The Phi Alpha Theta Speaker Series will present a Zoom talk with Jeff Howell titled “Hazel Brannon Smith: The Female Crusading Scalawag” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 15. Howell is Associate Professor of History at East Georgia State College and a specialist in U.S. race relations.

Howell’s talk is about Mississippian Hazel Brannon Smith, the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. His biography on Smith delves into the complexity of her commitment to civil rights. In addition to befriending civil rights activists like Medgar Evers, she opposed racial violence and the White Citizens Council, stances which led to a boycott of her newspaper. One member of the Citizens Council referred to Smith as a “female crusading scalawag.” For those not familiar with the term, “scalawag” is what Confederates labeled southern Unionists during the Civil War. Howell’s talk explains Smith’s evolution from racial intransigence to progressivism and the sacrifices she made seeking the truth in a segregated south.

Watch “Hazel Brannon Smith” on Zoom.

Phi Alpha Theta is an honor society for undergraduate and graduate students and history professors, with more than 400,000 members nationwide.

The event is sponsored by the Department of History and the Prothro-Yeager College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Admission is free and open to the public. Contact Associate Professor of History Whitney Snow at whitney.snow@msutexas.edu or 940-397-8917 for more information.