The Importance of Lillian Smith’s “Killers of the Dream” 75 Years Later in 2024

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the initial publication of Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream, and as I reread it this past week, I kept thinking about its continued relevance today, especially during 2024, a year which, and I do not feel this is hyperbole, carries within it a huge deal of historical significance for the United States and our democratic experiment. Countless others have said the same thing, but as I sit here, in late January and think ahead to November, I cannot help but think about what will happen come election day, no matter the legitimate outcome. I sit here days after the Iowa caucuses where an authoritarian demagogue won with 51% of the vote. I could argue that Iowa isn’t a bell weather, considering only 110,000 voters caucused, accounting for under 15% of Iowa’s 752,000 registered Republicans. However, it is telling that over 55,000 of those who caucused did so for a candidate who said he would only be a dictator on day one and channeled Adolf Hitler and Nazis by saying he faces internal enemies that he labels as “vermin” while others caucsed for candidates that said they would send troops into Mexico to solve the border crisis or claimed that slavery wasn’t the cause of the Civil War or that the United States has never been a racist nation.