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Mattie C.'s Boy: The Shelley Stewart Story
Mattie C's Boy The Shelley Stewart Story Author:Don Keith Shelley Stewart was five years old when he and his brothers watched in horror as their father murdered their mother with an ax. Homeless at the age of six, Stewart found what shelter he could, suffering physical and sexual abuse and racism. Despite heartbreaking setbacks and the racial strife that gripped the South in the 1950s and 1960s, Stewar... more »t graduated high school and entered the broadcasting profession. There he became a hugely popular radio personality, rubbing shoulders with the top recording artists of the day and becoming one of the nation's first black radio station owners.
He helped Dr. Martin Luther King mount the historic Children's March through the streets of Birmingham, Alabama. Later Stewart would use his powerful communication skills to help convict one of the men who bombed the city's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Then this often-honored man turned his business skills to the creation of a foundation named after his mother; the Mattie C. Stewart Foundation works to convince high school students to stay in school and graduate, a topic Stewart speaks on in his many engagements around the country. Stewart, with author Don Keith, tells his story in his memoir Mattie C.'s Boy.
"A testament to the courage, strength and generosity of the human spirit. Shelley's life story is both lesson and inspiration: it teaches us that hope and determination can overcome adversity, and it inspires us always to choose what is right, not just what is easy." -- Bill Milliken, Founder of Communication in Schools
"When you read a person's life story and feel like you've been in their skin, you know you're in the hands of a talented biographer. Shelley Stewart's story is astonishing, and Don Keith has told it with grace and honesty. I was mesmerized." -- Robert Inman, author of The Governor's Lady« less