Our problem is not racial, but human and economic. . . . We hold the Negro racially responsible for conditions common to all races on his economic plane. The writings of reformer Lily Hardy Hammond (18591925) are filled with such forthright criticisms of southern white attitudes toward African Americansenough so that her stature as a southern progressive thinker would seem assured. Yet Hammond, who once stood at the intellectual center of the southern womens social gospel movement and was in her time the Souths most prolific female writer on the race question, has been marginalized.

Elna Green is Associate Dean of the College of Humanities and Arts at San Jose State University. She is the author of "This Business of Relief" and the editor of "Before the New Deal" and "The New Deal and Beyond" (all Georgia).