2017 Lillian Smith Book Award Winners Announced

Two exceptional books will be recognized with this year's Lillian Smith Book Awards at a ceremony during the Decatur Book Festival on Sunday, September 3rd.

The Southern Regional Council established the Lillian Smith Book Awards shortly after Lillian Smith's death in 1966. Internationally acclaimed as author of the controversial novel, Strange Fruit (1944), Lillian Smith was the most liberal and outspoken of mainstream, mid-20th century Southern writers on issues of social and racial injustice. Smith’s family donated the collection of her letters and manuscripts to the University of Georgia 's Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library and, in 2004, the UGA Libraries joined the SRC as a partner in administering the awards. The awards are now presented as a partnership between the Southern Regional Council, the University of Georgia Libraries, Piedmont College (which operates the Lillian Smith Center), and the Georgia Center for the Book (which hosts the Decatur Book Festival).

The 2017 Award Recipients are:

The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murry, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice

By Patricia Bell-Scott

Patricia Bell-Scott’s groundbreaking biography, The Firebrand and the First Lady—two decades in the works—tells the story of how a brilliant writer-turned-activist, who was the granddaughter of a mulatto slave, and the first lady of the United States, whose ancestry gave her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, forged an enduring friendship that changed each of their lives, enriched the conversation about race, and added vital fuel to the movement for human rights in America.

Pauli Murray first saw Eleanor Roosevelt in 1933, at the height of the Depression, at a government-sponsored, two-hundred-acre camp for unemployed women where Murray was living, something the first lady had pushed her husband to set up in her effort to do what she could for working women and the poor. The first lady appeared one day unannounced, behind the wheel of her car, her secretary and a man Murray presumed to be a Secret Service agent as passengers. To Murray, then aged twenty-three, Roosevelt’s self-assurance was a symbol of women’s independence, a symbol that endured throughout Murray’s life.

Five years later, Murray wrote a letter to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt protesting racial segregation in the South. Murray’s letter was prompted by a speech the president had given at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, praising the school for its commitment to social progress. Pauli Murray had applied for and would be denied admission to UNC graduate school because of her race.

She wrote in her letter of 1938:

“Does it mean that Negro students in the South will be allowed to sit down with white students and study a problem which is fundamental and mutual to both groups? Does it mean that the University of North Carolina is ready to open its doors to Negro students … ? Or does it mean, that everything you said has no meaning for us as Negroes, that again we are to be set aside and passed over … ?”

The president’s staff forwarded the letter to the federal Office of Education. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote back to Murray: “I have read the copy of the letter you sent me and I understand perfectly, but great changes come slowly … The South is changing, but don’t push too fast.”

So began a friendship between Pauli Murray (poet, intellectual rebel, principal strategist in the fight to preserve Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, cofounder of the National Organization for Women, and the first African American female Episcopal priest) and Eleanor Roosevelt (first lady of the United States, later first chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women) that would last for a quarter of a century.

It was a decades-long friendship — tender, moving, prodding, inspiring — sustained primarily through correspondence and characterized by brutal honesty, mutual admiration, and respect, revealing the generational and political differences each had to overcome in order to support each other’s growth as the transformative leaders for which they would be later known.

Of the two extraordinary women, one was at the center of world power; the other, an outsider ostracized by multiple discriminations, fighting with heart, soul, and intellect to push the world forward (she did!) and to become the figure for change she knew she was meant to be; each alike in many ways: losing both parents as children, being reared by elderly kin; each a devoted Episcopalian with an abiding compassion for the helpless; each possessed of boundless energy and fortitude yet susceptible to low spirits and anxiety; each in a battle against shyness, learning to be outspoken; each at her best when engaged in meaningful, important work. And each in her own society sidelined as a woman, and determined to up-end the centuries-old social constriction.

Drawing on letters, journals, published and unpublished documents, and interviews, Patricia Bell-Scott, professor emerita of women’s studies and human development and family science at the University of Georgia, presents the first close-up portrait of this evolving friendship and how it was sustained over time, what each gave to the other, and how their friendship changed the cause of American social justice.

Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s

By Risa Goluboff

In 1950s America, it was remarkably easy for police to arrest almost anyone for almost any reason. The criminal justice system—and especially the age-old law of vagrancy—played a key role not only in maintaining safety and order but also in enforcing conventional standards of morality and propriety. Vagrancy laws were so broad and flexible that they made it possible for the police to arrest anyone out of place: Beats and hippies; Communists and Vietnam War protestors; racial minorities and civil rights activists; gays, single women, and prostitutes. As hundreds of these “vagrants” and their lawyers claimed that vagrancy laws were unconstitutional, the laws became a flashpoint for debates about radically different visions of order and freedom.  By the end of the 1960s, vagrancy laws were discredited and American society was fundamentally transformed.

In Vagrant Nation, Risa Goluboff reads the history of the entire era through the lens of vagrancy laws and shows how constitutional challenges to them helped constitute the multiple movements that made “the 1960s.” As Goluboff links the human stories of those arrested to the great controversies of the time, she powerfully demonstrates how ordinary people, with the help of lawyers and judges, can change the meaning of the Constitution.  Since the downfall of vagrancy laws in 1972, battles over what, if anything, should replace them, like battles over the legacy of the Sixties transformations themselves, are far from over.

Praise for Vagrant Nation:

“Vagrant Nation is an extraordinary accomplishment, one of the best books of constitutional history ever written. Using vagrancy law as her launching pad, Goluboff ties together and sheds light upon all of the major social reform movements of the 1960s and the constitutional law that arose around them-civil rights, gay rights, criminal procedure rights, the free speech rights of communists and Vietnam War protestors, the expressive rights of hippies and beatniks, and the sexual revolution. In the process, Goluboff teaches us how constitutional law gets made.” –Michael J. Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor, Harvard Law School

“Vagrant Nation is a fascinating account of how constitutional change occurs when old laws and new social understandings collide.” –Linda Greenhouse, Lecturer, Yale Law School

“Vagrant Nation tells how police used vagrancy laws as all-purpose weapons to stifle the movements defining the Sixties, and how a movement of movements persuaded the Supreme Court to eradicate those laws and ban jailing people simply because they were different-black, poor, gay, hippie, or antiwar. It’s a brilliant account of how a forgotten campaign to reform the law made America a more tolerant and much better country.” –Lincoln Caplan, Truman Capote Visiting Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School

“A masterful exploration of constitutional change! Goluboff presents a fascinating account of how dragnet criminal laws, once considered desirable protection against undesirables, clashed with emerging visions of a more inclusive society.” –Susan Herman, President, American Civil Liberties Union

The 2016 winners of the Lillian Smith Book Awards were Cheryl Knott, a professor in the School of Information, University of Arizona, and author of Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow; and Minion KC Morrison, professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Delaware, and author of Aaron Henry of Mississippi: Inside Agitator.

What Jeff Sessions will Learn from a Truly Honest Examination of University Admissions Policies

Affirmative Action and Angry White Men

By Leland Ware

Multiple media outlets report that the Trump administration is preparing to investigate university admissions programs that allegedly discriminate against white applicants. It is highly unlikely that the Justice Department would be able to find any such programs. The Supreme Court has affirmed the validity of affirmative action in every case that has come before it. In the first case, Board of Regents v. Bakke, the Supreme Court approved the constitutional validity of affirmative action with the caveat that numerical quotas could not be used to promote student body diversity.

Decades later in Grutter v. Bollinger the Supreme Court affirmed the validity of affirmative action admissions at the University of Michigan’s law school. In three more recent cases involving the University of Texas, the Court reaffirmed the validity of policies in which race was considered to enhance student body diversity. The bottom line is that race can be one among several considerations when minorities are underrepresented in a university’s student body.

The Supreme Court has made clear in case after case that race can be a factor, but it cannot be the predominant or motivating factor. The Justice Department is not likely to find any schools in which race is the primary factor in admissions decisions. There have been too many cases, too many academic journal articles, and too many professional conferences to assume colleges and universities do not know the rules.

Individuals involved in the process know how affirmative action works; what is permitted and what is not.  Most schools use a “holistic” approach to admissions, which involves a “full file” review of individual applications. Admissions decisions are not a mechanical, by-the-numbers process.  That approach was struck down in Gratz v. Bollinger.  Admissions Committees consider a number of factors including standardized test scores, grade point averages and academic recommendations. There are several other factors that come into play. These include, among other considerations, musical talent, athletic ability, legacies and the sons and daughters of wealthy donors.

The widely held belief that grades and test scores are the only considerations is not accurate.  Most schools have a set of “automatic admits” for the students with the strongest academic records. At the other end are automatic denials for students with the weakest records. The vast majority of the students fall into the middle range. Their academic records indicate that they can succeed as students. The question is who among them should be selected for the limited number of seats that are available. That is where the softer, more subjective considerations come into play. 

The irony of the claims of “reverse discrimination” is that no individual applicant can prove that he or she would have been admitted but for minority students who were admitted with lower grades and test scores. The white students who sued Michigan and Texas found there were other white applicants who were admitted with lower grades and test scores than theirs.  Numbers do not tell me entire story. This is what Attorney General Sessions will learn when he moves beyond his unfounded assumptions. Sessions’ plans are merely pandering to those in Trump’s base. These are whites who believe that people like them have been passed over for a position or promotion in favor of a less-qualified minority. This is the sort of racial resentment that propelled Trump’s election.  

Seventy years ago the Civil Rights Act of 1957 established the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. It has the responsibility of upholding the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly those who are most vulnerable. Sessions’ plan to subvert the mission of the Civil Rights Division to appease angry white men is a sad commentary on the state of the nation.

Leland Ware is Louis L. Redding Professor of Law, University of Delaware.

Elmore Nickelberry: 53 Years on a Memphis Garbage Truck

By: Harold Michael Harvey

Elmore Nickelberry

In 1964 Elmore Nickelberry was 32 years old. He was the father of five children.  He was a hero of sorts, but no one knew it or if they did know it, they gave him no recognition for his sacrifice and service to his country.

That year, Nickelberry was discharged from the United States Army, where he had served in the early stages of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. His release was bitter sweet.

On the one hand he was released from his tour of duty as President Lyndon Johnson was preparing to escalate America's involvement in Southeast Asia. But in 1964 he was unemployed and had to find a way to support his family back home in Memphis, Tennessee without the benefit of his Army wages.

It was hard for a Black man to find work, meaningful or otherwise in Memphis in the 1960s. Nickelberry found two menial part time jobs which required him to work during the night hours. He was constantly seeking a daytime job to replace the two part time jobs he had.

Each morning after completing his shift on the second part time job, Nickelberry would look for a full time job with day hours. The Memphis Sanitation Department had full time jobs that he could work during the day. The work conditions were very filthy; it was hard labor and demeaning to the honor and dignity of a military hero.

Nevertheless, Nickelberry sought a job with the Memphis Sanitation Department as a garbage man. At the very least the job would allow him to be at home with his family at night so that he could offer his family the protection that he had rendered to Vietnamese families during his tour of duty.

The problem with this idea was that Memphis had about as many Negroes as it wanted to pay on its sanitation trucks and they were not in any hurry to hire anymore Negroes to pick up garbage in the city. The department was content with working the ones they had very hard.

For a period of  two weeks Nickelberry would leave his second job every day and go to stand in a line with other Negro men in front of the sanitation department office seeking a chance to apply for a job to pick up garbage on the side of streets made famous by W. C. Handy, Elvis and B. B. King.

With Bernard Lafayette

"It would get hot out there," Nickelberry said recently at the Peabody Hotel where he was the guest of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during their 59th National Convention.

"It was hot out there. I was tired and I got hungry, but I stood in that line. I was used to standing in formation from the Army, so it was not a big problem for me to do. Then one day a white fellow came out of the office," he said.

"Boy, you been standing out here for two weeks, aint you," the white fellow queried?"

"Yes sir, I sure have," Nickelberry said to the sanitation employee.

"Come over here, I think I can find a job for you," the staffer said.

The next day, Nickelberry was on the back of a garbage truck, jumping off to pick up garbage cans and dump them into the truck and jumping back on the truck for the next stop.

The job was as bad as it looks from the to any reasonable observer: sweaty, stinky, low paying, unsanitary; and supervised by a mean spirited white boss.

By the time that Nickleberry had spent four years on the job, Black sanitation workers had become increasingly vocal in expressing concerns about theire working conditions. It was now 1968, and the only job a Black man could get in the Sanitation Department was on the back of the truck. There were no white garbage men working with Black crews. However, all of the garbage truck drivers were white.

On February 1, 1968 two sanitation workers were accidentally killed on a sanitation truck. Their deaths led sanitation workers to organize for better working conditions.

First and foremost these workers wanted to be treated like the grown men that they were; as evidenced by the protest posters they carried during the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike: "I Am A Man,"  one placard proudly pronounced.

Nickelberry joined the picket line and endured the wrath of Mayor Henry Loeb, III, an avowed segregationist, and the sanitation department managers. When Loeb refused to negotiate with the sanitation strikers they struck, bringing a halt to garbage collection in the city.

The strike was supported by both Roy Wilkins, President of the National Association of Colored People and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

King had never become involved in a labor dispute, and many of his confidants advised him against getting involved with the sanitation strike. We know the rest of this story. King did travel to Memphis. He got in the middle of this labor war. He was gunned down outside of room 306 of the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968.

Twelve days after King was murdered, Loeb met with the sanitation workers and conceded to their core demands for better working conditions, recognition of the union and a pay raise.

Following the strike, Nickelberry went back to work on the back of the sanitation truck. Today Nickelberry is 85 years old, and every work day since the strike ended in '68, he has been on a Memphis Sanitation truck. The only difference is he now works as a driver.

"Dr. King gave his life for that strike, did he die in vain," he was asked?

"Many things have changed, but there are a lot more things that need to change," he said after a reflective moment.

"How much longer are you going to work," a reporter asked Nickelberry during the SCLC conference.

"Oh, I don't know. I may retire next year. It'll be 50 years since the strike," he said.

"You have worked this long, what are you going to do in retirement," he was asked.

"I'll probably buy me a wide brimmed hat, a pair of brogan shoes and travel out to California and do some fishing in the Pacific Ocean," he said.

Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com

On this Independence Day, a Call to Action in the Struggle for Fair Courts

Our Struggle for a Fair Justice System is Deeply Rooted in the American Struggle. Will You Join Us?

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

            - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Throughout our nation’s history, progressive change has come about in large part because activists have worked outside of official channels to create a climate that is more conducive to that change. 

Frederick Douglas once observed that “The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. . . . If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. "

This is a principle as old as the American Republic.

For example, it was in the Treaty of Paris that King George III of Great Britain formally acknowledged the existence of the United States as free, sovereign and independent, but few today would attribute this accomplishment solely to the efforts of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and the other diplomats who directly negotiated the Treaty. Rather, it generally accepted that Britain would never have even come to the negotiating table without  the “agitation” of people like Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine (which some of their contemporaries viewed as outrageous), together with the valor of those who risked their lives at Lexington, Concord, Saratoga and Yorktown (which some of their contemporaries viewed as extreme).

From another era, we have the story of Sidney Hillman, who served for a time as head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union.  After helping Franklin Roosevelt get elected in the Presidential campaign of 1932, Hillman is said to have gone to the White House and presented an ambitious agenda of progressive reforms for the new President to adopt.  President Roosevelt supposedly replied: “Sidney, I agree with everything in your proposal. It is all exactly right.  Now you just go back home and make me do it.”  Following the President’s admonition, Hillman proceeded to “make” the President embrace many of his recommendations through a campaign of what Frederick Douglas would have described as “agitation.”

Years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. is said to have had a similar conversation with President Lyndon Johnson.  In response to Dr. King’s call for voting rights legislation and for the appointment of more African American officials, President Johnson is said to have challenged Dr. King to essentially “make me do it”. It is doubtful that many of the progressive initiatives sponsored by President Johnson could have been achieved without “agitation” on the part of advocates such as Dr. King and others.

In more recent times, the Plaintiffs in Brooks v. State Board of Elections played a role similar to that of Sidney Hillman and Martin Luther King.  They saw that those who were charged with administering justice in the State of Georgia in the 1990s were not representative of the communities that they served, and not representative of the populations whose lives they influenced. With little thought for their own personal needs, they “agitated” through the courts to make Georgia’s justice system more representative, with some measure of success.

More than 30 years after the Brooks litigation, the goal of a representative judiciary remains an elusive one, and progress toward that goal appears to have stalled.  There are numerous communities throughout the State of Georgia where persons of color constitute a majority of the population, but in which there have never been any judges of color.  Meanwhile, appointing authorities too often appear to have embraced a single-minded focus on filling judicial vacancies only with people who look like they look and think like they think. We are headed toward a closed, stagnant and inbred system in which the quality of justice will inevitably decline.

How are we to reverse this disastrous trend? Only by concerted action on the part of those of us who truly care about the quality of justice.

But concerted action begins with individual resolve. It only takes one person at a time. One person can decide that, sometimes, there are some things in life that are bigger than himself/herself or his/her career.  One person can resolve not to give in to apathy, discouragement, distrust, or disappointment. One person can decide that “I’m too busy to fight for this cause” is not an acceptable answer. Each person who stands stand silent, because others are uncomfortable, risks condemning future generations to a judiciary that is not representative of their communities or responsive to their interests.

We are on the precipice of change in our country and in our State. Our populations are becoming more and more diverse and, consequently, more and more open to the reality that they can use their votes to counteract the damage that some of our politicians are doing through the appointment process. In order to take advantage of these developments, it will be necessary for each of us to be that one person,  working with others of like mind, fighting for justice, willing to commit himself or herself to speaking up and speaking out about why our courts need to be representative and accountable to the communities they serve.  This is, after all, a major element of the “more perfect union” that we all profess to seek.

This is a moral issue, for which we must all stand up in unison.

Can we count on you?

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