Last week's focus was on visual artists of the Mixed experience. This week's focus is on social activists.
We start with Lillian Smith (1897-1966), a social critic and author of the best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944) about an interracial love affair. A white woman, Smith championed the rights of women and minorities in her writing and through her community involvement. According to Wikipedia, Smith "was one of the first prominent Southern whites to write about and speak openly against racism and segregation." "Segregation is spiritual lynching," she once said. Smith was the author of several books including Killers of the Dream (1949), Now Is the Time (1955), and Our Faces, Our Words (1964). In a letter to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Smith wrote: "My warmest greetings to you and to your congregation and to your people who are my people too, for we are all one big human family. I pray that we shall soon in the South begin to act like one."
