MISS SMITH KNOWS THE SOUTH AND NEGROES
Coleman, Mcalister
Miss Smith Knows The South And Negroes STRANGE FRUIT, by Lillian E. Smith. Reynal & Hitchcock. $2.75. Reviewed by McAlister Coleman THIS BOOK is written by a white woman from Georgia, the...
...This book should have been reviewed by a Negro for proper evaluation of how Miss Smith has caught the psychology of his people, but, at all events, this reviewer has the impression that she has come pretty close to the heart of the colored race...
...It is a depressing and, at the same time, a stirring story of the love of a white youngster for a Negro girl who had gone to college, but returned to a small Georgia town to become a servant...
...Tracy was a weakling and succumbed to the pressures put on him by the "respectables" of the town, but, in the long run, he could not save himself...
...In these days, there is no domestic problem more pressing than our relations to the people whose skin is of a different color than ours, and you cannot come away from this book without a deeper understanding of the entire problem...
...Everybody's scared...
...weeping for the living...
...She wanted to smile . . . and then, too, she was weeping for the dead...
...Tracy's family had everything planned for him, but he spoiled it all by falling in love with Non-nie...
...The author writes -with power and imagination, from an obviously intimate knowledge of the Southern milieu, and her story marches with tremendous precision to its appointed goal...
...It is quite the best piece of creative writing which has come out of the South for a long, long time...
...These emotional reactions of a Negro woman are those which will possess the sensitive reader of this book...
...Something bad is happening and they are not going to be left behind for it to happen to while white folks bury their dead...
...Perhaps the ending of Chapter 26 sums up the mood of the book as well as anything could...
...True, you will find no solution of it here, but the posing of it is a worthwhile task, well done...
...Reviewed by McAlister Coleman THIS BOOK is written by a white woman from Georgia, the co-editor of South Today, who has devoted most of her active life to the study of the Negro problem...
...Scared...
...She was contented with her lot, passionately in love with Tracy Deen, the son of a rather stuffy white family who lived across the tracks...
Vol. 8 • March 1944 • No. 13
