Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Keri Leigh Merritt, discussing her new book, An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America (St. Martin’s Press, 2026). Smith, born in 1897, was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: she passionately championed racial equality and integration while living openly with her partner, Paula, at their home atop Old Screamer Mountain in Clayton, Georgia. Best known as the author of Strange Fruit (1944) and Killers of the Dream (1949), she continued to fight for both civil and human rights—all while receiving death threats—until her death in 1966.
