The Southern Regional Council in conjunction with the University of Georgia, Piedmont College, and the Georgia Center for the Book have announced three winners of the 2019 Lillian Smith Book Awards. The three winners will be honored on September 1 at the DeKalb County Public Library.
Lillian Smith was the author of Strange Fruit, a 1944 novel about interracial romance. She was a White southern feminist and advocate for civil rights during the Jim Crow era.
The three winners of this year Lillian Smith Book Awards are all women with current academic affiliations. One of the three is an African American.
Vanessa Siddle Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. Her latest book is entitled The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools (The New Press, 2018).
Dr. Walker joined the faculty at Emory University in 1990. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in education. She holds a master’s degree in English education and an educational doctorate from Harvard University.
