Delivering Justice W.W. Law and the Fight for Civil Rights

A gripping biography of the mail carrier who orchestrated the Great Savannah boycott — and was instrumental in bringing equality to his community.

''Grow up and be somebody,'' Westley Wallace Law's grandmother encouraged him as a young boy living in poverty in segregated Savannah, Georgia. Determined to make a difference in his community, W.W. Law assisted blacks in registering to vote, joined the NAACP and trained protestors in the use of nonviolent civil disobedience, and, in 1961, led the Great Savannah Boycott. In that famous protest, blacks refused to shop in downtown Savannah. When city leaders finally agreed to declare all of its citizens equal, Savannah became the first city in the south to end racial discrimination.

A lifelong mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, W.W. Law saw fostering communication between blacks and whites as a fundamental part of his job. As this affecting, strikingly illustrated biography makes clear, this ''unsung hero'' delivered far more than the mail to the citizens of the city he loved.