William Gardner Smith
Encyclopedia
William Gardner Smith was an American journalist
, novelist, and editor
. Smith is linked to the black social protest novel tradition of the 1940s and the 1950s, a movement that became synonymous with writers such as Richard Wright
, Ralph Ellison
, Willard Motley
, and Ann Petry
. His third book, South Street (1954), is considered to be one of the first black militant protest novels. Smith's last published novel, The Stone Face (1963), in its account of the Paris massacre of 1961
, "stand[s] as one of the few representations of the event available".
Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
of African American
descent. After 1951, he maintained an expatriate
status in France. However, due to his various journalistic and editorial assignments, he also lived for extended periods of time in Ghana
. In the final decade of his life, Smith would travel to the United States to visit family and friends and write about the racial and social upheaval that was occurring there.
Some of Smith's journalism and reportage from this period was published in various media outlets in France and Europe. Some of it was revised, re-adapted, and published in Return To Black America in 1970. Smith, who spoke fluent French, was a frequent contributor and guest on radio and television programs in France where he was considered an expert on the political struggle, civil unrest, and racial tension occurring in the United States during the turbulent decade of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Smith was diagnosed with cancer in October 1973 and died just over a year later in Thiais
, a commune
in the southern suburbs of Paris
, France
.
In Smith's senior year, his high school principal helped him secure a part-time position with the Pittsburgh Courier
. Smith graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School with honors in January 1944 at the age of sixteen, the second highest student in his class. After graduation Smith began working full time as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier, but in January 1946 he was drafted into the Army. He was sent to Europe where he was assigned as a clerk-typist in occupied Berlin, Germany. It was this experience that inspired his first novel, Last of the Conquerors
, published in 1948 when Smith was only twenty-one.
Discharged from active duty in 1948, Smith attended Temple University
and continued working as a journalist with the Pittsburgh Courier. During this time he married his high school sweetheart and had begun working on his second published novel Anger at Innocence (1950). After a short stay at the Yaddo Foundation in Saratoga Springs, the recently married couple left the United States for France in late 1951. There they became part of a large African American community of artists and writers living there including, most prominently, Richard Wright
, James Baldwin
, and Chester Himes
among others.
Smith and his wife believed that a move to Europe might help their troubled marriage, but that was not to be. Increased financial burdens, along with his wife's difficulty both speaking French and learning to survive as struggling artists in the displaced milieu
of a community far from family and home, led to the couple's divorce. Despite these serious financial and spiritual difficulties, Smith continued to write while leading a bohemian
existence in the Latin Quarter
.
In 1954, Smith's situation improved with the release of his third novel, South Street (inspired by his childhood in the black neighborhoods and ghettoes of Philadelphia) and his hiring by the Agence France-Presse
(AFP). In the following years, Smith served as a foreign service editor and correspondent. He also was a director of AFP in Ghana until the fall of Nkrumah in 1966, after which he continued as an editor and special correspondent of AFP in various countries.
Smith's next book The Stone Face, published in 1963, would be his last published novel. Smith had begun work on this book in 1961 when the war in Algeria proved to be an explosive situation which had exacerbated passions in France. This novel evokes the anti-Arab racism that Smith was witness to both in his daily journalistic work and in the streets of Paris. Kristin Ross
, in her book May '68 And Its Afterlives, points out that The Stone Face is one of the earliest published eyewitness accounts (albeit in a fictionalized format) of what occurred in Paris on October 17, 1961. [see also: Paris massacre of 1961
]
Smith's status as a foreigner and expatriate (doubly) marked him as both the insider and outsider in two cultures, the United States and Europe. By the early 1960s, as a black American working in a foreign land and witness to injustice on two continents, the stakes were raised for Smith in the composition of this novel. It pushed his capacities as an artist, writer, and journalist to their limits. In this novel and his subsequent journalistic writing and reportage, Smith would testify to the social, political, and cultural happenings of his adopted country as a way to explore and address everyday racism in the United States. In France, Smith was considered an expert on the racial situation in the United States, especially after he published a report in 1967 on the revolts within American black ghettos.
Smith remarried on October 31, 1961. His second wife, with whom he had two children, was of French descent. Smith's second marriage ended in divorce in 1969. Smith would marry a third time. His last marriage was to a native of India with whom he had a daughter in 1971.
Periodical publications
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, novelist, and editor
Editor
The term editor may refer to:As a person who does editing:* Editor in chief, having final responsibility for a publication's operations and policies* Copy editing, making formatting changes and other improvements to text...
. Smith is linked to the black social protest novel tradition of the 1940s and the 1950s, a movement that became synonymous with writers such as Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
, Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...
, Willard Motley
Willard Motley
Willard Motley was an African-American writer, related to the noted artist Archibald Motley. The two were raised as brothers, although in actuality Archibald was Willard's uncle...
, and Ann Petry
Ann Petry
Ann Petry was an American author who became the first black woman writer with book sales topping a million copies for her novel The Street.-Early life:...
. His third book, South Street (1954), is considered to be one of the first black militant protest novels. Smith's last published novel, The Stone Face (1963), in its account of the Paris massacre of 1961
Paris massacre of 1961
The Paris massacre of 1961 was a massacre in Paris on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War . Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French police attacked a demonstration of some 30,000 pro-FLN Algerians...
, "stand[s] as one of the few representations of the event available".
Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
descent. After 1951, he maintained an expatriate
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
status in France. However, due to his various journalistic and editorial assignments, he also lived for extended periods of time in Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
. In the final decade of his life, Smith would travel to the United States to visit family and friends and write about the racial and social upheaval that was occurring there.
Some of Smith's journalism and reportage from this period was published in various media outlets in France and Europe. Some of it was revised, re-adapted, and published in Return To Black America in 1970. Smith, who spoke fluent French, was a frequent contributor and guest on radio and television programs in France where he was considered an expert on the political struggle, civil unrest, and racial tension occurring in the United States during the turbulent decade of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Smith was diagnosed with cancer in October 1973 and died just over a year later in Thiais
Thiais
Thiais is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.The name Thiais comes from Medieval Latin Theodasium or Theodaxium, meaning "estate of Theodasius", a Gallo-Roman landowner....
, a commune
Communes of France
The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany...
in the southern suburbs of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Life and work
Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Edith Smith. In 1934 his mother married Douglass Stanley Earle. According to the Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB):In Smith's senior year, his high school principal helped him secure a part-time position with the Pittsburgh Courier
Pittsburgh Courier
The Pittsburgh Courier was an American newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which was published from 1907 to 1965. Once the country's most widely circulated Black newspaper, the legacy and influence of the Pittsburgh Courier is unparalleled.A pillar of the Black Press, it rose...
. Smith graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School with honors in January 1944 at the age of sixteen, the second highest student in his class. After graduation Smith began working full time as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier, but in January 1946 he was drafted into the Army. He was sent to Europe where he was assigned as a clerk-typist in occupied Berlin, Germany. It was this experience that inspired his first novel, Last of the Conquerors
Last of the Conquerors
Last of the Conquerors is the debut novel by African-American journalist and editor William Gardner Smith. It was first published in 1948....
, published in 1948 when Smith was only twenty-one.
Discharged from active duty in 1948, Smith attended Temple University
Temple University
Temple University is a comprehensive public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally founded in 1884 by Dr. Russell Conwell, Temple University is among the nation's largest providers of professional education and prepares the largest body of professional...
and continued working as a journalist with the Pittsburgh Courier. During this time he married his high school sweetheart and had begun working on his second published novel Anger at Innocence (1950). After a short stay at the Yaddo Foundation in Saratoga Springs, the recently married couple left the United States for France in late 1951. There they became part of a large African American community of artists and writers living there including, most prominently, Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
, James Baldwin
James Baldwin
James Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist and civil rights activist.James Baldwin may also refer to:-Writers:*James Baldwin , American educator, writer and administrator...
, and Chester Himes
Chester Himes
Chester Bomar Himes was an American writer. His works include If He Hollers Let Him Go and a series of Harlem Detective novels...
among others.
Smith and his wife believed that a move to Europe might help their troubled marriage, but that was not to be. Increased financial burdens, along with his wife's difficulty both speaking French and learning to survive as struggling artists in the displaced milieu
Milieu
Milieu is the word for environment in French, and, for hundreds of years, also in Dutch, Swedish, English, and other languages that were strongly influenced by French culture and French language, primarily during the 17th and 18th centuries....
of a community far from family and home, led to the couple's divorce. Despite these serious financial and spiritual difficulties, Smith continued to write while leading a bohemian
Bohemian
A Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, either in a narrow sense as the region of Bohemia proper or in a wider meaning as the whole country, now known as the Czech Republic. The word "Bohemian" was used to denote the Czech people as well as the Czech language before the word...
existence in the Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter is a part of the 5th arrondissement in Paris.Latin Quarter may also refer to:* Latin Quarter , a British pop/rock band* Latin Quarter , a 1945 British film*Latin Quarter, Aarhus, part of Midtbyen, Aarhus C, Denmark...
.
In 1954, Smith's situation improved with the release of his third novel, South Street (inspired by his childhood in the black neighborhoods and ghettoes of Philadelphia) and his hiring by the Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...
(AFP). In the following years, Smith served as a foreign service editor and correspondent. He also was a director of AFP in Ghana until the fall of Nkrumah in 1966, after which he continued as an editor and special correspondent of AFP in various countries.
Smith's next book The Stone Face, published in 1963, would be his last published novel. Smith had begun work on this book in 1961 when the war in Algeria proved to be an explosive situation which had exacerbated passions in France. This novel evokes the anti-Arab racism that Smith was witness to both in his daily journalistic work and in the streets of Paris. Kristin Ross
Kristin Ross
Kristin Ross is a professor of comparative literature at New York University. She is primarily known for her work on French literature and culture of the 19th and 20th centuries. -Life and work:Ross received her Ph.D...
, in her book May '68 And Its Afterlives, points out that The Stone Face is one of the earliest published eyewitness accounts (albeit in a fictionalized format) of what occurred in Paris on October 17, 1961. [see also: Paris massacre of 1961
Paris massacre of 1961
The Paris massacre of 1961 was a massacre in Paris on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War . Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French police attacked a demonstration of some 30,000 pro-FLN Algerians...
]
Smith's status as a foreigner and expatriate (doubly) marked him as both the insider and outsider in two cultures, the United States and Europe. By the early 1960s, as a black American working in a foreign land and witness to injustice on two continents, the stakes were raised for Smith in the composition of this novel. It pushed his capacities as an artist, writer, and journalist to their limits. In this novel and his subsequent journalistic writing and reportage, Smith would testify to the social, political, and cultural happenings of his adopted country as a way to explore and address everyday racism in the United States. In France, Smith was considered an expert on the racial situation in the United States, especially after he published a report in 1967 on the revolts within American black ghettos.
Smith remarried on October 31, 1961. His second wife, with whom he had two children, was of French descent. Smith's second marriage ended in divorce in 1969. Smith would marry a third time. His last marriage was to a native of India with whom he had a daughter in 1971.
Selected bibliography
Major works- Last of the ConquerorsLast of the ConquerorsLast of the Conquerors is the debut novel by African-American journalist and editor William Gardner Smith. It was first published in 1948....
, (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1948; London: Gollancz, 1949). - Anger at Innocence, (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1950; London: Gollancz, 1951) – Malheur aux justes, Club Français du Livre, 1952, 293 pages, traduit de l'américain par Jean Rosenthal
- South Street (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1954)
- The Stone Face (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1963).
- Return to Black America (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970) – L'Amérique noire, 1972, traduit de l'américain par Rosine Fitzgerald / Paris: Casterman
Periodical publications
- "The Negro Writer: Pitfalls and Compensations," Phylon, 11 (Fourth Quarter 1950): 297-303.
- “European Backdrop,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 5, 1952, p. 3.
- “Black Boy in France,” EbonyEbony (magazine)Ebony, a monthly magazine for the African-American market, was founded by John H. Johnson and has published continuously since the autumn of 1945...
, vol. VIII, no. 9 (July 1953) pp. 32–36, 39–42. – Article deals with life of Richard Wright in Paris over a span of seven years - “The World’s Most Famous Nude,” Art and Photography, vol. VIII, no. 10–94 (April 1957), pp. 14–15, 43–45
Further reading
- Bush, Joseph Bevans. “On Re-Calling William Gardner Smith: Writer and Friend,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 30, 1977, p. 21.
- Bone, Robert A. The Negro Novel in America, revised edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 167, 176-178.
- Bryant Jerry H. "Individuality and Fraternity: The Novels of William Gardner Smith," Studies in Black Literature, 3 (Summer 1972): 1-8.
- Fabre, Michel. From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 1840-1980. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991).
- ____________. La rive noire, essai, André Dimanche Éditeur, 1999 (French)
- Gayle, Addison (Jr). The Way of The New World: The Black Novel in America, (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Press, Doubleday, 1975), pp. 239–247.
- Gilroy, Paul. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001
- Hodges, LeRoy. Portrait of An Expatriate--William Gardner Smith, Writer. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985).
- Höhn, Maria. GIs and Fräuleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
- Schatt, Stanley. "You Must Go Home Again: Today's Afro-American Expatriate Writers," Negro American Literature Forum, 7 (Fall 1973): 80-82.
- Schraufnagel, Noel. From Apology to Protest: The Black American Novel (De Land, Fla.: Everett-Edwards, 1973) pp. 47ff.
- Stovall, Tyler. Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. (Mariner Books, 1998).
External links
- http://www.ina.fr/media/entretiens/video/CPF08000146/porte-ouverte-william-gardner-smith.fr.html interview
- Archives de France-Culture : Les nouvelles guerres culturelles aux Etats-Unis - Identités afro-américaines, émission du 25 août 2006, avec William Gardner Smith en 1970 et Angela Davis.