
          A Letter from Lillian Smith
          Edited by Gladney, RoseRose Gladney
          Vol. 9, No. 5, 1987, pp. 32-33
          
          As writer, intellectual, and social critic of 20th century Southern
and American life, Lillian Smith corresponded with a variety of
notables about subjects of major historical, political, and cultural
interest. The following selection from her correspondence with Eleanor
Roosevelt (copied from the original in the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers,
Franklin D.  Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York) provides a
glimpse of the extent, variety, and timeliness of the interests and
concerns that underlay Smith's goals and achievements as a writer. It
is from the first volume of Selected Letters of Lillian
Smith, forthcoming from the University of Georgia Press.
          Prior to the publication of her best-selling novel Strange
Fruit (1944), Smith supported herself by directing Laurel
Falls Camp for Girls near Clayton, Georgia. However, her public
writing career began in 1936 when she and her assistant camp director
Paula Snelling decided to co-edit a magazine, first called
Pseudopodia, then North Georgia Review,
and finally South Today. Designed to encourage fresh
critical views of Southern literature and culture, it quickly became
the region's most liberal literary voice, publishing and reviewing the
works of blacks and whites, males and females, and calling for an
immediate end to all forms of racial segregation.
          In 1937 the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which had since 1928 focused
primarily on developing black education, established a fellowship
program open to Southern whites as well as to blacks in order to
broaden its efforts to improve race relations. Because of the related
interests and focus of their magazine, Smith and Snelling applied for
and received joint Rosenwald Fellowships in 1939 and 1940, enabling
them to travel widely throughout the South studying economic,
political and cultural conditions.
          In 1942, '43, and '44, they were again employed by the Rosenwald
Fund to travel throughout the South in search of potential fellowship
recipients among the region's college students. Eleanor Roosevelt was
also involved with the Rosenwald Fund; indeed, her response to this
particular letter indicated that she would be unable to meet Smith
because she would be "in Hampton attending a Rosenwald meeting."
          As the following account indicates, Smith's impressions of Southern
college students and her assessment of major issues facing the region
in 1942 sound eerily familiar some forty-five years later. Likewise,
as in Smith's correspondence as a whole, this letter reveals the mind
and spirit of a woman keenly observant of the world around her,
especially conscious of the importance of all aspects of human
relationships, and clearly aware of her role in shaping and
interpreting the age in which she lived.
          April 7, 1942
          Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt,
          The White
House,
          Washington, D.C.
          My dear Mrs. Roosevelt:
          Paula Snelling and I have this past week completed a trip through
the South during which we have interviewed for the Rosenwald Fund the
young Negro and White college seniors who have applied for Rosenwald
scholarship-aid grants.
          We have found these interviews profoundly stirring and want in some
way, to share our findings with you. Some of our talks with the young
Negroes were very disturbing, some most heartening, nearly all sincere
and realistic. We found in the young whites--though there were
exceptions--a shocking ignorance of their South, a concern primarily
with their personal affairs, a restlessness about the future, 

little
awareness of the international picture and our place in it. We found
few educated whites who had ever met an educated Negro; few young
Negroes who had met a racially unprejudiced white. We interviewed only
the "cream" of the senior classes in 22 colleges.
          Throughout the South, as we expected, we found many liberals giving
up their liberalism "for the duration." Especially did this seem to be
true of those who are labeled "friends of the Negro." The Negroes feel
this too and are depressed and disheartened by the knowledge that many
of their white friends disappear when crises arise.
          Down in the Delta we found reaction rising like a great
wave. Cotton is 26 cents in the Delta now and the general attitude
among the planters is that neither Mr. Roosevelt nor God Himself is
going to keep them from making some money while the making is
good. There is a childish desperation in their attitude that would be
awfully funny were they not so powerful. (Among my various activities
is that of being a director of a summer camp for little rich
girls. Some of these planters send their children to me in spite of my
"liberalism." But this spring I find them on the defensive, very
antagonistic to all liberal movements, growing suspicious of what I am
teaching their children in my camp; so suspicious and antagonistic
that I dared not tell them that I was on Rosenwald Fund business for
their hospitality would not have been equal to such a strain being put
upon it!)
          There is something heartbreakingly valiant about the young of the
Negro race, so eager to prove to white America their willingness to
die for a country which has given them only the scraps from the white
folks' democracy. There is resentment also; a quiet, strong
resentment, running like a deep stream through their minds and hearts;
something I think few white Americans are aware of, or want to
face.
          I shall be in Washington Friday, April 10th, at the Hay Adams
House. I shall call Miss Thompson Friday morning and shall be honored
to talk with you if you wish me to do so. I know you are a very busy
person and I do not want to burden you further by a talk with me
unless you think it will be useful to you to have in more detail this
recent skimming of southern opinion.
          Should you let me talk with you I would like to discuss with you
also the possibilities for making this new venture of the Rosenwald
Fund a more creative and vital youth project. Some of us think--and
Dr. Embree shares this opinion--that the project should be more than a
mere selection of young whites and blacks for graduate study. Could
they feel themselves a part of some big and creative effort, something
that had to do directly with their South, that had adventure in it, it
would become a significant experience for them, rather than merely one
more year of university study. They need somehow to be brought
together, to have actual experience with each other, though heaven
only knows how we can work it out in a South where such an idea can be
mentioned now only in whispers. But how can the South ever work out
its bi-racial problems when its intelligent and educated young whites
and Negroes have never met an educated member of the other race?
          I believe Miss Lucy Mason recently wrote you about Paula Snelling
and me and our magazine The North Georgia Review which
has now changed its name to South Today. I merely
mention this kindness to us so that it will help you identify us.
          There are many of us who are deeply grateful to you for your
unwavering stand for the democratic decencies.
          Most sincerely yours,
          Lillian E. Smith
          
            Rose Gladney is assistant professor of American studies
at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
          
        