The first time Kerri Leigh Smith arrived on Old Screamer Mountain, which served as Lillian Smith\u2019s home for the majority of her sixty-eight years, it was early autumn. The Appalachian landscape was ablaze with the vibrant hues of changing leaves, their brilliant oranges, reds, golds, maroons, mustards, and burnt siennas illuminating the crisp air and serving as a poignant reminder of the fleeting nature of life. Having hiked the Georgia trails many times before, Kerri Leigh Smith had never visited the mountain sanctuary, yet the site instantly felt serenely familiar\u2014it felt like home.<\/p>\n
As the months of research unfolded, the modern historian discovered striking parallels between her own life and that of her predecessor. Both women were born in other Deep South states\u2014Smith in Florida, and her modern biographer in Mississippi\u2014before ultimately claiming Georgia as their home, despite being at deep odds with the majority of the state\u2019s white citizenry during their respective eras. Both experienced childhoods burdened by complicated, troubling relationships with their mothers and found their worldviews profoundly shaped by extensive travel, particularly abroad, during their teenage and young adult years. <\/p>\n
Furthermore, both writers faced major interruptions in their life’s work due to serious illness and had to overcome profound personal losses. They shared a foundational belief that dismantling racism required a multifaceted approach combining personal relationships, education, art, psychology, and policy. Both launched their public-speaking careers through civil rights organizations and Southern colleges, alongside private organizations in New York. They shared a reputation for being impatient, morally rigorous\u2014perhaps even righteous at times\u2014and admittedly a bit too intolerant of intolerance. Ultimately, both stood far to the left of the mainstream political and social spectrum of white Americans of their respective generations.<\/p>\n
Intensely intrigued by the tiny, wire-framed woman from Old Screamer Mountain, Kerri Leigh Smith began researching in earnest, instantly becoming enthralled by her findings. Lillian Smith was a white woman who fought to dismantle segregation as early as the 1930s, a best-selling author whose provocative books were censored, burned, and banned in multiple cities across America, and an openly queer woman who lived alongside her lifelong partner, Paula Snelling. It became increasingly clear to her biographer that Smith had been nearly erased from the historical narrative because her existence and her uncompromising ideology posed\u2014and continue to pose\u2014a direct threat to prevailing societal hierarchies and power structures.<\/p>\n The urgency of restoring this forgotten history became paramount. Smith and her revolutionary ideas undoubtedly deserve to be known by every American. Her essays should be a cornerstone of modern classrooms, and entire college courses should be dedicated to her written work and civil rights activism. As this deep historical interest blossomed into a full-length book project, Kerri Leigh Smith began collaborating closely with Matthew Teutsch, then the Director of the Lillian Smith Center before its funding was cut by Piedmont University. Teutsch worked tirelessly for years to restore Smith\u2019s rightful place in American history. Those efforts culminated on April 20, 2022, when Lillian E. Smith finally received her own historical marker from the Georgia Historical Society.<\/p>\n The historic marker explicitly details her contributions: \u201cSmith openly challenged Jim Crow and provided a critical White voice on Southern race relations through her writings, including the novel Strange Fruit<\/em> and memoir Killers of the Dream<\/em>, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n By formally recognizing Paula Snelling as Lillian\u2019s life and intellectual partner, the marker achieved a historic milestone, becoming one of\u2014if not the only\u2014historical markers in the Deep South to formally acknowledge a same-sex relationship. It also stands as one of the very few markers in the entire state of Georgia honoring a woman. In a landscape historically dominated by Civil War markers, the revolutionary nature of Lillian Smith\u2019s plaque cannot be overstated. Highlighting one of the few women listed among thousands of men, and one of the rare LGBTQ+ individuals honored in this manner, the marker also commemorates one of the exceptionally few white Southerners recognized for their steadfast dedication to the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n By the time the plaque was officially approved, Kerri Leigh Smith had delivered numerous speeches on the enduring importance of Lillian Smith and her work, establishing herself as a recognized authority on the author. Dr. Teutsch subsequently invited her to deliver the keynote address at the historic marker\u2019s dedication ceremony. At that exact moment, the author realized she needed to temporarily set aside other projects to finish writing An Inconvenient Woman<\/em>, marking the first book in four decades to comprehensively examine Smith\u2019s life, work, and sexuality.<\/p>\n The dedication speech focused heavily on how Lillian Smith fearlessly exposed the systemic sins of white America while simultaneously maintaining an unwavering sense of hope, effectively lighting a path toward a more equitable future. While she frequently scolded and preached against injustice, she also welcomed repentant individuals back with open arms and a forgiving heart. Smith argued that the fundamental key to achieving societal peace lay in creating new, constructive identities for white supremacists whose self-images had been shattered by modernity and social progress. <\/p>\n Writing on the psychological necessity of this transition, Smith noted that when a person is asked to give up established defenses, they will not feel secure unless something equal or better is returned to them. She emphasized the critical need to provide people with new beliefs and new self-images to substitute for obsolete prejudices.<\/p>\n These insights\u2014centering on new beliefs and new self-images\u2014remain vital recipes for societal healing today. As Kerri Leigh Smith emphasized during the dedication of the historical marker, keeping Lillian Smith\u2019s name and her critical mission alive is imperative to guide and inspire future generations. Her extraordinary life serves as a powerful reminder of the arduous, frequently selfless, and sometimes dangerous work required to build a genuinely equitable, peaceful, and loving society, calling on modern citizens to take up the mantle in honor of Smith and all fearless freedom fighters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Long before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s transformed the American landscape, Lillian Smith was standing nearly alone as a white Southern voice demanding the total eradication of segregation. An uncompromising author, activist, and visionary, Smith used her platform as early as the 1930s to expose the moral decay of Jim Crow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[230,2660,231,3701,126,229,2663,3604,2654,1576,2664,3700],"class_list":["post-2499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eastern-heritage-and-history","tag-archaeology","tag-civil","tag-eastern-culture","tag-erased","tag-heritage","tag-history","tag-lillian","tag-pioneering","tag-rediscovering","tag-rights","tag-smith","tag-voice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Remembering](\"https:\/\/www.thehistoryreader.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Lil-and-Paula-in-camp-uniforms_CREDIT-Lillian-Smith-Center.jpg\")
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