Renfrow Smith in her cap and gown the day she graduated from Grinnell College in 1937.
Edith Renfrow Smith family collection/Drake Community Library Archive Collection
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Edith Renfrow Smith family collection/Drake Community Library Archive Collection
Edith Renfrow Smith died Friday at her home in Chicago. She was 111.
In addition to a notably long life — she was one of a very small number of “supercentenarians,” or people who live to at least 110 — she bore witness to major events and came into personal contact with historical figures. She was a pioneering Black woman with an unassuming personality.
Renfrow Smith’s daughter, Alice Smith, confirmed her death to NPR.
Lifting a heavy burden
At the time of Edith Renfrow’s birth, Poweshiek County, Iowa, had 20,000 residents. Just 55 of them were Black. Her grandfather, George Craig, had made his way there after escaping enslavement with the aid of John Brown, and was working as a barber in the town of Grinnell. Her own parents, Lee and Eva Renfrow, worked as a cook and a laundress. It was only a few decades after Plessy v. Ferguson established “separate but equal,” and yet despite it all the Renfrows made sure all six of their children attended college.
“My mother insisted that education was the only thing that could not be taken away,” Renfrow Smith told NPR’s Scott Simon in 2023. “My sister, who was eight years older than I, went into service so she could keep my brother in Hampton Institute in Virginia until he graduated from college. Everybody helped each other.”
Renfrow Smith would attend Grinnell College, the small liberal arts school just blocks from her home. She was at that point the school’s only Black student and with her graduation in 1937 became the first Black woman graduate in the college’s history.
It was during her time on campus that Renfrow Smith met Amelia Earhart. “She was one of the celebrities that came to Grinnell to talk to the students,” Smith recalled. “She was just like another one of us. It was a delightful visit.”
Working outside the home
Renfrow Smith entered the workforce during the Great Depression, when the Black unemployment rate far surpassed the rate for whites and when female Black workers were overwhelmingly in domestic service. She found employment in Chicago as a secretary to Oscar De Priest, first African American elected to Congress in the post-Reconstruction modern era.
“He asked me if I would like to be a teacher,” Renfrow Smith explained. “That’s when I decided to take a methods course where I could join the Chicago system.” She would be a Chicago Public School elementary school teacher for 22 years.
Brushing elbows
Edith Renfrow married Henry Smith in 1940. They had two daughters, Alice and Virginia, and settled on Chicago’s South Side along with many other Black families, such as the Hancocks across the street.
“Mrs. Smith was a dear friend of my mother’s in particular,” Herbie Hancock told NPR in 2023. “We were that close, almost like we were related. She had a regal kind of presence. She didn’t try to convince me to go to Grinnell… just her demeanor was one of absolute respect.”
Hancock would go on to attend Smith’s alma mater, where he found his calling as a musician. He’d later become one of America’s greatest jazz artists.
The Smiths were avid consumers of Chicago Black culture. Renfrow Smith recalls meeting poet Gwendolyn Brooks “in passing because she was giving a program at the YWCA. I went to all the programs … and the YWCA saw to it that we met all the famous Negroes who came to Chicago.”
It was elsewhere that Renfrow Smith came into contact with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “When he came and spoke at a synagogue,” she said, “that was when I met him.”
Giving with gratitude
Renfrow Smith at home in Chicago
Alice Smith/family photo
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Alice Smith/family photo
After Renfrow Smith’s 1976 retirement from the Chicago Public School system, she volunteered and indulged a hobby of pie-making. She also regularly welcomed visitors and did so as recently as Dec. 26, reported her daughter Alice Smith, adding that the elder Renfrow Smith herself prepared a fruit cocktail of pineapple and mandarin oranges for her guests.
Renfrow Smith participated as a “SuperAger” at the University of Chicago’s Healthy Aging & Alzheimer’s Research Care Center, and she donated her remains for research.
In the 2023 conversation with Scott Simon, Renfrow Smith reflected on all the history she had seen. “A lot, a lot, a lot,” she said. “A lot of good, and a lot of bad.”
But she still looked forward to each new day. “Wake up every morning and thank the good Lord that you are alive and able to look at his wonderful world,” she advised. “And always go with a smile. A frown does nothing for the person you meet.”
