In this episode, we speak with actress and director Brenda Bynum and documentary filmmaker Hal Jacobs about the creative work they have done on the life and work of Lillian Smith and on Smith's importance to them.

Brenda Bynum worked, for years, with the Alliance Theater in Atlanta and taught in the theater department at Emory for seventeen years. She is the writer/director/performer of "Jordan is So Chilly," a one-woman show on the life of Lillian Smith.

Hal Jacobs is a documentary filmmaker who wrote and directed, along with his son Henry, "Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence" in 2019. He has also done documentaries on Mary Hambidge, Common Good Atlanta, the Northside Tavern, and more. His most recent documentary is "Just Another Bombing?: This is Donal and Iona's Story" about "a little-known incident of the 1960s Civil Rights era. Iona Godfrey King and her son Donal Godfrey share their deeply moving account of surviving a Klan bombing of their home with three other family members on February 16, 1964, in Jacksonville, Fla."

You can see "Jordan is So Chilly" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMore3yvgQ8

You can see "Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence" here: https://www.hjacobscreative.com/lillian-smith

You can see "Just Another Bombing?" here: https://www.hjacobscreative.com/jax-bombing

In this episode, we conclude our series on Lillian Smith and Religion, examining the intersections of religion, race, class, gender, and sexuality. We are joined by Rev. Dr. Benjamin Boswell, pastor of Myers Park Baptist Church, Rev. John Harrison, pastor of Nacoochee Presbyterian Church, Dr. Jennifer Morrison, Assistant Professor of English at Xavier University Louisiana, Dr. Keri Leigh Merritt, and Rev. Annanda Barclay, co-host of the podcast Moral Repair: A Black Exploration of Tech.

We spoke about how Lillian Smith's work, for all of the "sorrowful story" that she relates, provides us with hope for the future.

To learn more about Lillian Smith and our work at the LES Center, visit us at https://https://www.piedmont.edu/lillian-e-smith-center/

This is the part two in a five-part series examining Lillian Smith's thoughts on religion in relation to issues of race, class, and gender. We are joined by Rev. Annanda Barclay, co-host of the podcast Moral Repair: A Black Exploration of Tech, and Rev. John Harrison, pastor of Nacoochee Presbyterian Church in Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia.

In this episode, we speak with Rev. Barclay and Rev. Harrison about Lillian Smith's essay "The Three Ghosts" and Audre Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power."

You can see Smith's essay here: https://library.piedmont.edu/c.php?g=521347&p=9040488

You can find Lorde's essay here: https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/11881_Chapter_5.pdf

You can listen to Lorde reading "Uses of the Erotic" here: https://youtu.be/aWmq9gw4Rq0?si=bSiOoqfCpBlcry3Y

You can find the Moral Repair podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/moral-repair-a-black-exploration-of-tech/id1708625744

This is the part two in a five-part series examining Lillian Smith's thoughts on religion in relation to issues of race, class, and gender. We are joined by Dr. Keri Leigh Merritt, Rev. Dr. Benjamin Boswell, pastor of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Rev. John Harrison, pastor of Nacoochee Presbyterian Church in Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Merritt, Rev. Dr. Boswell and Rev. Harrison about Lillian Smith's essay "Two Men and a Bargain" and Dr. Merritt's essay "The Southern Gap: Capitalism and Underdevelopment in the American South"

You can find Dr. Merritt's essay here: https://aeon.co/essays/capitalism-and-underdevelopment-in-the-american-south

This is the part two in a five-part series examining Lillian Smith's thoughts on religion in relation to issues of race, class, and gender. We are joined by Dr. Jennifer Morrison, Assistant Professor of English at Xavier University Louisiana, Rev. Dr. Benjamin Boswell, pastor of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Rev. John Harrison, pastor of Nacoochee Presbyterian Church in Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Morrison, Rev. Dr. Boswell and Rev. Harrison about Lillian Smith's essay "The White Christian and His Conscience" and Willie James Jennings' essay "Can White People Be Saved? Reflections of the Relationship of Missions and Whiteness."

You can read "The White Christian and His Conscience" here:

https://library.piedmont.edu/ld.php?content_id=55519594

You can find Jennings' essay in "Can 'White' People Be saved? edited by Love Sechrest, Johnny Ramírez-Johnson, and Amos Yong

https://www.ivpress.com/can-white-people-be-saved

This is the first in a five-part series examining Lillian Smith's thoughts on religion in relation to issues of race, class, and gender. We are joined, in each of these episodes, by Rev. Dr. Benjamin Boswell, pastor of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Rev. John Harrison, pastor of Nacoochee Presbyterian Church in Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia.

In this episode, we speak with Rev. Dr. Boswell and Rev. Harrison about the Winter 1944-45 issue of Lillian Smith and Paula Snelling's journal "South Today." The issue, entitled "The Church and Men's Needs" explores their thoughts on religion and its role in society. It contains essays by Smith and Snelling as well as responses from clergy to a questionnaire that they sent out asking for respondents to address the role of the church in society.

You can read the issue here: https://cdm17007.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/Magazines01/id/265/rec/1

This episode is a small selection of recordings from the Laurel Falls Camp Collection Recordings, a collection of 105 digitized recordings from 78-rpm lacquer discs and magnetic tapes we discovered at the center. This recording will be part of a year-long exhibit on the life and work of Lillian E. Smith at the Mason Scharfenstein Museum at Piedmont University. The exhibit will debut on September 5, 2024.

You can find the recordings here: https://tinyurl.com/466ht5x4

You can find more information here: https://library.piedmont.edu/lfcrecordings

This episode is a recording of "Celebrating Lillian E. Smith," an event that took place on March 20, 2024, at the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art at Piedmont University.

LES Center director Dr. Matthew Teutsch led a panel discussion on Smith's legacy and importance with Rev. Dr. Benjamin Boswell, Dr. Keri Leigh Merritt, and Dr. Jennifer Morrison. They engaged in a wide-ranging conversation about Smith's work, her pedagogy, and her role within the Civil Rights Movement.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Karen Cox, Professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the author of multiple books, including "Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture" and "Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture." Her current book project explores the Rhythm Club fire, which took the lives of more than 200 African Americans in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1940.

Dr. Cox's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, TIME magazine, Publishers Weekly, Smithsonian Magazine, and the Huffington Post.

We speak with her about the United Daughters of the Confederacy, monuments, and her latest project on the Rhythm Club fire.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Michael Dando, Assistant Professor of Communication, Arts, and Literature at St. Cloud State University. Dando is an award-winning author, artist, educator, and scholar with over twenty years of experience in the classroom. His research and pedagogy explores ways that teachers and students collaborate with communities to create collective, civically engaged democratic opportunities for social justice. We speak about the ways that Lillian Smith's work, specifically her thoughts on pedagogy, correspond to Dando's pedagogical approaches, on the role of art in society, and more.