ATHENS, Ohio -- "Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman," published by Ohio University Press in June 2001, has been selected by the American Association of University Presses as among "The Best of the Best from the University Presses: Books You Should Know About." The book launched the Ohio University Press Series in Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia.

Born in 1890 in West Virginia, the daughter and granddaughter of slaves, Memphis Tennessee Garrison was named after an aunt who was a schoolteacher in Memphis. Garrison attended Ohio University as a young woman, after which she became a schoolteacher. She later served as a liaison between the upper management of U.S. Steel in Gary, West Virginia, and its coal-mining workforce.

In the days before unions, Garrison presented miners' grievances to the company, and by the early 1960s she was a vice president of the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She died in 1988, at age 98.

Her oral history was edited by Ancella Bickley, a retired administrator and professor of English at West Virginia State College, and Lynda Ann Ewen, a sociology professor at Marshall University and co-director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia.

Ewen found the transcript of Garrison's memories in an archive at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. The oral history had languished for thirty years, having been recorded at Marshall in 1969. When Ewen read it, she realized its historic and social value. Although the annual NAACP dinner in West Virginia is named in her honor, younger generations had forgotten Garrison. "This was a national figure who had simply been lost," Ewen said.

In its review, Publishers Weekly wrote, "Anecdotally rich, 'Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman' fills the gap in historical accounts of mining. Of particular interest is her work in the NAACP and her recollections of its less-remembered cultural mission ... as well as its political one."

Panelists from the American Association of University Presses and a committee of librarians picked "Memphis Tennessee Garrison" as one of thirty-five books published by university presses that are "essential additions for public and/or secondary school library collections." The panelists will present the books to the American Library Association at its summer conference on June 15 in Atlanta.