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A Castle audience prepares to watch the NC premiere of Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence
On October 17, Camp Merrie-Woode hosted a film screening in Castle of the new documentary, Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence. This 50 minute film tells the story of prominent author, civil rights activist, and camp director Lillian Smith. Lillian directed Laurel Falls Camp in Clayton, GA during the 1920s – 1940s. She was a good friend and colleague of Camp Merrie-Woode’s founder, Dammie Day. Both were progressive, like-minded women on many issues, including race relations and gender equality.
I first became excited about this documentary last winter when my research in camp history and the CMW Centennial Archives led me to discover Lillian Smith. I saw in her a kindred spirit to Dammie and began looking further into Lillian’s story. When I then discovered that Dammie and Lillian were friends in the 1940s, I became even more excited. More on that later… First, let me tell you a bit about the remarkable life of Lillian…
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Director, Hal Jacobs, leads a Q&A session after the film.
Lillian Smith received national attention in the 1940s and 1950s as the first prominent southern author to speak out against segregation. Her name and books are mostly forgotten now except by southern historians and activists. Yet from the 1940s through the early 1960s, this southern writer was a force to be reckoned with. Her first novel, Strange Fruit (1944), was a national bestseller that dropped like a bomb on wartime America because of its bold look at social relations in a small southern town that strongly resembled her hometown of Jasper, FL, where she was born in 1897.
Writing from her home in the north Georgia mountains, where she lived most of her life, Lillian was deemed a traitor to the South for her stance on racial and gender equality. A central theme in her work was that segregation amounted to “spiritual lynching” to both races, as she wrote in numerous articles and in her controversial semi-autobiographical book Killers of the Dream, published in 1949. Before the Civil Rights Movement took off in the late 1950s, she was a voice of reason in the North. Here was a southern woman who remained in the South and wasn’t afraid to speak her conscience against the demagogues, Klan, and mobs.
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Lillian Smith at Camp Merrie-Woode in the 1940s.
Lillian was lauded by luminaries such as Eleanor Roosevelt and James Baldwin, and she was an inspiration to leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. She was a trusted friend and correspondent of Martin Luther King, Jr., who, in his impassioned Letter from Birmingham Jail, included her as one of a small group of those who “have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms.” In fact, in 1960, when King was pulled over in DeKalb County for an alleged traffic violation, Lillian was riding in his car. He was driving her to Emory Hospital for the treatment of cancer that plagued her for over 10 years and would eventually take her life in 1966.
Breaking the Silence explores how this child of the South became a formidable opponent of the southern way of life protected by segregationist politicians, church leaders, and newspaper editors. The documentary tells the story of Lillian Smith in her own voice and seldom-seen interviews. It also features the voices of friends and family, pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement, and leading academics.
Image may be NSFW.
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When I realized this documentary was in the works, I reached out to the film’s director, Hal Jacobs. During my work in the CMW Centennial Archives, I had come across a series of letters from Lillian to Dammie Day in the 1940s and many photographs of Lillian from Dammie’s personal collection. Several of these photos were used in the final cut of Breaking the Silence, as well as one particularly important letter detailing an invitation to an interracial dinner party Lillian was hosting at her home on Screamer Mountain. This letter describes in wonderful detail both the risk Lillian took by hosting such gatherings at the time, as well as her philosophy in the importance of doing so. In the letter, dated 1943, she writes to Dammie,
“Perhaps while we are together we shall, as eighteen women of intelligence and ability and good will, work out with one another some interesting plans and projects that may be valuable to both races…All the movements in the world, all the laws, the drives, the edicts will never do what personal relationships can do – and must do…The tensions today are most acute and troubling – something must be done, and I believe this something will quite probably come from the women of the two races long before it comes from the men.”
Hal remarked that while he had heard of these social gatherings Lillian had hosted, he had never seen a letter such as this in all his research. I was thrilled that our archives could contribute and add historical significance.
The film screening in Castle this October marked the North Carolina premiere for Breaking the Silence. Hal hosted an engaging Q&A session after the film ended and was met by positive remarks from the Castle audience. Future screenings are already planned for Washington DC, Alabama, and throughout Georgia in 2019 and 2020. Take a look at the film’s upcoming screenings to find a showing near you. Hal has expressed that it is his hope, along with his son and co-director Henry Jacobs, that Lillian’s life and words will inspire more dialogue, more fearlessness, and more people breaking the silence well into the future.
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Dammie Day and Lillian Smith
Lillian and Dammie were alike in many ways. By creating their own small camp communities tucked up beneath Old Bald and on Screamer Mountain, they created a world in which they wished they lived: a world without prejudice and hate that empowered and valued women. Lillian’s voice, though once prominent, has been largely forgotten in our country’s narrative. I think Dammie would have been proud to see her courageous friend’s story told at Merrie-Woode. And one day, I’ll have to get to work on a movie to tell Dammie’s own story… Wouldn’t that make for a thrilling movie night in Castle!
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