Lillian Eugenia Smith (December 12, 1897 – September 28, 1966) was a writer and social critic of the Southern United States, known most prominently for her best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944). A white woman who openly embraced controversial positions on matters of race and gender equality, she was a southern liberal unafraid to criticize segregation and work toward the dismantling of Jim Crow laws, at a time when such actions virtually guaranteed social ostracism.
