William Gardner Smith (February 6, 1927 – November 5, 1974) was an American journalist, novelist, and editor. Smith is linked to the black social protest novel tradition of the 1940s and the 1950s, a movement that became synonymous with writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Willard Motley, and Ann Petry. Smith's third book, "South Street" (1954), is considered to be one of the first black militant protest novels. His last published novel, "The Stone Face" (1963), in its account of the Paris massacre of 1961, "stand[s] as one of the few representations of the event available all the way up until the early 1990s".