August 30, 1993
This collection of 145 letters by author and social activist Smith (1897-1966) are accompanied by informative biographical essays written by Gladney, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of Alabama. The letters reveal the strength of a single voice reflecting on a singular life. As a white woman who was outspokenly opposed to the racism that permeated the American South, where she had been raised, Smith addressed the issue prominently in her literary magazine, South Today , co-edited with her lover, Paula Snelling. After publishing Strange Fruit , a controversial novel about an interracial love affair, Smith lectured widely. Letters to Martin Luther King Jr., to Eleanor Roosevelt and to other activists testify to her involvement in the civil rights movement. Other correspondence here documents Smith's concern with the interaction between sexual and racial attitudes and the impact on children, the subject of her autobiographical work, Killers of the Dream. Illustrated .