88 Books Nominated for 2024 Lillian Smith Book Awards

The Southern Regional Council (SRC) recently announced that eighty-eight books have been nominated for the Lillian Smith Book Awards for 2024 to be presented at the Georgia Center for the Book on October 3, 2024.

SRC was 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. Piedmont College, which operates the Lillian Smith Center, became a partner in 2015. 

The award recipients for 2023 were Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Democracy by Tomiko Brown Nagin and Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America by Linda Villarosa. 

The 2024 nominated books are:

Title Author American Gun Cameron McWhirter  and Zusha Elinson American Ramble Neil King American Whitelash Wesley Lowery America's Black Capital Jeffrey Ogbar An Inconvenient Cop Edwin Raymond Arguing for a Better World Arianne Shahvisi Banyan Moon Thao Thai Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights Dylan C. Penningroth Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family Rachel Jamison Webster Black and Queer on Campus Michael P. Jefferies Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis Maria Smilios Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood, and Myth Deborah DEEP Moulton Black on Black Daniel Black Blue Hour: A Novel Tiffany Clarke Harrison Bone Doctor's Concerto Dr. Alvin Crawford Bruised Magnolias: New South, Old Politics Leila Ryland Swain Built From the Fire Victor Luckerson Campus to Counter: Civil Rights Activism in Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, 1960-1963 Brian Suttell Charleston Susan Crawford Coach Prime Jean-Jacques Taylor Cogitatio: Shadow in the Wind McKinley Aspen Cost of Free Land Rebecca Clarren Coyote's Swing: A Memoir and Critique of Mental Hygiene in Native America David Edward Walker Dark Days: Fugitive Essays Roger Reeves Dear Department Chair: Letters from Black Women Leaders to the Next Generation Stephanie Y Evans, S tephanie Shonekan,  Stephanie G Adams Death of a Jaybird Jodi M Savage Decent People De'Shawn Charles Winslow Dirt Don't Burn: A Black Community's Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation Larry Roeder  & Barry Harrelson Education of Kendrick Perkins Kendrick Perkins  with Seth Rogoff Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause: Confessions of a Southern Church Christopher Alan Graham False Starts Casey Stockstill Fever in the Heartland Timothy Egan Fire on the Levee Jared Fishman  and Joseph Hooper Food, Power, Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement Bobby J Smith II Happiness Falls Angie Kim He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters Schuyler Bailar Hijab Butch Blues Lamya H Homeward Angela Jackson-Brown Hope and Healing: Black Colleges and the Future of American Democracy John Silvanus Wilson Horse Barbie Geena Rocero I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction Kidada E. Williams Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism Leigh Goodmark In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning Grace Elizabeth Hale Indigenous DC: Native Peoples and the Nation's Capital Dr Elizabeth Rule Indigo Field Marjorie Hudson Injustice of Place Kathryn J. Edin,  H. Luke Shaefer,  Timothy J. Nelson Killing Closet VL Brunskill King: A Life Jonathan Eig Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr Leta McCollough Seletzky Learning from Birmingham: A Journey into History and Home Julie Buckner Armstrong "Let Us Go Free": Slavery and Jesuit Universities in America C Walker Gollar Life and Times of Hannah Crafts Gregg Hecimovich Life on Other Planets Aomawa Shields Majority Elizabeth L Silver Middle Daughter Chika Unigwe More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew John Blake Most Tolerant Little Town Rachel Louise Martin Necessary Trouble Drew Gilpin Faust Ordinary Notes Christina Sharpe Our Best Intentions Vibhuti Jain Our Migrant Souls Hector Tobar Path to Grace: Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement Ethel Morgan Smith Peach Seed Anita Gail Jones Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis Sara Marcus Promise Rachel Eliza Griffiths Say Anarcha JC Hallman Saying It Loud Mark Whitaker Shielded Joanna Schwartz Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi (2024) John H. Cable Stayed on Freedom Dan Berger Stealing Margaret Verble Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs: A Memoir of Uyghur Exile, Hope, and Survival Gulchehra Hoja Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) Sly Stone  with Ben Greenman;  Forward by Questlove Those We Thought We Knew David Joy To Speak a Defiant Word (2022) Pauli Murray Unfortunates JK Chuwku Unloose My Heart: A Personal Reckoning with the Twisted Roots of by Southern Family Tree Marcia Edwina  Herman-Giddens Unmasking the Klansman Dan T Cater Up Home Ruth J. Simmons
War as I Saw It: In Rhodesia, Now Zimbabwe, Through the Eyes of a Black Boy George Makonese Matuvi We Were Once a Family Roxanna Asgarian What Napoleon Could Not Do DK Nnuro Who Gets Believed?: When the Truth Isn't Enough Dina Nayeri Witness Jamel Brinkley Women of NOW Katherine Turk Wounded World Chad L. Williams Wreck Cassandra Jackson Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter Patricia Foster