Description
Nell Battle Lewis was a nationally renowned journalist, feminist lawyer, and educator who fought for human rights and social justice in the American South in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1920 she began her long career as a journalist with the Raleigh News and Observer. In her column, "Incidentally," she attacked the Ku Klux Klan, lobbied against the exploitation of mill workers, defended strikers during the notorious Gastonia (North Carolina) labor violence, mocked religious fundamentalists who sought to proscribe the teaching of evolution, and decried lynch law. She also conducted forceful journalistic and personal advocacy for African Americans, women, and children. Inspired by H. L. Mencken's scathing criticism of the South, Lewis forged connections with him and earned a national reputation through her publications in Smart Set, Nation, and American Murcury. This project sheds light on the most important female southern journalist of the era by exploring her pioneering advocacy, motivation, and connectedness to other prominent journalists, intellectuals, and human-rights proponents. It also examines Lewis's turbulent personal life and many defining events in twentieth-century southern history.
