Unearthing the Legacy of Lillian Smith: The Forgotten Southern White Woman Who Fought Jim Crow in the 1930s

Long before the modern civil rights movement captured the national consciousness in the 1950s and 1960s, a remarkable Southern white woman named Lillian Smith was already on the front lines, fighting tirelessly to dismantle the entrenched systems of segregation and white supremacy. A bestselling author, essayist, and visionary activist, Smith used her platform and her pen to expose the deep moral rot of Jim Crow, challenging her fellow white Southerners to confront the profound injustices embedded in their society. Yet, despite her monumental contributions to American literature and social justice, her name has largely faded from public memory, obscured by decades of cultural erasure.

Now, historian and author Kerri Leigh Smith—no relation—is working to bring this foundational figure back into the historical spotlight. In her new book, An Inconvenient Woman, Kerri Leigh Smith explores the life, work, and enduring relevance of a woman whose radical progressive vision made her a dangerous threat to the established power structures of her time—and perhaps the reason her legacy was so thoroughly marginalized.

The journey toward rediscovering Lillian Smith often begins in the rugged landscapes of the American South. For Kerri Leigh Smith, that rediscovery started during an early autumn visit to Old Screamer Mountain, the place Smith called home for sixty-eight years. Located in Clayton, Georgia, the mountaintop retreat offered a serene yet striking backdrop. As the autumn leaves descended in a brilliant tapestry of oranges, reds, golds, maroons, and burnt siennas, they served as a poignant reminder of the fleeting nature of life. Having hiked the nearby Appalachian trails many times before, the author found herself stepping onto Old Screamer Mountain for the very first time, experiencing an immediate, serene familiarity that felt remarkably like home.

As the months of research unfolded, the modern historian discovered profound parallels between her own life and that of her subject. Both women were born in other Deep South states—Smith in Florida and Kerri Leigh in Mississippi—and both ultimately chose Georgia as their home, despite holding views that placed them at bitter odds with the majority of the state’s white citizenry. Both experienced childhoods burdened by complicated, troubling relationships with their mothers, and both were profoundly shaped and educated by extensive travel, particularly abroad, during their formative teenage and young adult years. Furthermore, both women saw their life’s work repeatedly interrupted by serious illness, requiring them to overcome major personal losses along the way.

Ideologically, the two writers shared a conviction that dismantling racism required a multifaceted approach, blending personal relationships, education, art, psychology, and public policy. Both launched their public speaking careers through civil rights organizations and college campuses across the South, alongside various private organizations in New York. They shared a certain impatience, a rigorous moral compass, and an admitted intolerance for bigotry. Most significantly, both women stood far to the left of the mainstream political and social spectrum of their respective generations in white America.

Intensely intrigued by the diminutive, wire-framed woman who had once commanded intellectual and moral authority from Old Screamer Mountain, Kerri Leigh Smith began an earnest research journey. She was immediately captivated by the breadth of Smith’s defiance. Lillian Smith was a white woman who openly fought to end segregation as early as the 1930s. She was a bestselling author whose provocative books were censored, publicly burned, and banned in numerous cities across the United States. Furthermore, she lived openly as a lesbian with her lifelong partner and collaborator, Paula Snelling. It became increasingly clear that Smith had been nearly erased from the historical narrative because her life and ideas posed a direct, uncompromising threat to the prevailing racial and social hierarchies of the American South.

Yet Smith and her ideas remain profoundly relevant to contemporary American society. Her essays and books arguably deserve to be staple readings in modern classrooms, with entire college courses dedicated to her written work and social activism. As Kerri Leigh Smith’s research evolved into a full-length book project, she began working closely with Matthew Teutsch, who served as the Director of the Lillian Smith Center prior to its defunding by Piedmont University. For years, Teutsch labored tirelessly to restore Smith’s rightful place in history. Those efforts bore historic fruit on April 20, 2022, when Lillian E. Smith finally received her own official historical marker from the Georgia Historical Society.

The marker acknowledges her courageous stance against institutional racism: "Smith openly challenged Jim Crow and provided a critical White voice on Southern race relations through her writings, including the novel Strange Fruit and memoir Killers of the Dream, and a literary magazine co-edited with her life partner Paula Snelling. Through her involvement with Civil Rights organizations, Smith became friends with Martin Luther King, Jr."

By explicitly recognizing Paula Snelling as Lillian’s life and intellectual partner, the marker achieved a groundbreaking milestone. It stands as one of—if not the very only—historical markers in the Deep South to formally acknowledge a same-sex relationship. Moreover, it is among the exceedingly few markers in the entire state of Georgia dedicated to honoring a woman. In a landscape dominated by thousands of markers commemorating the Civil War and military figures, the revolutionary nature of Smith’s plaque is difficult to overstate. Listing one of the few women alongside thousands of men, and standing as one of the very few LGBTQ+ individuals and white Southerners honored for their dedication to civil rights, the plaque represents a rare corrective to historical omission.

By the time the marker was approved, Kerri Leigh Smith had delivered numerous speeches on the significance of Lillian Smith and her work, cementing her status as a leading authority on the author. When Dr. Teutsch invited her to deliver the keynote address at the historic marker dedication, she realized she needed to prioritize completing An Inconvenient Woman, which stands as the first comprehensive book dealing fully with Smith’s life, work, and sexuality in four decades.

In her dedication speech, Kerri Leigh Smith focused on how Lillian Smith possessed the rare ability to confront white America with its moral failings while simultaneously maintaining an unwavering sense of hope and lighting a clear path forward. Smith was known to scold and preach, but she also welcomed repentant individuals back with open arms and a forgiving heart. She understood that achieving lasting peace required constructing new, constructive identities for white supremacists whose self-images had been shattered by the march of modernity and social progress.

As Smith herself once wrote, "when a man gives up something, even old defenses, he is not going to feel good unless he has something equal, or better, returned to him. We must give our people new beliefs, new images of themselves to substitute for the old."

These insights—the necessity of offering new beliefs and new self-images—offer a timeless framework for societal healing, even today. As Kerri Leigh Smith emphasized during the marker dedication ceremony, keeping Lillian Smith’s name and her vital mission alive is imperative for guiding and inspiring future generations. Her life serves as a enduring reminder of the difficult, frequently selfless, and sometimes perilous work required to forge an equitable, peaceful, and loving society, calling upon contemporary citizens to take up the mantle in honor of Smith and the countless other fearless freedom fighters who came before them.