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"Path to Grace: Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement" with Ethel Morgan Smith

Co-presented with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights

Join the Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights and the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System in conversation with the author, Ethel Morgan Smith.

The civil rights movement is often defined narrowly, relegated to the 1950s and 1960s and populated by such colossal figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Many forget that the movement was bigger than the figures on the frontline and that it grew from intellectual and historical efforts that continue today. In "Path to Grace: Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement," winner of the 2023 Eudora Welty Prize, Ethel Morgan Smith shines light on unsung heroes of the civil rights movement, the ordinary citizens working behind the scenes to make an impact in their communities.

Through eleven original interviews with teachers, parents hosting fundraisers for civil right workers, volunteers helping with voter registration, and more, Smith highlights the contributions these figures made to the civil rights movement. Some of these brave warriors worked at the elbows of icons while others were clearing new paths, all passing through history without wide recognition. Path to Grace introduces readers to new witnesses and largely neglected voices. Also included are interviews with such esteemed but less studied figures as writer Gloria Naylor, poet Nikki Giovanni, fashion designer Ann Lowe, and educator Constance Curry.

This work of social change situates these narratives in both the past and present. Indeed, many of Smith’s subjects, such as Emma Bruce, John Canty, Andrea Lee, Ann Lowe, and Blanche Virginia Franklin Moore, can trace their ancestry back to enslavement, which provides a direct chain of narrators and firmly plants the roots of the civil rights movement in the country’s foundation. Through historical contextualization and an analysis of contemporary sociopolitical events, Path to Grace celebrates the contributions of some of the nameless individuals, generation after generation, who worked to make the United States better for all its citizens.

Join the Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights and the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System in conversation with the author, Ethel Morgan Smith.

Ethel Morgan Smith is the author of three books: "Path to Grace: Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement," (August 2023) winner of the 2023 Eudora Welty prize; "From Whence Cometh My Help: The African American Community at Hollins College" (2000 & 2017); and "Reflections of the Other: Being Black in Germany (2012)." Her work has been published in The New York Times, Callaloo, African American Review, University of Florida Journal, STIR Journal, Green Mountains Journal, Midnight & Indigo Journal, De Standaard (Brussels, Belgium), Connotation Press, Tusculum Review, and Re-Visioning the Past: Historical Self-Reflexivity in American Short Fiction (Germany). 

Smith is Professor of English Emeritus at West Virginia University and has taught at: Virginia Tech, Randolph College, Universität Tübingen (Germany), Monash University (Australia), University of Canterbury (New Zealand). She received the following fellowships: Eudora Welty Prize, Fulbright Scholar-Universität of Tübingen (Germany), Rockefeller Fellowship (Bellagio Italy), Visiting Artist-American Academy Rome, DuPont Fellow-Randolph College, Visiting Scholar-Women’s Studies Research Center-Brandies University, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Bread Loaf Fellowship, Two NEHs (University of Kansas (1993) and University of Louisiana-Lafayette (2016) and PLAYA (Summer Lake, Oregon).