MARY STANTON

REVIEWS

 

From Selma To Sorrow:  The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo –

 

“An important contribution to civil rights history…”

                                                                        --Publisher’s Weekly

 

“Righteously reclaims a broken reputation from history’s dustbin…”

                                                                         --Kirkus Reviews

 

“Fascinating…Should be a required text for anyone who believes prejudice and racism are figments of the black imagination or a thing of the past..”

                                                                         --Charlotte Observer

 

“Stanton’s fascinatring story of a neglected civil rights hero is long overdue…She ably creastes a portrait of a woman who was determined to have her life stand for something.”

                                                                       --Detroit News

 

 

Freedom Walk: Mississippi or Bust -

“Stanton illuminates a neglected area of civil rights history and highlights the flaws that plagued activists such as Bill Moore.  This biographical exploration makes the book accessible to both popular and scholarly audiences…Her research speaks to a variety of academic conversations and poses fruitful avenues for further inquiry….She draws some interesting connections between Christianity and the Klan and Freedom Walk provides a starting point for thinking more about the relationship between religion, race and violence.”

                                                                                           ---The Journal of Southern Religion

 

 

“Stanton who restored Viola Liuzzo to history in From Selma to Sorrow (1998), offers a moving well-written portrait of another overlooked civil rights warrior mail carrier Bill Moore.  Moore launched a now-forgotten one-man campaign for African American equality with his own two feet…A few days into his long walk Moore was shot dead by an Alabama grocer and Klansman who was eventually acquitted of the murder…Stanton honors Moore and his brave efforts while examining his troubled life.  She also traces the post-1963 trajectory of Moore’s murderer who “learned to live with a local reputation of being the man who’d gotten away with murder, a dubious distinction which caused him to be admired by some of his neighbors and avoided by others.”  Freedom Walk is a fine contribution to the literature of the civil rights movement and to Southern history.”

                                                                                          ---Kirkus Reviews

 

 

Journey Toward Justice:

Juliette Hampton Morgan and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

 

“Journey Toward Justice is a riveting narrative biography of the life of Juliette Hampton Morgan, a white Southerner and anguished liberal who sought both to live within a white supremest  Southern society and to fight against it.  This book makes an important contribution for professional scholars to the history of the early civil rights movement and white Southern women, but it is also accessible to a wider audience…The power of Stanton’s work lies in its exploration of the personal side (and toll) of white participation in the movement…This is a well researched, well written contribution to Southern history, women’s history and civil rights history.”

                                                                            ---H-Net Reviews (Humanities & Social Science Network)

 

 

“Mary Stanton has made an admirable career of restoring tragic casualties of our country’s racial past to the place in history they deserve.  Here she follows up her fine biographies of two white iconoclasts murdered in Alabama while protesting segregation---Viola Liuzzo and William Moore---with a heartbreaking portrait of another white martyr to the cause of justice:  Juliette Morgan.  Journey Toward Justice is a much needed appraisal of a player who has too long remained on the margins of the civil rights story, and it is also an absorbing social history of the band of southern liberals who answered the call of the zeitgeist at a time when it was potentially fatal to do so.  Wonderfully written and vividly researched, the book is a pleasure to read!”

                                                                           ---Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham,
                                                                                        Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

 

 

The Hand Of Esau: Montgomery’s Jewish Community & the Bus Boycott

 

“Mary Stanton has done an outstanding job of unearthing hitherto unknown details about the roles of Jews in relation to the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama.  In these pages their conflicting emotions, positive support, and rejection of black rights reflect a community in turmoil. This nuanced account pits heroes against villains, with a majority silenced out of fear of violence, boycott and loss of acceptance.  Yet, as Stanton clearly shows, agreeing with or acquiescence to Southern mores failed to offer a shield against anti-Semitism.  By tracing the Jewish community’s varied reactions The Hand of Esau places the story in historical context. The book is a must read for anyone interested in the civil rights struggle, Southern history and Southern and American Jewish history.”

 

                                                                ---Mark K. Bauman, editor Southern Jewish History and

                                                                            co-author of  Quiet Voices: Southern Rabbis and Black Civil Rights.