Hazel Freeman Smith (née Brannon; February 4, 1914 – May 15, 1994) was an American journalist and publisher, the owner and editor of four weekly newspapers in rural Mississippi, mostly in Holmes County.
Smith became known for her editorials and her column ("Through Hazel's Eyes"), which focused on unpopular causes, political corruption, and social injustice in Mississippi, particularly Holmes County.
As early as April 1943, she indicated her independence by a feature front-page story in her Durant paper about an African-American civic group that donated money to the local Red Cross.
But she wrote in support of a county venereal disease clinic, and encouraged law enforcement to act against illegal bootlegging and gambling.
In 1954, Smith attracted attention for her reporting of the sheriff shooting Harry Randall in the leg, after a confrontation in which he told the man to get moving.
Gradually she began to express a progressive position, editorializing in favor of the civil rights movement and against activities of the White Citizens Council.
[5] Following the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, White Citizens' Council were established across the state, especially in black-majority counties, to oppose school desegregation.
This was the kind of economic blackmail being used against civil rights activists across the state: African Americans were fired for being members of the NAACP, others were evicted from rental housing, and some businesses were boycotted in an effort to suppress activism.
In 1960, Smith received the Elijah P. Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism from the International Conference of Weekly Newspaper Editors and Southern Illinois University.
[5] Beginning in 1961, Smith faced an outright economic boycott on advertising, as the White Citizens Council increased its opposition after learning that she was printing jobs for African-American activists.
In December 1961, Smith began to print the Mississippi Free Press, founded by activists in an effort to get their news out to the African-American community in the state.
[3] Smith continued to report fuller accounts of local news, for instance providing the details of the police shooting in June 1963 of Alfred Brown, an African-American Navy veteran of World War II and father of five who was fatally shot soon after being released from a mental hospital.
[3] In the civil rights years and later, African Americans in Holmes County said they gained optimism from seeing her as an example of a "white person [who] showed the capacity to change and the willingness to join them.
In 1964 Smith welcomed the 33 SNCC volunteers who came to the county to educate African Americans and prepare them for registering and voting in what was known as "Mississippi Freedom Summer".
The latter money was presented to her on Editor's Appreciation Day by Dr. Arenia Mallory at Saints Junior College, an event organized by African Americans in Holmes County to counter the activities of the White Citizens Council.
[5] In 1986 Smith moved to live with her sister and her family in Gadsden, Alabama, her hometown, suffering from early symptoms of apparent Alzheimer's disease.
She won the Golden Quill Award of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors in 1963, and in 1964 was named by the National Council of Women as the "Woman of Conscience" that year.
Her life was dramatized in the ABC-TV movie A Passion for Justice: The Hazel Brannon Smith Story (1994), with Jane Seymour in the title role.