Wayne Greenhaw
Wayne Greenhaw (born c. 1939 in North Alabama; died May 31, 2011 in Birmingham) was a journalist and author.
Greenhaw survived a bout with polio which caused ongoing spinal problems. He became a voracious reader during his long recovery and, after graduating high school, traveled to Mexico to participate in a writer's workshop there. He continued his studies at the University of Alabama and the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. His first novel, The Golfer, was published in 1968.
As a journalist in the 1960s, Greenhaw covered Alabama politics and the Civil Rights Movement for the Alabama Journal and Montgomery Advertiser. His stories ran nationally in The New York Times and other outlets. In 1973 he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University and, with another fellow, led a seminar in Southern politics at the Kennedy Institute that Spring.
In the 1980s, Greenhaw became the editor and publisher of Alabama magazine while contributing columns to state newspapers. In 1993 he was appointed director of the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel and served on the advisory committee for the Alabama Film Commission and on the board of the Alabama Humanities Foundation.
Greenhaw authored 22 books and two plays. His last book, Fighting the Devil in Dixie (2011) recalls his years on the Civil Rights beat in the 1960s and 70s. He was still working on a novel, Call of the Whippoorwill, which he had begun long before with editorial assistance from Harper Lee.
Greenhaw was married to former Montgomery County Circuit Judge Sally Greenhaw. He died following heart surgery at UAB Hospital in May 2011 and is buried in Montgomery.
Publications
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1968) The Golfer. New York: J. B. Lippincott
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1971) The Making of a Hero: Lt. William L. Calley and the My Lai Massacre. Louisville, Kentucky: Touchstone Publishers
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1976) Watch Out for George Wallace. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1981) Elephants in the Cottonfields: Ronald Reagan and the New Republican South. New York: Macmillan
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1984) Flying High: Inside Big-Time Drug Smuggling. New York: Dodd Mead
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1986) Alabama On My Mind. Montgomery: Sycamore Press
- Greenhaw, Wayne and Kathy Holland (1990) Montgomery: Center Stage in the South. Los Angeles, California: Windsor Publications
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1991) Tombigbee. Montgomery: Sycamore Press
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1993) Montgomery: The Biography of a City. Montgomery: Montgomery Advertiser
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1994) King of Country. Montgomery: Black Belt Press
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1998) Alabama: Portrait of a State. Montgomery: Black Belt Press
- Greenhaw, Wayne (1999) Beyond the Night. Montgomery: Black Belt Press
- Greenhaw, Wayne (2000) Alabama: A State of Mind. Montgomery: Community Publications
- Greenhaw, Wayne (2001) My Heart is in the Earth: True Stories of Alabama and Mexico. Montgomery: River City Publishing
- Greenhaw, Wayne (2002) The Long Journey. Montgomery: River City Publishing
- Greenhaw, Wayne (2002) Montgomery: The River City. Montgomery: River City Publishing
- Greenhaw, Wayne (2003) The Spider's Web. Montgomery: River City Publishing
- Williams, Donnie and Wayne Greenhaw (2005) The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow. Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Review Press
- Greenhaw, Wayne (2007) Ghosts in the Road: Poems of Alabama and Mexico. Montgomery: River City Publishing
- Greenhaw, Wayne (2011) Fighting the Devil in Dixie: How Civil Rights Activists Took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books ISBN 9781569763452
References
- Benn, Alvin (May 23, 2011) "Alabama author Wayne Greenhaw dies." Montgomery Advertiser
External links
- Wayne Greenhaw website