and allowed me to know that i can negotiate with the best of them. >> in the weeks ahead we would hear from barbara, nancy johnson and. watch oral history sunday link back to booktv continues now with another stop from the c. stands for these two are. the next visit from tyler texas includes lou anne smoot talks about the struggles of hiding her homosexuality in texas for 60 years. it's the topic of her memoir out a courageous woman's journey. >> i start off talking about my parents, because they had such an influence on the direction that my wife took. they were southern baptists. so, i was brought up in the baptist faith tradition. they were leaders in the church.

my dad was a deacon and those others talk about sunday school classes and it seemed like we were at the church every time the doors opened. i learned to take my religion very seriously, so much so that when it was time to choose a college to attend, i chose baylor university and it was there that i had to face the fact that i was different because i fell in love with a girl at baylor. when i had been in high school, i had what i called a strange feeling towards a particular girl. having been brought up in a very, very conservative home, i had never heard the words gay, lesbian, homosexual. i didn't even know that it was

possible for a girl to fall in love with another girl. so i have no vocabulary to explain to myself who and what it was i was feeling. so, as i've already mentioned, i fell in love, we were both seven team and this was in 1956. when the christmas holidays came, we were separated for the first time and we miss each other so much that we would always writing letters back and forth. each evening i propped up in bed and i wrote to her. my dad was a sociology major with knowledge of same-sex attraction and rightfully concluded that his only daughter was gay. he shared this with my mother and suggested she go in and have a talk with me.

so she came into my bedroom that evening and shared with me what she had been taught about being gay. but it was sinful and certainly unacceptable for me to live my life that way. they have plans for me to earn my teaching certificate and she told me that evening though school district would harm me to teach in the schools have also explained that he would have a very difficult time just finding a place to live, that no one would grant us an apartment and few people would even sell us a house. so she painted a very bleak picture of our future together. her talk with me that evening devastated me. i felt guilty, i felt shameful

for something i felt i couldn't help. after all, i hadn't planned to fall in love with a girl. i would have much preferred to have fallen in love with a boy, someone i can proudl could prouw off, someone i could marry, someone with whom i could have a family, but that didn't happen. i felt my life was in a mess. i felt sorry for myself. ..

>> it was part of sitting in that was part of our life. when i was 23 i was teaching high school in odessa and west texas. one day i simply said to myself you will never fall in love with a man so quit waiting for that to happen but you do need to get married. so pick out a nice fellow and miriam and get it over with. it wasn't long after i made that decision to marry without love, that a friend arranged a blind date for me. a nice fellow, a schoolteacher with aspirations to be an

administrator and this appealed to me because my dad was a school administrator. his dad was a southern baptist preacher. he loved children and very much wanted to have a family. and i wanted to have children. so i asked myself what more is it that i'm looking for? he fits the bill. we were married march 1963. it wasn't long after he married when i realized i had made a terrible mistake. i was very unhappy. but by the time i began to seriously consider divorce we had our first child. a little boy that i named after his dad. and as i contemplated asking for divorce, i told myself it

would be cruel to separate this son of his father. and i would bring shame to my parents who were in the public eye in little rock because divorcing in the 60s was shameful. and then i told myself i would bring pain to my in-laws who loved me were proud of me divorcing their eldest. as i thought through all of the ramifications of getting a divorce, i always came to the same conclusion that no one would benefit from a divorce but me and that made a very selfish decision. i had been taught all my life not to be selfish.

so eventually i decided i would honor my wedding bows till death do part and that is what i did for 37 years. but i was very unhappy during that time. we had four children. they brought light and joy into my life in the still do. but i was determined that nobody would ever know that i was gay especially my husband to ever find out that i was gay. i also avoided reading anything about homosexuality for fear somebody would see me reading that type of material and figure out i was gay. so i went through life very ignorant on the subject. i thought i was a unique human

being suffering in a way nobody else was suffering. i also avoided having a close friend for fear i would fall in love with her. so i was a shell of a person i was not the woman i was created to be. i began to think of my inability to love a man as a dirty trick god played on me over and over and that thought would go through my mind and then i added to the thought to say that god tries to make up for that trick by giving me a good life because i had a good life. i had married a good man. i had four wonderful children. i had a secure life. but i was always thinking

missing her wondering where she was what she was doing and if she was happy and when i think about her, the tears would come. and i convince myself that i would never again be happy here honor. only by dying and going to heaven what i ever again be happy. so i spent close to 40 years of my life yearning for that and thinking of all kinds of ways. i could kill myself and eventually just begging god to take me. take me right then and i was ready to go. but all of this changed in 1999. at that time i was teaching a lady's sunday school class

here in downtown tyler. it was a small class i had not been teaching it long. and one morning i was visiting with the members and we were sharing information about her family's and faith and she began to tell me about her son who was an artist and she told me he was so kind and thoughtful person especially to his grandmother. and it was about then that a thought came into my mind like a lightbulb going off. her son is gay it wasn't a question i wonder if it is it wasn't like that. i knew her son was gay. and for that reason i believe

god put that thought in my head and i believe god pushed me into what i did next which was totally illogical, because i asked this woman, is your son a homosexual? you don't ask people that question especially conservative area like tyler texas and a member of the southern baptist church. she was shocked. and she hesitated for quite some time before she eventually said, yes but that's just the way god made him and god loves him just the way he is. i had never heard that before that god loved gaze and especially that god loved gaze when they were not even pretending to be straight. her words that morning changed

my life. it would take too long to explain all the emotions i experienced that afternoon but finally it was on this woman her words of acceptance were words that i have never heard before and it stirred that dead spot in my heart and after all my efforts to avoid this problem never to tell anybody i was gay or reading about the subject all of those efforts were for not to because that feeling of love for a woman came completely out of the blue and hit me hard i couldn't continue any longer. i had to get out of my marriage and five months later i asked my husband for divorce

and told him i was very unhappy in the marriage and i moved out of our home into a small one bedroom apartment. and about two months later he sent me a long e-mail to please be specific what it was in the marriage that made me so unhappy. i didn't answer that letter because i never had any intention of ever admitting to anyone that i was gay. but when i. >> reporter: his letter i realized he was blaming himself for things that had nothing to do with me asking for divorce. then i reminded myself we were married 37 years and i felt that i owed him the truth. so late that i wrote a long e-mail back.

that i was gay and always had been gay and i tried to ask elaine what it is like to be gay in the world that does not accept gaze. he wrote back immediately to say this was a subject he did not want to discuss on the web but asked if he could come by my apartment the next morning after his exercise class and i said certainly. when i opened the door about 9:00 o'clock the next morning, he took me in his arms and held me tight and began sobbing. and i held him and cried eventually we set down on the sofa and a box of tissues between us and i gave him the opportunity to vent for all those years of frustration when he tried to be close to me and couldn't. he always said there was a wall between us.

and i knew he was right but i never told him he was. one of the questions he asked me that morning was is this something you thought about every year? and i said every year? i thought about it every day. he said it must've been a miserable life. when i came out to my brother in california he told me i needed a support group because i didn't know any gaze. so he sent me a list of various organizations and i found a lot of them were in dallas but one of them was in tyler texas. and at that time it stood for parents families and friends

of lesbians and gays. but i called the phone number and on monday evening i drove to st. francis of this couple church and drove my car and sat there for a long time to work up the courage to a meeting of strangers at that time i was a wine and spent my full life hiding the fact i was gay. and i knew that my life would be changing after that evening. when i sat in my car i have to admit there was a certain curiosity as to what gays and lesbians looks like and acted like as i was just a much a

victim as everybody else. when i eventually walked into the room of 25 or 30 people there was one empty chair by the woman who is now my wife, brenda, we were in a relationship for over 17 years now, the last two as legally married i always really feel god was watching over me that evening. that first felt like a church service to me because there was a lot of talk about god and how much god loves gaze despite the messages we would get from the pulpits around town. when i actually came out in my church i started to feel very uncomfortable.

there were several members i considered friends who simply could not look me in the eye and it made me feel as if they saw me as the academy of evil itself. and i gave serious consideration to leaving the church, finding somewhere else to worship where i would be more comfortable. but i feel god loves me and reminded me of that time i was a member of first baptist for almost 12 years. the congregation knew me not only as a wife, send a schoolteacher, hand bell ringer and a deacon and active and supportive member of the congregation and if i left i would throw away that goodwill so if i stay i told myself i

have a very unique opportunity to be known as a gay christian leavy that was an oxymoron. so i decided i would stay. but then when brenda joined me shortly thereafter, then we were the example of a gay christian kumble and we made a point to sit together the third row from the front in the center section where everybody could see us and we remained as active as they would allow us there were some restrictions. we would remain an additional 14 years we finally left the first part of 2015. i spent most of my life believing being gay was a moral failing.

and i did everything in my power to hide the fact that i was gay. but now i believe being gay is just the way people are. just the way im, and i'm thing for for god's love and the freedom he gives me to simply be who i am. my purpose for writing the story, at least in the beginning was to have a target audience of fundamentalist students who were convinced being gay was chosen and i have always felt my story depicts perfectly that in games not chosen. and i wanted to target that group and convince them erroneously that we can change

and that we can become street people and all they have to do is pray. goodness knows i prayed for years. i knew that was not the solutio solution. it did not change me. that was my target audience. then once i realized fundamentalist christians are not interested in my story, then i thought i had learned by that time those who were, were those who had lived a life similar to mine or who had gay children and this targeted the organization. so many of the talks i have given through nine different states at this time has been to these groups primarily although a few churches were college classes.

but primarily the gay groups it's amazing how many people come up afterwords and say you just told my story or a statement that i made is exactly how i felt. i have become a voice for many who have the same story to share but have not been able to share it the way that i have. i never started off to be a gay advocate. that was not my goal but to convince fundamentalist christians in and i realized in the attempt to do that i had become a gay activist and had become able to admit that i'm gay and no longer bothers me i am proud of the fact i am gay. i wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

>> if they could come back and see america today, and see the most important play on broadway and the last several years is a play that to lionize alexander hamilton to vilify jefferson and ignores pain and the maldistribution of wealth in the united states and the amount of money to american politics today, they would see or fear that many of these things that are going on in the united states today had an uncanny resemblance to the england that they revolted against