Rootlessness and Action in William Gardner Smith’s “The Stone Face”

Over the past few posts, I have been looking at the tensions that Simeon feels in William Gardner Smith’s The Stone Face. Simeon leaves the United States for France, seeking refuge and escape from the racist oppression of white supremacy. He finds, as other African American expatriates do within the novel, the “illusion of safety.” This illusion provides a means of escape, a means of allowing Simeon to be himself without having to worry about what others think about him. He does not have to look over his shoulder or couch his words. Instead, he can be his true self. However, this illusion gets shattered when Simeon begins to learn about France’s racism and white supremacy, and this realization causes him to question how he can be in Paris while the Civil Rights Movement occurs back home.

Numerous moments throughout the novel cause Simeon to reflect upon his position, and one of the key moments occurs when he sees a photograph in the Paris Herald Tribune of “five black girls and boys walking with heads held high through a crowd of white adults whose faces were twisted by hatred.” Simeon doesn’t specify the school or town where the photograph was taken. It exists as a representation of countless moments such as Little Rock, New Orleans, Oxford, Athens, and many other cities and towns when African American students integrated…