Symposium From the Archives

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

On 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.

From the Archives

Annie 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.