Forty-Two Books Nominated for 2015 Lillian Smith Book Award

The Southern Regional Council (SRC) recently announced that forty-two books have been nominated for the Lillian Smith Book Awards for 2015 to be presented in Decatur, Georgia on September 6, 2015.

SRC is an inter-racial organization founded in 1919 to combat racial injustice in the South. SRC initiated the Lillian Smith Book Awards shortly after Smith's death in 1966 to recognize authors whose writing extends the legacy of the outspoken writer, educator and social critic who challenged her fellow Southerners and all Americans on issues of social and racial justice. Since 2004 the awards have been presented by SRC in a partnership with the University of Georgia Libraries, whose Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library houses a historic collection of Lillian Smith's letters and manuscripts. The Georgia Center for the Book became a partner in 2007, when the awards ceremony first became part of the Decatur Book Festival.

The award recipients for 2014 were We Shall Not be Moved by M.J. O'Brien and In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma by Bernard Lafayette.

The 2014 nominated books are:

BOOK TITLE	AUTHOR	PUBLISHER
Strong Inside:  Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South	Andrew Maraniss	Vanderbilt University Press
The Invitation	Clifton Taulbert	NewSouth Books
Dare We Speak of Hope Searching for a Language of Life in Faith and Politics	Alan Aubrey Boesak	Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Dear White Christians:  For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation	Jennifer Harvey	Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
They Don’t Kill Because They’re Hungry, They Kill Because They’re Full	Mark Bibbins	Copper Canyon Press
The New Testament	Jericho Brown	Copper Canyon Press
Looking Back, Moving Forward:  The Southwest Georgia Freedom Struggle, 1814-2014	Lee W. Formalt	Albany Civil Rights Institute and Georgia Humanities Council
Angels Make Their Hope Here:  A Novel	Breena Clarke	Little, Brown and Company
When Paris Went Dark:  The City of Light Under German Occupation 1940-1944	Ronald C. Rosbottom	Little, Brown and Company
Death of a King:  The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year	Tavis Smiley with David Ritz	Little, Brown and Company
Factory Man:  How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring , Stayed Local – and Helped Save an American Town	Beth Macy	Little, Brown and Company
Citizen:  An American Lyric	Claudia Rankine	Graywolf Press
Counting Teeth:  A Namibian Story	Peter Midgley	Wolsak and Wynn Publishers
Pageants, Parlors, & Pretty Women:  Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South	Blain Roberts	University of North Carolina Press
The Red Atlantic:  American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000-1927	Jace Weaver	University of North Carolina Press
The Indicted South:  Public Criticism, Southern Inferiority, and the Politics of Whiteness	Angie Maxwell	University of North Carolina Press
Baptized in PCBs:  Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town	Ellen Griffith Spears	University of North Carolina Press
Captive Nation:  Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era	Dan Berger	University of North Carolina Press
A Southern Girl:  A Novel	John Warley	University of South Carolina Press
Blessed Experiences:  Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black	James E. Clyburn	University of South Carolina Press
The Spirit of an Activist:  The Life and Work of I. DeQuincey Newman	Edited by Sadye L. M. Logan	University of South Carolina Press
Tell the World You’re a Wildflower:  Stories	Jennifer Horne	University of Alabama Press
This Bright Light of Ours:  Stories from the 1965 Voting Rights Fight	Maria Gitin	University of Alabama Press
Martin Luther King Jr., Heroism, and African American Literature	Trudier Harris	University of Alabama Press
Down to the Crossroads:  Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear	Aram Goudsouzian	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
On Democracy’s Doorstep:  The Inside Story of How the Supreme Court Brought “One Person, One Vote” to the United States	J. Douglas Smith	Hill and Wang / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Angels by the River:  A Memoir	James Gustave Speth	Chelsea Green Publishing
The Fog Machine:  A Novel	Susan Follett	Lucky Sky Press
The Half Has Never Been Told:  Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism	Edward E. Baptist	Basic Books
Split	Cathy Linh Che	Alice James Books
Money Money Money Water Water Water	Jane Mead	Alice James Books
Without Mercy:  The Stunning True Story of Race, Crime, and Corruption in the Deep South	David Beasley	St. Martin’s Press
Tomlinson Hill:  The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name – One White, One Black	Chris Tomlinson	St. Martin’s Press / Thomas Dunne Books
An Unnecessary Woman:  A Novel	Rabih Alameddine	Grove Atlantic /  Grove Press
Untamed:  The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island	Will Harlan	Grove Atlantic /  Grove Press
An Untamed State	Roxane Gay	Grove Atlantic /  Black Cat
The Secret of Magic:  A Novel	Deborah Johnson	Penguin Random House
Redemption Songs:  Suing for Freedom before Dred Scott	Lea VanderVelde	Oxford University Press
Unbroken Circles for Schools:  Restoring Schools one Conflict at a Time	Ken Johnson	Southern Yellow Pine Publishing
Desire and Disaster in New Orleans:  Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory	Lynnell L. Thomas	Duke University Press
Penn Center:  A History Preserved	Orville Vernon Burton with Wilbur Cross	University of Georgia Press
Slavery and Freedom in Savannah	Leslie M. Harris and Daina Ramey Berry	University of Georgia Press