Lillian Smith was a writer and social activist who lived most of her adult life in Clayton, Georgia. Born in 1897 into a prosperous white family, she was unafraid to take controversial positions on race and gender equality.
She is best known for her novel Strange Fruit, written in 1944. The book told the story of an interracial couple in a small 1920s Georgia town. It was banned in Boston and Detroit and even forbidden from being mailed through the U.S. Postal Department. She also wrote a series of essays called Killers of the Dream in 1949. Both books explored segregation as harmful to all races and helped to dismantle Jim Crow laws.
While she was socially ostracized through much of her life, by the time of her death in 1966, she was praised for her views.