
          The 1987 Lillian_Smith Book Awards
          By Davis, ThadiousThadious Davis
          Vol. 9, No. 5, 1987, pp. 33-34, 36
          
          When Georgia author Lillian_Smith died in 1966, the Southern
Regional Council established an award not only to honor her work and
her memory, but also to foster in others the spirit of her courageous
struggle for human rights in the South. Smith's first novel,
Strange Fruit (1944), explored the human tragedy
resulting from racial segregation. That novel catapulted her to fame
as a white Southerner with a social consciousness who spoke out
against a major problem in her native region. With the publication of
Killers of the Dream (1949), she provided both an
intensive psychological analysis of the effects of segregation on
whites and blacks and an uncompromising call for an end to a
debilitating system. Her visionary writing was accompanied by social
and political activism. Whether functioning with national
organizations, local groups, or personal friends, Smith committed her
energy to persuading others to work for social justice and racial
equality under the law.
          The Lillian_Smith Book Awards have been presented since 1967 in
recognition of outstanding writing concerned with the Southern
region. Recipents have not been restricted to Southerners,
but they have been expected to contribute understanding of social
issues and human problems affecting Southerners and the South. In
sponsoring the awards, the Southern_Regional_Council recognizes those
writers who have translated Smith's "struggle into terms
appropriate to our own lives" today, as SRC President Paul
M. Gaston puts it. Gaston points out that the intent is "honor the
authors not so much for their own sakes. . . but so that others will,
because of the award, learn about and read their books."
          This year the Lillian_Smith Book Awards have been 

jointly awarded
in the non-fiction category to Thomas L. Johnson and Phillip C. Dunn
for A True Likeness: The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts,
1920-1936 and to Pauli Murray, posthumously, for Song
in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage. The 1987 Smith
Award in the fiction category is to Mary Hood for the collection of
short stories And Venus Is Blue.
          A TRUE LIKENESS IS A COLLECTION of the photographs
of Richard Samuel Roberts, a black Floridian who in 1920 moved to
Columbia, S. C., where he operated a photography business in the black
commercial district until his death in 1936. Selected from some three
thousand extant glass plates, Roberts's photographs document the lives
of blacks in Columbia and the surrounding area. They make a unique
contribution to the historical record of black communities in the
urban South during the period between the world wars. Roberts provided
a rare glimpse into the activities and culture of emergent
middle-class towns people in the early decades of the modern South. He
photographed people and the artifacts of their material culture:
studio backdrops, city streets, public buildings and private homes;
weddings, christenings and wakes; family groups, school children and
individual portraits; prominent citizens, day laborers and community
leaders.
          Anthony Paul Dunbar, a member of the awards committee, observed
that "Not only are the pictures artistically and technically
excellent but they record a life that very few people knew existed. If
you read the captions to the photographs you will see the civil_rights
movement emerging."
          Published by two regional houses, Algonquin Press of Chapel_Hill,
N.C., and Bruccoli Clark of Columbia, S.C., A True
Likeness is the result of a collaboration between Roberts's
surviving children (Wilhelmina Roberts Wynn, Gerald E., Beverly N. and
Cornelius C. Roberts) and Phillip C. Dunn, an art professor at the
University of South_Carolina specializing in photography.
          With the support and assistance of the South Caroliniana Library's
field archival program, Dunn cleaned and restored the glass negative
plates, developed contact prints from which he selected "the most
powerful and significant," and made exhibit-quality prints. Dunn and
his co-editor Thomas L. Johnson state that the true value of Roberts's
work lies not merely in its "intrinsic aesthetic appeal as a
photography collection of undeniable technical finesse and formal
beauty," but in "it's revelation--its true representation--of a
lost world of a people whose identity was lost not only upon the white
world but also upon itself." Essentially, the recovered
photographs of Richard Samuel Roberts attest to the vitality of a
Southern black_community and deposit a cultural legacy for the
descendants of that community as well as for those of a white
community that never knew of its existence. His pictures recapture for
all an aspect of Southern life rarely seen by outsiders and nearly
forgotten by insiders; in the process, they further an understanding
of the multicultural South.
          PAULI MURRAY'S Song in a Weary Throat, published by
Harper and Row, is memoir of self and society by a 

woman who insisted
on her full humanity as a person of color and as a female. It recounts
with unusual clarity, passion, and compassion Murray's journey toward
achievement in the face of racial and sexual discrimination. Murray
chose her title from a verse in her book of poetry, Dark Testament and
Other Poems: "Hope is a song in a weary throat." Hope is the
keynote that sustained her through long years of commitment to civil
rights and moral justice. Robert J. Norrell, chairman of the awards
committee, termed it a "powerful statement of one person's
challenge to a world that put a lot of obstacles before her but that
she would not let daunt her."
          Murray chronicles her life as "An American Pilgrimage" which took
her from early childhood in Baltimore to formative years in the black
South of Durham, N.C. She presents her youthful ambitions and dreams
along with the nearly devastating effects of discriminatory practices
upon them. She recounts her efforts to become a lawyer during a period
when both her race and sex limited her opportunities for professional
education. The University of North_Carolina would not admit her
because of her race; Harvard University would not admit her because of
her sex.
          Murray not only became a civil_rights attorney and legal scholar,
but she also was a founding member of the National Organization for
Women. From the 1930s through the 1980s, she remained a tireless
teacher-activist for the advancement of blacks and women, a cause that
she understood as necessary for the advancement of all Americans. In
1973, she entered the seminary and in 1977 became the first black
woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. She ends her pilgrimage with
an account of the celebration of her first Holy Eucharist, a communion
service at the Episcopal Chapel of the Cross in Chapel_Hill, N.C.,
where her white and black ancestors had worshipped for generations and
where she herself felt all the strands of her life as a poet, lawyer,
teacher, friend, and minister come together in "the spirit of love
and reconcilation drawing us all toward the goal of human
wholeness." Murray died in 1985 while completing Song in a
Weary Throat; the book is a fitting tribute to her quest for
wholeness--for herself and all Americans.
          MARY HOOD'S And Venus is Blue is a collection of
seven stories and title novella. Published by Ticknor and Fields, the
work is about white Southerners in the contemporary world of change
and transition. In these accomplished stories of physical and
psychological survival, Hood shatters stereotypical views of the
South. Though incorporating details of cultural reality not restricted
to the South (Harlequin books, Datsun cars, etc.), she treats rural
people with the expansive perception of one who recognizes the quiet
valor of their determination to remain fully human in dehumanizing
times. One female character envisions the world as
"untrammeling. . . widening in ripples about her," and sees herself as
"the stone at the center that sets things moving."
          Without condescension or caricature, Hood captures the often hidden
meaning of ordinary life, distills it with compassion, and renders it
for others to share. Her special gift is for articulating the often
unspoken conflicts of the heart among the working-class poor. A rural
family man, for instance, struggles against the limits of his
existence:
          There was a little air stirring. The pines on tomorrow's cutting
were tall against the first stars. Up toward Hammermill the sky was
lighter. Cheney could see, after his eyes got sharper, the glint of
the mayonnaise jar he had brought his tea in for lunch....He picked it
up. the lid was missing. Cheney tossed it--it hit on something and
smashed I'm so goddamn tired of being poor, he said.
          His voice may not be eloquent, but the scene incompasses with
accuracy and authority the contrast between the potential of the
natural world and the reality of the unending human effort to create
an inhabitable space within that world.
          Hood lives in Georgia, whose northern foothills and mountain areas
provide settings for her stories. Her fiction has evoked, for some
readers, comparisons with Flannery O'Connor, another Georgian and
master of the short story form. However, according to awards committee
member Mary Frances Deriner, Hood's people and landscapes are neither
O'Connoresque nor grotesque, but are instead the "essence of the
modern South."
          Race and Justice
          Of the 5,710 judges and prosectors who play a role in deciding who
will be executed in the United_States, 178 (3.1 percent) are black.
          
            Thadious Davis teaches at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel_Hill and was a member of the committee which
selected this year's Lillian_Smith prize winners. Other committee
members were Robert J. Norrell, Center for the Study of Southern
History and Culture, University of Alabama; Mary Frances Derfner,
Charleston, S.C.; and Anthony P. Dunbar, New_Orleans, La. In making
its selections, the committee reviewed approximately forty strong
entries in fiction, history, and autobiography! memoir published
between July 1, 1986, and June 30, 1987.
          
        
