Tag: strange fruit

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Community Complicity in White Supremacy in Lillian Smith’s “Strange Fruit”

Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit ends with the lynching of Henry McIntosh and the community members’ reactions to the murder. Following Ed Anderson murder of Tracy Deen, the townspeople, specifically the poor white mill hands, seek vengeance and they accuse Henry of murdering Tracy because Henry moved Tracy’s body off of the road into the palmetto bushes. The fact that Henry is innocent doesn’t matter. The mob, … Read More Community Complicity in White Supremacy in Lillian Smith’s “Strange Fruit”

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Lillian Smith and the “Sex-Race-Religion-Economics” Tangle

Over the past week, I’ve been reading Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream for my Women in the Civil Rights Memoir course and her debut novel Strange Fruit for a book club at the end of January. If memory serves, this is the third, maybe fourth, time I have read each of these books. However, I have never read them at the same time, moving back and forth between the … Read More Lillian Smith and the “Sex-Race-Religion-Economics” Tangle

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Rereading Lillian Smith’s “Strange Fruit” :Part II

Last post, I started looking at my thoughts after I reread Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit for a virtual book club. I discussed the issues that i still have with the novel, but I also pointed out that, after reading more of Smith’s work, my thoughts about the novel have shifted some, and I see what Smith wanted to accomplish with it. I see the … Read More Rereading Lillian Smith’s “Strange Fruit” :Part II

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Rereading Lillian Smith’s “Strange Fruit” :Part I

Sometimes, a book, for whatever reason, does not grab you on the first read through. This was definitely the case with Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit (1944). The first time I read Smith’s bestselling novel, I found it lacking, for a myriad of reasons. I think part of this feeling stemmed from all of the novels I have read, by Black authors, about interracial intimacy, … Read More Rereading Lillian Smith’s “Strange Fruit” :Part I