Killers of the Dream
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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.
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"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, readers 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.
Liked Killers of the Dream? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked Killers of the Dream. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
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The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade Shares nonfiction, memoir, race -
Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity Shares nonfiction, history, American history -
The Burden of Southern History Shares history, nonfiction, race -
The Hidden Wound Shares nonfiction, essays, race
“People who read Killers of the Dream tend to reach for these next.”
“If you want more of the same (history about race), start with these.”
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Telling Memories Among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South
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Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940
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At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America
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Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America
