University Communications
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: Oct. 14, 1999
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Assistant Vice President, 404-727-0644, or dhammac@emory.edu

Emory Professor Receives Lillian Smith Book Award for Biography of John Hope, Pioneer of Black Higher Education in America

The decade of work that went into Leroy Davis' book "A Clashing of the Soul," a biography of John Hope, has been rewarded with a 1999 Lillian Smith Book Award from the Southern Regional Council (SRC) in recognition of outstanding writing about the American South. Davis, associate professor of history and African American studies at Emory, has created a seminal work on Hope, the Augusta-born president of both Morehouse College and Atlanta University, and contemporary of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Hope was the first African American president of both institutions and was a pioneer in higher education for black Americans. The award recipients will be honored at a luncheon on Saturday, Nov. 6 at the Sheraton Colony Square in Atlanta, followed by readings and book signings. The readings will be at 3:30 p.m. and are free and open to the public. For more information or to purchase tickets to the luncheon, call 404-522-8764 ext. 24.

"John Hope meant to the development of black college education in the United States what Booker T. Washington meant to the development of black vocational or industrial education," Davis says. "Until the 1920s the general position in America was that African Americans had no need to have a college education, given their role in the Southern political economy."

The book chronicles many historical developments in Georgia's history as well as Atlanta's in a period when it struggled desperately, not always successfully, to deal with racial problems in a city that prided itself on being "Too busy to hate." The book undoubtedly sets the tone, stage and background for an understanding of Atlanta during the Civil Rights years.

The Lillian Smith Book Awards have been presented annually since 1968 and are one of the region's oldest and best-known book awards. The awards honor serious, well-crafted books that contribute to a better understanding of human rights and other social issues, matters of primary concern to author Lillian Smith more than 50 years ago and to the SRC ever since.

A symposium on Smith, including video footage from the 1960s, will precede the luncheon, from 10 a.m. to noon, and is free and open to the public. Tickets for the luncheon are $40, and are available from the SRC or select Borders Books (Buckhead, Ashford-Dunwoody, Duluth, Snellville and Parkway Point). Books will be available for sale beginning at 2:30 p.m. Davis will be joined by fellow award recipient, J. Morgan Kousser, who is being honored for "Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Amendment."

"The award honors writers today who, in the tradition of Lillian Smith, are writing thoughtfully about the South," says SRC Executive Director Wendy Johnson. Smith was the author of the 1944 best-selling novel, "Strange Fruit," that catapulted her to national acclaim. She dealt with race and sex before they were generally permissible topics in the South, and her writing remains relevant today because it confronts deep-rooted social problems and their high human costs. For more information about Smith or the SRC, go to the web site www.southerncouncil.org.

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