Strange Fruit Quotes

“That’s the South’s trouble. Ignorant. Doesn’t know anything. Doesn’t even know what’s happening outside in the world! Shut itself up with its trouble and its ignorance until the two together have gnawed the sense out of it. Believes world was created in six days. Believes white man was created by God to rule the world. As soon believe a nigger was as good as a white man as to believe in evolution. All tied up together. Ignorance. Scared of everything about science, except its gadgets. Afraid not to believe in hell, even. Afraid to be free.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit

“Every Southerner knows, of course. We lynch the Negro’s soul every day of our lives.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit

“Trouble is, you can’t be a Christian in the South. You can’t be one even if you want to, in the setup we’ve got down here! Everybody gouging his living out of somebody beneath him—singing hymns as he gouges—”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit

“boy. Ten million Crazy Carls to be tended and fed and protected from the cruelty which Miss Sadie’s eyes were sharp enough to see lay in white men’s breasts.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit

“There’s right and there’s wrong. You’ll do right as a doctor, Son, or wrong. There’s no middle road.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit

“How old are you?” “Most thirteen.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit

“When you can’t ask a small favor of a son—there’s not much left for a mother.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit

“It was all a little vague to her, but sleeping together, cold weather or hot, seemed a necessary thread in the fabric of marriage, which, once broken, might cause the whole thing to unravel.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit

“Yes sirree, Sam Perry’s one nigger a college education didn’t ruin.” They listened to Sam. “Sam Perry”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit

“All they did was go to work, come home, go to work. Seemed enough. Enough for niggers in Georgia … sure!”
― Lillian E. Smith, Strange Fruit