Summary

Who’s in the Stew opens with a description of Tom Radney, the lawyer for the Reverend and eventually Robert Burns. It was 1969, and Radney was running for lieutenant governor, known for his championing of “liberal politics in the Deep South” (79). Three years earlier, Radney ran to represent Alabama’s Sixteenth District in the state senate. In this race, Tom’s opponent H.H. O’Daniel had the support of Governor George Corley Wallace Jr. who was a Democrat, “one of the few [judges] who addressed both whites and blacks in his courtroom as ‘mister’” (81). After years of Alabama being a “one-party state” run by Wallace, Radney was ready to mount an attack (82).

Tom had a good upbringing with parents who taught him “lessons in human decency” (83). In the Methodist Church, Radney came to believe in the...