An Inconvenient Woman - by Keri Leigh Merritt (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A revelatory and immersive biography of a white Southern woman who was a key figure in the early civil rights movement, devoting her life to ending segregation in America only to be forgotten by history.

Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: She lived with her lover, Paula, first running a summer camp in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, and then a magazine, devoted to creating a new vision of the South, one that passionately championed equality and integration. Smith published Black and white writers, a rare feat in those days, and herself wrote articles instructing white Southerners on why they shouldn't support segregation--Smith firmly believed racism hurt white Americans, too. In 1944 she published a bestselling novel, Strange Fruit, which became a national sensation and was banned in Boston and Detroit. The FBI began a file on her, she received death threats, and her house caught fire three times, twice intentionally, resulting in the loss of all her works-in-progress and her correspondence. Undaunted, she continued her ardent fight against segregation, maintaining correspondence with some of the great leaders of her day, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr, W.E.B Dubois, Paul Robeson, and Pauli Murray. She continued to fight for both civil and human rights throughout the 1960s, helping nurture many of the activists in SNCC and CORE, only to succumb to cancer in 1966.

Drawing on previously unpublished archival research, and with a modern appreciation of Smith's complex identity, AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN is the definitive account of a woman who defied all expectations and dedicated her life to racial equality.

Review Quotes

"At once a startling new history of the civil rights movement and a long overdue rescuing of a personal story of an unsung heroine that two few know, An Inconvenient Woman is a beautiful must read. With deft care, a critical eye, and an oh-so-rare appreciation for the true complexity of what brought people into the Black freedom struggle, this close study of Lillian Smith's life and activism gives us all hope is this current moment of brutal hatred and intolerance."
--Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy

"A fascinating exploration of the life of the extraordinary writer Lillian Smith, one of the southern white progressives who stood at the forefront of the struggle for racial justice and civil liberties. This riveting, and sometimes painful, biography--taking the reader from China to the passenger seat of a car with Martin Luther King Jr.--recovers one of the forgotten figures who helped bend the arc of the universe toward justice, even as the forces of reaction did everything possible to stop her. A beautiful contribution to American history."
--Julian Zelizer, author of Burning Down the House, New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2020

About the Author

KERI LEIGH MERRITT received her B.A. from Emory University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Her first book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, won both the Bennett Wall Award from the Southern Historical Association as well as the President's Book Award from the Social Science History Association. She is also co-editor of After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Salon, Aeon, The Hill, Jacobin, The Bitter Southerner, Common Dreams, and on CNN and PBS, among others. She lives in the Atlanta metro area.