In Killers of a Dream, Lillian Smith succeeds in uncovering the double truths at work for all people in the racially segregated South. To that end, Smith also reveals the dichotomy of morals taught to the young Lillian (and most white children of the South) on the unwritten social status of Negroes, and the subsequent crippling effects upon her development. It is through this systematic training that Smith contends that many white segregationist Southerners are not born, but bred.

Experts, including Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin, agree that "The making of a [white or black] Southerner, is a fundamentally somatic activity as well as a cognitive one" (484). For whites, Lillian Smith contends it is accomplished by a systematic indoctrination from the earliest of beginnings. She writes "From the day I was born, I began to learn my lessons" (471). Such social education was rarely spelled out verbally, yet the messages were clearly understood. Smith says, "we were given no formal instruction in these matters, but we learned our lessons well" (470). Southern religion further reinforced segregation, and sent more mixed signals to Lillian who was told "all men are brothers with a common Father, [but she] also knew [she] was better than a Negro, that all black folks have their place and must be kept in it" (470).

In this environment, young Lillian slowly comes to understand that the doors open to relationships with Negroes (like her wet nurse, or Janie) were preordained to close. Lillian’s questioning of this logic yields angry responses from her mother, declaring, "You’re too young to understand this. And don’t ask me again, ever again about this!" (476), likely "scaring off" any current or future search for truth. The child could sense the confusion of values, even if she could not completely comprehend them. Smith continued, "Mother’s voice was sharp but her face was sad and there was no certainty there" (476). Still it proves to be a powerful lesson for Lillian. The mother’s act of quashing Lillian’s voice with her parental authority effectively sanctions a separation of private beliefs from public actions. Daniel Joseph Singal identifies this behavior as "Victorian dichotomy, with its separation of mind and body as chief culprit" (qtd. in Loveland 102). And the first school house for learning this Southern divisiveness of values is the home.

Repressing social status being the best physical evidence (next to violence) of the mental act of racism, these issues were some of the first and lasting lessons Southern children (including Lillian) were taught in the home. Smith "knew by the time I was twelve that a member of my family would always shake hands with old Negro friends, would speak graciously to members of the Negro race unless they forgot their place" (471). Bewildered at the duality of rule interpretation, Lillian realized that she must adapt to the social norms being laid out before her because "It was the only way my world could be held together" (476). But in order for Lillian’s outer world to stay together, she learned that she would be required to tear her inner world apart.

Negroes peopled much of Lillian’s inner world. Lillian says of her feelings for her wet nurse, "I knew but I never believed it, that the deep respect I felt for her, the tenderness, the love was a childish thing that every normal child outgrows, that such love begins with one’s toys and is discarded with them" (471). Lillian’s guilt at the behavior she was developing made the inner transition from childhood to adolescence even harder, the death of her youth even more of a loss. Young Lillian came to realize "somehow --- though it seemed impossible to my agonized heart – I too, must outgrow these feelings" (471). At a time and place in her young life when fitting in is paramount, she was all but powerless against the established and accepted behaviors of the Southern tradition. Writer Jay Watson also contradicts any hopes of a different outcome. "When young Lillian dares to think to herself that black people might really be her social equals, another voice, the internalized voice of Southern tradition, immediately interrupts to banish the thought" (479). After all, exhibiting the behavior and thought patterns of the Southern tradition was considered to be a sign of growing up.

Thus Lillian began to take on her role in the perpetuation of those values by gradually changing in her own behavior. In her dealings with the wet nurse, Lillian "learned to use a soft voice to oil my words of superiority" (470). After the family determines that Janie is "colored," Lillian plays the piano to calm herself and little Janie joins her looking for some comfort. Lillian remembers that "I shrank away from her as if my body had been uncovered. I had not said a word, but she knew, and tears rolled slowly down her little white face" (476). Lillian was progressing on the path laid out by generations of Southerners before her, much like her father, who when hearing that Janie was actually "colored" quickly agreed that she should return to Colored Town, because "now that you know, it is pretty simple" (474). Thus Lillian Smith appeared to be joining in the lockstep march of the next generation of Southern racists.

In Killers of a Dream, Lillian Smith proves handily that life for most blacks during the Jim Crow days was, to say the least , dreadful. But Negroes were not the only ones to suffer from the segregation of blacks and whites. Smith also painstakingly depicts the harrowing guilt and confusion faced by young white children like Lillian as they come to grips with the double meanings of their world. It’s a role they may not have necessarily chosen, but will likely feel forced to accept in order to preserve their status quo. In Killers of a Dream, Smith outlines the racist curriculum of Southern tradition that is passed down in each white family, each with its own unique set of peccadilloes. Furthermore, she reveals that the guilt from each subsequent generation taught the evil lessons of white superiority fuels the dream killers in the hearts of everyone.

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