An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America
By Keri Leigh Merritt; Foreword by Rev. Dr. William Barber II
St. Martin's Press; hardcover, 304 pages; $30.00; available today, Tuesday, September 29th
Keri Leigh Merritt, Ph.D., is a historian and writer whose articles have appeared in outlets ranging from Smithsonian and Aeon to The Hill and CNN. Her first book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, won both the Bennett Wall Award from the Southern Historical Association, as well as the President's Book Award from the Social Science History Association.
An Inconvenient Woman is Merritt's new book, an epic on Lilian Smith, one of the most famous writers from the first half of the 20th century, but now, she is largely forgotten. This book will certainly rectify that, as her political and literary legacy should have new relevance in this current tough moment we're going through.
Smith was a champion of integration and civil rights for Black Americans, making her one of the few whites in the South who spoke up early and often about racism.
In 1949, Smith wrote this about something else she confronted, "It is the apathy of white Southerners that disturbs me; and I may add, this apathy is north and west of our region, too. There are so many people who are determined not to do wrong but equally determined not to do right. Thus they walk straight into Nothingness. Are we - the nation that first embarked on the height adventure of making a world fit for human beings to live in - about to destroy ourselves because we have killed our dream? Can we live with a dead dream inside us? How many dead dreams will it take to destroy us all?"
Smith was born into a wealthy white family in the rural Deep South during Segregation, and she went on to run a popular girls' summer camp in the Blue Ridge mountains, which she made into a progressive haven.
At her home in Clayton, Georgia, Smith hosted integrated parties, dinners and events, as she personally navigated the boundaries of segregation.
Revered Dr. William Barber II wrote in his Foreword, "Sometimes in life we get to live out the meaning of our name. Lillian comes from the Latin for 'lily,' symbolizing purity, innocence, and beauty, but it also connects to the Hebrew name Elizabeth, meaning 'God is my oath.' Lillian made an oath to tell the truth about the wounds of racism. As a writer, she put words to a struggle that so many souls have felt: 'I felt if I went to New York to live or Paris to live, all of it would begin to fade, and it hurt,' she wrote,' but wanted it to hurt, because I think a writer stops writing when the wound heals, and we must keep the wound open...One must be aware of these deep injuries.' Long before Wendell Berry would write about the Hidden Wound, Smith was giving words to the unspeakable. By doing so, she opened up a conversation that made a new kind of community possible. A generation of white Southerners grew up with the silence broken, which allowed them to break free from the generational curses passed down to them in hushed gestures."
Smith was in a decades-long relationship with another woman, Paula Snelling, which was recently confirmed by scholars, adding another layer to her fight for the rights of all people.
They edited a literary magazine, South Today, that promoted the work of both Black and white authors, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Pauli Murray. The magazine ran for a full decade, as it called for an end to Jim Crow laws and championed integration and non-violence.
Smith wrote multiple best-selling books, both novels and non-fiction, amidst censorship and book bans. that was created specifically to promote integration, and that was the start of Smith's career as an author.
Some of the first female literary agents represented Smith, and many of her books were published by legendary editor George Brockway at W.W. Norton. Her books sold millions of copies, as did her pamphlets about the many immediate and practical steps that white Americans could take to end segregation and battle hatred.
There was certainly a personal cost to Smith's work, as she was constantly threatened with violence, and her hose was set on fire several times by white supremacists. Despite that, her work continued throughout the 1960s, influencing many of the activists of that era, like John Lewis, who said, "Her writings and her words inspired us all to do better."
In this excerpt, Merritt writes of Smith's clout: Lillian joined several Southern organizations seeking to "solve the race question." Even among self-proclaimed liberal whites, she had a reputation as domineering and uncompromising on questions of equality. She was constantly pushing more moderate whites to the left. Over the years, she served on the boards of multiple organizations and as an unofficial advisor to many more, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. From the NAACP's Walter White to the president and first lady of Morehouse College, Benjamin and Sadie Mays; to activists such as A. Philip Randolph, Paul and Essie Robeson, Alice Walker, and Mary McLeod Bethune in her early years of activism; to Julian Bond and Martin and Coretta Kind in Smith's later years, Lillian offered support to Black leaders and worked with them to effect change, forging genuine friendships. She corresponded and developed relationships with some of the most influential activists, artists, and intellectuals of her day, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Virginia Foster Durr, and James Weldon Johnson.
Strange Fruit, Lillian's first novel, was published in 1944 to both fanfare and outrage. The provocative story of an interracial affair that culminated in a lynching in a small Georgia town in the 1920s, Strange Fruit was immediately banned for language and lewdness in Boston and Detroit. It was even banned by the US Postal Service until one of Lillian's lifelong fans, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, appealed to her husband to end the censorship. Strange Fruit portrayed concepts that were forbidden to be discussed in the South, as well as topics that could get the author - whether Black or white, man or woman - killed. Making the New York Times bestseller list and eventually selling more than three million copies, the book made an international star out of Lillian.
Killers of the Dream, published in 1949, remains Lillian's best-known work. A collection of essays, it examines and rebukes racism and segregation, challenging not just white Southerners but all white Americans to change both their beliefs and their behaviors. Interwoven with autobiographical stories and personal reflections, Killers of the Dream criticizes the spinelessness of white moderates and liberals, urging them to fight for social justice. Surely influenced by Lil's lesbian identity, Killers also centers gender and sexuality in a psychoanalytic, Freudian-like interpretation of Southern history.
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