Lillian Smith Quotes
To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open.
Lillian Smith, 1897-1966, Writer, Reformer, & Political Activist, Attributed statement of belief in desegregation
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In 1869 the all male legislature of Wyoming at the urging of legislator Col. William Bright passed legislation allowing women not only to vote but to hold public office. A local Justice of the Peace was so outraged that he resigned in protest. Then Esther Morris ran for the vacated position and won becoming the first woman to hold public office. See {585019} & {585018}
Lillian Eugenia Smith was a writer and social critic of the Southern United States, known most prominently for her best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944). A white woman who openly embraced controversial positions on matters of race and gender equality, she was a southern liberal unafraid to criticize segregation and work toward the dismantling of Jim Crow laws, at a time when such actions virtually guaranteed social ostracism.
