Encyclopedia article about Lillian Smith who was one of the first prominent white southerners to denounce racial segregation openly and to work actively against the world of Jim Crow. From as early as 1930 she argued that Jim Crow was evil and that it leads to social moral retardation. She wrote Strange Fruit (1944) and Killers of the Dream (1949). Smith openly convened interracial meetings and toured the South, talking to people of all races and classes. She refused to join groups such as the Southern Regional Council until it could oppose segregation as well as racism. Smith studied at Piedmont College in Demorest and Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland and worked at a Methodist missionary school in China. She and her partner, Paula Snelling, founded Pseudopodia.

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Cite as: "Lillian Smith (1897-1966)," New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved [date]: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org.

Forms part of the New Georgia Encyclopedia.