LES Newsletter S21

Spring 2021

A View From the Mountain a newsletter from the Lillian E. Smith Center

This Issue 2 LES & MLK 4 Symposium From the Archives 5 Residency Awards 8 Donor List

Lillian Smith and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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n Lillian Smith’s copy of Strength to Love (1963), Martin Luther King, Jr. inscribed the following: “To my friend, Lillian Smith. Whose friendship I cherish very deeply and whose genuine goodwill, great humanitarian concern and unswerving devotion to the principles of freedom and justice will be an inspiration to generations yet unborn.”

Five years later, on February 4, 1968, two months before his assassination, King delivered “The Drum Major Incription from Martin Luther King, Jr. Instinct” at Ebenezer Baptist Church to Lillian Smith in Smith’s copy of Strength to Love. where he pointed out that the drum major instinct can lead to “tragic race prejudice.” On this point, he continued, “Many have written about this problem—Lillian Smith used to say it beautifully in some of her books. And she would say it to the point of getting men and women to see the source of the problem.”

Planned Giving

Planned gifts are a perfect way to provide fellowships for artists in residence at the Center or scholarship funds for students enrolled in the Lillian E. Smith Scholars Program at Piedmont College.

FOR MORE INFORMATION piedmont.edu/endowment-planned-giving Mark Elam melam@piedmont.edu | 706-894-4214

DIRECTOR OF LILLIAN SMITH CENTER Matthew Teutsch mteutsch@piedmont.edu | 706-894-4204

LES ADVISORY BOARD James F. Mellichamp, Chair Nannette Curran Nancy Smith Fichter Margaret Rose Gladney Sue Ellen Lovejoy Susan Montgomery Tommye Scanlin John Siegel Stewart Smith W. Austin Smith John H. Templeton Bill Tribby

King’s reference to Smith is no coincidence. The two knew each other, and they spent time together.

As he continued, one could even hear echoes of Smith’s Killers of the Dream (1949) in his sermon when King described the ways that race prejudice arises from the drum major instinct. He said, “A need that some people have to feel superior. A need that some people have to feel that they are first, and to feel that their white skin ordained them to be first. And they have said it over and over again in ways that we see with our own eyes.”

On multiple occasions, King mentioned Smith as one of the prominent white Southern voices during the period, even listing her, among others, in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” as one who has “written about our struggle in eloquent, prophetic, and understanding terms.” In “Who Speaks for the South?” King commented that the vocal bigoted minority does not “speak for the South.” Instead, the “voices like those of Miss Lillian E. Smith of Georgia, Mr. Harry Ashmore of Arkansas, and the ever-growing list of white Christian ministers ... represent the true and basic sentiments of millions of southerners, whose voices are yet unheard, whose course is yet unclear and whose courageous acts are yet unseen.”

Twelve years before he delivered “The Drum Major Instinct,” on March 10, 1956, Smith wrote a letter to King. She told him how much she admired his work and how she thought that his approach would be successful. She told King that she would like to have the opportunity to meet him, and she offered her encouragement to the movement.

Along with all of this, Smith also noted, as she did in speeches such as “The Right Way is Not the Moderate Way,” the effects that King’s work and the work of so many others would have on the white psyche. She writes for King to tell those in Montgomery, “I, too, am working as hard as I can to bring insight to the white group; to try to open their hearts to the great harm that segregation inflicts not only on Negroes but on white people too.”

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Along with her assertion of racism’s effects on whites, she pointed out that racism caused a severing within the psyche, causing the oppressor to deny logic and succumb wholly to the mythological ideas of white supremacy that act as an umbilical cord that one must sever in order to truly grow and survive. She wrote to King,

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I, myself, being a Deep South white, reared in a religious home and the Methodist church realize the deep ties of common songs, common prayer, common symbols that bind our two races together on a religio-mystical level, even as another brutally mythic idea, the concept of White Supremacy, tears our two people apart.

”

Smith explored, throughout Killers of the Dream, the ways that these myths created “logic tight compartments” that caused the severing of the mind: “This separation divorced our beliefs from the energy that might have carried them into acts, but we accepted this moral impotence as a natural thing and often developed what is called a ‘judicious’ temperament from believing equally in both sides of a question.”

Smith and King corresponded and met on various occasions. In 1960, after having dinner together, Martin and Coretta drove Smith back to Emory University Hospital for her cancer treatment.

“On the way,” as Coretta writes in My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr., “a policeman stopped Martin simply because he had a white woman in his car. Then, when he saw that he was dealing with that well-known ‘troublemaker,’ he issued a summons.” Afterwards, King went to the

DeKalb County courthouse and paid the $25 fine. He was given a suspended sentence and placed on probation. He did not know, as Coretta points out, about the probation.

A few months later, King was arrested during a sit-in at Rich’s department store in Atlanta.

DeKalb County officials kept him in prison because they claimed that he violated his probation. The judge sentenced King to six months’ hard labor at the state prison in Reidsville. King’s attorney asked that the judge not send him to Reidsville immediately because they were preparing a writ of habeas corpus; however, in the middle of the night, officers came into King’s cell and drove him to Reidsville, three hours from DeKalb.

John F. Kennedy was running for president against Richard Nixon in 1960. Kennedy called Coretta expressing his concern and telling her that if she needed anything to let him know.

Kennedy, along with his brother Robert, secured King’s release, partly as a political move to help secure the Black vote. Some of his advisers suggested against Kennedy getting involved, but Robert persuaded him to do so. As Coretta writes, “It is my belief that historians are right when they say that his intervention in Martin’s case won the presidency for him.”

We remember this part of the story. It gets retold, over and over again when we see documentaries or pieces about King or Kennedy. We remember that the authorities kept King in jail after the release of others who particpated in the sit-ins based on a traffic violation from months before the sit-in.

What we do not get, though, is the cause for that traffic violation. We do not get that he was pulled over, before the cop even knew who he was, for having Lillian Smith, a white woman and his friend, in the front seat with him. We do not get that he was taking her to the hospital after they ate dinner together. We do not get that the two had a correspondence and relationship. We need that part of the story. We need to see the work that King and Smith did together, the thoughts they shared, the words they wrote to one another.

We need their relationship in our memory.

Upon her death in September 1966, King wrote to Smith’s family: “We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of your sister and our dear friend, Lillian Smith. Her writings, her exemplary life and her commitment to people and humanity inspired millions. She was one of the brightest stars in the human firmament. Probably no southerner seared the conscience of white southerners on the question of racial injustice than Lillian Smith. She carved for herself an imperishable niche in the annals of American history.”

Image of letter

Telegram King wrote to Smith’s family on September 29, 1966. Box 80 Folder 7 Lillian Eugenia Smith papers at UGA’s Hargrett Library.

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From the Archives

“Collaboration of the Dream” 2021 Lillian E. Smith Symposium on Arts and Social Change

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n March 4, the LES Center hosted “Collaboration of the Dream,” its biannual symposium on arts and social change.

Lillian E. Smith understood the importance of art, in its myriad forms, in bringing individuals together, collaborating with one another, as she put it, “in each other’s dreams.”

The symposium featured presentations by Chuck Brown, creator of Image Comics’ On the Stump and co-creator of the Eisner Award winning Image Comics’ series Bitter Root; Dr. Keri Leigh Merritt, historian, writer, and activist and author of the multiple award-winning Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South; Marie Cochran, founding curator of the Affrilachian Artist Project and the 2020/2021 Lehman Brady Visiting Professor with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill; and Amisho Baraka, hip-hop artist and cofounder of Forth District and The And Campaign.

Smith knew the power of art in bringing about change and fostering within us empathy for those who inhabit the world alongside us. In Now is the Time (1955), she highlights the importance of art in society: “To grow good human beings is the people’s business: a job that must be done in the home, at church, in the school; goodness seeps into a child from the books he reads, the art he loves, his play, his talk, his dreams and ideals, his awareness of others and their needs.” Smith saw the artist and the audience in a collaborative network around the artistic product, speaking to one another about their shared humanity.

Watch the symposium on our website at www2.piedmont.edu/lilliansmith-resources

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nnie Laurie Peeler (née Smith) was one of Lillian Smith’s older sisters. She taught for 34 years at the State Teachers College, which would later become part of Memphis State University.

She would return to Laurel Falls Camp during the summers and help with the operations.

At the State Teachers College, Annie Laurie served as a faculty member, teaching sixth-grade students and also training future educators. In a 1963 article

by Reese Wells, Annie Laurie talked about her philosophy of education, telling Wells that students learn a lot from their experiences: “The things that they remember are not always in books.” One former student talked about gaining an interest in “high fidelity music” because Annie Laurie had students place their heads on their desks to relax while listening to music.

In the archives, we have a student’s composition book from the 1948-49 school year. Entitled “Making a Happy Life,” the book consists of what appear to be writing prompts. Instead of writing sentences and paragraphs in reaction to the prompt, the student drew pictures, detailing the action that leads to happiness. For the prompt “Kindness should not just include people but also animals,” the student drew two pictures; one where a person kicks a dog and one where the person interacts with the dog in a positive manner, petting it and offering it a bone.

Through the student’s composition book, we get some insight into Annie Laurie’s pedagogy, and what we get mirrors what educators such as Tim Smyth do in their classrooms today.

Lillian E. Smith Center Residency Awards

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ince its inception, the LES Center has served as a space for artists, writers, scientists, students, and more to continue the legacy of Lillian Smith through their work. To facilitate them, the LES Center offers four residency awards every year: • • • •

Writer-in-Service Award McClure-Scalin Visual Artist Award Gabriele Stauf Award Emily Pierce Graduate Award

Lillian E. Smith

Writer-In-Service Award

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ustin Rudder is the 2021 recipient of the Lillian E. Smith Writer-in-Service Award. He is a Digital Asset Archivist at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, as well as the founder and director of the Digital Grassroots heritage project.

Rudder’s project, Black Towns in Alabama, works to counter the ways that “many white Southern communities refuse public acknowledgment of their local Black history.”

All awards provide individuals with a twoweek stay at the center so that they can dedicate time and energy to their projects. A small honorarium is also provided with two of the awards—the Writer-in-Service Award and the Emily Pierce Graduate Award. The Writer-inService Award also provides a travel allowance.

Our current fundraising priority is to shore up each of these funds so that we can provide an honorarium and travel allowance with each award.

Additionally, we would like to identify donors interested in endowing each of the four awards so they can be offered in perpetuity. If you are interested in contributing to one or more of the residency award funds or, if you would like to discuss funding a permanent endowment, please contact Dr. Matthew Teutsch at the LES Center.

On the project, Rudder says, “Scholars have brought visibility to the stories of slavery and civil rights movements on the national, state, and regional levels over the last few decades.

However, the joys and sorrows of daily African American life as well as how Black citizens identify the world around them are regularly overlooked.

Some towns have taken steps to publicize the history of Black neighborhoods through social media as well as local library and museum websites. However, many towns respond that there are no Black communities or authorities on Black history in the area, and reason that their towns were integrated so any individual Black communities would be difficult to map.”

This award is sponsored annually by a generous gift by Sue Ellen Lovejoy, a member of the LES Center Advisory Board. This award provides an opportunity for those writers who, like Lillian E. Smith, recognize “the power of the arts to transform the lives of all human beings.”

Recipients receive an honorarium, travel allowance, and a two-week residency at the Center.

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examines racial identity construction in childhood with a particular focus on white children; the early racialized memories/experiences of white teacher candidates and the possible impact those might have on their practice; and the development of anti-racist pedagogies for elementary aged children through culturally relevant/sustaining early literacy practices.

Gabriele Stauf Residency Award

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r. Erin Miller is the 2021 recipient of the Gabriele Stauf Residency Award. Miller is an Associate Professor in The Reading and Elementary Education Department in the Cato College of Education at The University of North Carolina Charlotte. Miller’s research

On receiving the award, Miller said, “I am grateful for the support of the folks from the Lillian E. Smith Center of Piedmont University. This fellowship will provide much needed time to do writing about pedagogy over the summer in the beautiful, serene North Georgia foothills” The Gabriele Stauf Residency Award provides a complimentary two-week retreat at the Center for an educator who is working on a project that would benefit from a residency. Gabriele Stauf, Professor Emerita of English at Georgia Southwestern State University, sponsors this annual award because she understands the value of time and solitude required for creative pursuits.

T McClure-Scanlin Visual Artist Residency Award 6

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om Hansell is the recipient of the 2021 McClure-Scanlin Visual Artist Residency Award. Hansell is a filmmaker, educator, and author who explores relationships between energy, community, and nature. Hansell plans to use his residency at the Lillian Smith Center to focus on the Ancient New project, a series of short films, art installations, and public events that will reveal invisible ties between mountain headwaters communities and urban communities downstream. Working across geographic, racial, and political boundaries, these events will bring people together to celebrate the river and to ensure equal access to fresh water.

On receiving the award, Hansell said, “I am truly honored to be awarded the McClureScanlin residency at the Lillian E. Smith Center.

During my time there, I plan to create work

that honors Lillian Smith’s commitment to the environment, education, and justice.”

You can see some of his work on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/tomhansell The McClure-Scanlin Award is made possible through a generous gift to Piedmont University

from Tommye Scanlin and her husband, Thomas. Tommye is a member of the LES Center Advisory Board and a long-time LES Center Fellow. The award recipient is selected in consultation with faculty members of the Piedmont Department of Art and receives a complimentary two-week residency at the Center.

been read on NPR’s This American Life. She holds a BA in Literature from Yale, an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, and will soon complete a PhD in English and Women’s Studies at the University of Georgia. Amy is also a founding editor of 7x7.la, a literary journal devoted to collaborations between writers and visual artists.

Residency Award

She is currently working on a graphic memoir about her family history and its intersections with American history, inspired by reading her greatgrandmother’s unpublished memoir which details her upbringing “as a settler on the the Homestead Act land in Oklahoma.” According to Bonnaffons, “The Perimeter of Eden is . . . about more than just myself and my family: it’s about my process of working through the question of how to live ethically, with concern for the future, as a white American woman amid late-stage capitalism.”

my Bonnaffons is the recipient of the 2021 Emily Pierce Graduate Student Residency Award. She is the author of the story collection The Wrong Haven and the novel The Regrets. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere, and has

Named after one of the first Lillian E. Smith Scholars, the Emily Pierce Graduate Residency Award provides the opportunity for graduate students whose work moves us towards a more equitable society. It includes a complimentary twoweek retreat at the Center and an honorarium.

Emily Pierce Graduate Student

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