Accidental Activist

Front cover, left to right: President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Benjamin Willis, Superintendent of City Schools, Chicago, IL; The Honorable Anthony Celebrezze, Secretary of U.S. Dept. of HEW; Dr. Chester Swanson, Professor of Education, UC Berkeley; Mary Allen Jolley. Rose Garden presentation of Vocational Education Report. Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston “As the saying goes, many people frantically struggle for fame while a handful forget themselves into immortality. Mary Jolley never sought Alabama’s spotlight, but she was seldom beyond its refractive beam when matters of greatest importance were at stake. ACCIDENTAL ACTIVIST is a primer for all who wish to know what was best about the state’s history, politics, and society in the Twentieth Century.”— James Wayne Flynt University Professor Emeritus of History,Auburn University, author of 13 books on the historical, economic and social fabric of Alabama, including Poor But Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites; co-author of Alabama: A History of a Deep South State, both nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.