
          "Winners of Lillian_Smith Award"
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 6, No. 2, 1984, p. 21
          
          1968 George B. Tindall, The Emergence of the New
South
          1968 Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro
          1970 Paul M. Gaston, The New South Creed
          1971
Tony Dunbar, Our Land, Too
          1972 Robert Coles,
Children of Crisis, Vols. II and III
          1973 Harold
Martin, Ralph McGill, Reporter Alice Walker, Revolutionary
Petunias and other Poems
          1974 C. Vann Woodward,
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 3d rev'd ed.
Albert Murray, Train Whistle Guitar
          1976
James Loewen and Charles Sallis, Mississippi: Conflict and
ChangeReynolds Price, The Surface of
Earth
          1977 Richard Kluger, Simple
JusticeAlex Haley, Roots
          1978 Will
Campbell, Brother to a DragonflyGarrett Epps,
The Shad Treatment
          1979 Marion Wright,
Human Rights OdysseyErnest J. Gaines, In My
Father's House
          1980 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt
Against ChivalryCormac McCarthy,
Suttree
          1981 John Gaventa, Power and
Powerlessness; Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian
ValleyPat Conroy, The Lords of
Discipline
          1982 Harry Ashmore, Hearts and Minds:
A History of Racism from Roosevelt to Reagan
          1983 John
Ehle, The Winter PeopleFred Hobson,
South-Watching: Selected Essays by Gerald W. Johnson
Roy Hoffman, Almost Family
          
            Critical Attitudes
          
          If the work of building the new South is to go forward to best
advantage, the South must develop its own critics. They can criticize
most effectively, in the first place because they have the Southern
viewpoint, and can therefore be understood, and in the second place
because they have the most reliable information, and therefore can
most frequently spot the joints in Southern armor. For the same
reasons they can best interpret the South to the rest of the
nation.
          But if they are to affect either the South or the outside world,
they must be critics, not press-agents Too much has been said of the
South's need for "sympathetic" criticism. This demand has resulted in
some so-called criticism that is sympathetic, not with the South, but
with the South's least admirable traits, with bigotry, intolerance,
superstition and prejudice. What the South needs is criticism that is
ruthless toward those things--bitter towards them, furiously against
them--and sympathetic only with its idealism, with its loyalty, with
its courage and its inflexible determination. Such criticism will not
be popular, for it is not in human nature to hold in warm affection
the stern idealist who relentlessly exposes one's follies and
frailties and continually appeals to one's better nature. But it will
be respected and in the end admired. And above all, it will be
effective.
Gerald W. Johnson, 1924.
        
