ATHENS,
GA -- Pulitzer-prize winner Hank Klibanoff will be the featured speaker Sept. 25 at
the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Lillian Smith Book
Awards.
This
celebration will commemorate a half-century tradition, currently a
collaboration of the Southern Regional Council, the University of Georgia
Libraries, Piedmont college, and the Georgia Center for the Book, of
recognizing authors whose books represent outstanding achievements
demonstrating through high literary merit and moral vision an honest
representation of the South, its people, its problems, and its promise.
The
program, open free to the public, begins at 6:30 p.m. at the National Center
for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. A reception will follow.
Klibanoff
will speak on “Courage, Cowardice and, Now, Contrition,” which will draw on his
book, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening
of a Nation; the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases class Klibanoff leads at
Emory University; and the podcast, Buried Truths, which he hosts and WABE
produces.
“The
writings of Lillian Smith are as relevant today as they were more than 50 years
ago when she was a surprising and surprisingly vocal champion of social justice
and civil rights,” said Charles Johnson, chair of the Southern Regional
Council, which began the annual book awards in 1968. “We are excited to have
Mr. Klibanoff join us in this observance as his work ably continues ‘Miss
Lil’s’ efforts to shine a light on injustice.”
The
Race Beat won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in
History and tells “the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of
how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see,
hear, and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial
segregation in the South--and the brutality used to enforce it.
“It
is the story of how the nation's press, after decades of ignoring the problem,
came to recognize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turn it into
the most significant domestic news event of the 20th century,” according to the
Pulitzer organization webpage.
Klibanoff
is currently a professor in the creative writing/non-fiction program at Emory
University. He directs the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory
(coldcases.emory.edu) and is the creator and narrator of Buried Truths, a
narrative history podcast available on https://apple.co/2HqAkH3.
“We
can learn, interpret and give life — and historical context and meaning — to
their important stories. The stories of who they were are the stories of who we
are,” Klibanoff said of the Cold Cases Project.
“Buried
Truths” is a six-episode podcast allowing viewers to experience “what
Klibanoff’s students have — the chance to revisit Georgia’s sordid racial and
judicial past and see all of the white men and women in the pages of history
who sat on the sidelines, watching it all happen and doing nothing.
“Who
were we as a people that we allowed this to happen? That’s the question we
always have to ask ourselves,” says Klibanoff. “That’s always worth asking. Can
I be a bystander on this, or do I need to engage?”
WRITER/CONTACT:
Jean Cleveland, jclevela@uga.edu, 706.542.8079
