her editorials and her column ("Through Hazel's Eyes"), which focused on unpopular causes, political corruption, and social injustice in Mississippi, particularly Holmes County. This agricultural county of 27,000 had a majority-black population, many of whom were poor. 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. Most newspapers at the time reported on African Americans only when they were involved in crimes. Smith was a woman of the South and had absorbed many of its mores. But she wrote in support of a county venereal disease clinic, and encouraged law enforcement to act against illegal bootlegging and gambling. She initially wrote against the United States Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), saying the races preferred separation, and that southern states needed to work on their own solutions. 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. Smith criticized Sheriff Richard Byrd for harassing a black resident and called for his resignation. He filed a libel suit against her, winning in the lower court, but a state court of appeals overturned the verdict against her. After 1954 Smith no longer supported segregation in her editorials. She became known for her truthful reporting and sympathy for justice for African Americans. Gradually she began to express a progressive position, editorializing in favor of the civil rights movement and against activities of the White Citizens Council. 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. The state also established the taxpayer-funded Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, ostensibly to promote and market the state. But it established a secret police arm that conducted surveillance of private citizens, made lists of suspected activists, and made these available to private groups to conduct suppression of civil rights activism. Smith's editorials and fair reporting attracted the wrath of local and eventually state segregationists. In 1956, the Citizens' Council of Holmes County forced the firing of her husband Walter B. Smith from his position as county hospital administrator, affecting their economic stability. This was the kind of economic blackmail being used against civil rights activists across