Flannery O’Connor Was Not a Racist, by Lorraine V. Murray

By Lorraine V. Murray, The Catholic Thing, July 30, 2020

Lorraine Murray is the author of The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O’Connor’s Spiritual Journey. She is a columnist with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Georgia Bulletin. She lives in Decatur, Georgia.

Note: Many readers were moved by Professor Smith’s column yesterday about the hypocrisy in Loyola University Maryland’s removal of Flannery O’Connor’s name from a dormitory because of vague charges of “racism.” We thought readers would also benefit from today’s exploration of O’Connor’s actual views about race. – Robert Royal

Flannery O’Connor is the latest cultural figure to be canceled. The very title of Paul Elie’s recent article in The New Yorker, “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?” assumes her guilt. Jumping upon the cancellation bandwagon, the Jesuit president of Loyola University Maryland has announced that her name will be removed from a dormitory.

But this is the woman who wrote a story poignantly revealing the suffering of black people in the South. This is the woman whose spiritual director was a Jesuit priest, James McCown, who was known as a strong proponent of integration. And this is also the woman who said, after an upsetting experience involving a bus driver’s cruel remark toward black passengers, “I became an integrationist.”  ….

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