, for The Hand of Esau.

 

2007 Awarded AAUP Outstanding Title for Understanding Race Relations in America for
          Journey Toward Justice: Juliette Hampton Morgan and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

 

2005 Awarded Kadwaller Research Grant from the Southern Jewish Historical Society

          for The Hand of Esau.

 

1998 Awarded Loyola University Award for the Study of Communication, Language & Gender,  

         for From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo.

 

1998  From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.