Killers of the Dream

Written by Lillian Smith and Margaret Rose Gladney

Narrated by Elisabeth Ashby

A Southern white writer, educator, and activist, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) spoke out all her life against injustice. In Killers of the Dream, her most influential book, she draws on memories of her childhood to describe the psychological and moral cost of the powerful, contradictory rules about sin, sex, and segregation-the intricate system of taboos-that undergirded Southern society.

Published to wide controversy, it became the source (acknowledged or unacknowledged) of much of our thinking about race relations and was for many a catalyst for the civil rights movement. It remains the most courageous, insightful, and eloquent critique of the pre-1960s South.

"I began to see racism and its rituals of segregation as a symptom of a grave illness," Smith wrote. "When people think more of their skin color than of their souls, something has happened to them." Today, listeners are rediscovering in Smith's writings a forceful analysis of the dynamics of racism, as well as her prophetic understanding of the connections between racial and sexual oppression.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Oct 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350842043

Lillian Smith

Lillian Smith (1897–1966) was the internationally acclaimed author of the controversial novel Strange Fruit, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller and translated into fifteen languages worldwide. In all her writing, Smith was one of the most liberal and outspoken of the white, mid-twentieth–century Southern writers on issues of social and racial injustice. For her persistence in calling for an end to segregation, Smith was often scorned by more moderate Southerners, threatened by arsonists, and denied the critical attention she deserved as an author. She remained an advocate for social justice throughout her life.