Edith Renfrow Smith believed in using the time you were given.
In 2019, standing before graduates at Grinnell College, she looked back on more than a century of a life spent breaking barriers.
“Grinnell has been my life,” she told graduates. “And life has been wonderful. Remember, take every opportunity to do your best, and I have done it, I hope.”
Renfrow Smith, a supercentenarian born the granddaughter of slaves and who lived through the administrations of 19 U.S. presidents, died Friday, Jan. 2, in Chicago. She was 111.
Born in Iowa two weeks before the start of World War I and five years before women were granted the right to vote, Smith became the first Black woman to graduate from Grinnell College in 1937 and remained mentally sharp well past 100, later becoming part of medical research examining aging and memory.
“She felt it was time,” her daughter, Alice Frances Smith, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “She said she was tired.”
Renfrow Smith was born July 14, 1914, in Grinnell into one of the town’s few African American families. She was the fifth of six children born to Lee Renfrow, a chef at the Monroe Hotel. Her mother, Eva Pearl, took in laundry.
Her grandfather was an escaped slave from Missouri who made his way to Grinnell via the Underground Railroad in 1859 and established himself there as a barber, according to historical records cited by the Drake Community Library. Her grandmother also was born into slavery and was sent north from South Carolina as a child so she could live free.
Renfrow Smith attended local public schools in Grinnell, including Davis Elementary School. Her family regularly hosted Black students enrolled at Grinnell in the 1920s, known as the Rosenwald Scholars, for Sunday dinners.
Her mother placed a strong emphasis on education, a value that shaped all six children. Though three of her older siblings attended historically Black colleges, Renfrow Smith always was determined to go to Grinnell.
“Mrs. Renfrow Smith’s mother was a person who told her children every day, ‘No one is better than you’ — that you are special, that there is something that you are meant to do in the world,” Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, professor of gender, women’s and sexuality studies at Grinnell College, told the Des Moines Register in 2022.
In June 1937, she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology with minors in economics and history. More than 600 Black women would later follow her path and graduate from Grinnell.
While an undergraduate, Renfrow Smith met Amelia Earhart during one of the famed aviator’s visits to campus.
After graduating, Renfrow Smith moved to Chicago, where she worked as a stenographer, a telephone operator, and a secretary, including for Oscar Stanton De Priest, the first Black man elected to Congress in the 20th century. In 1940, she married Henry T. Smith, a milkman for Borden Milk Co. The couple raised two daughters, Edith Virginia and Alice Frances, and lived in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood.
In 1954, she began teaching at Ludwig Van Beethoven Elementary School on the South Side, a career that spanned 22 years. She retired in 1976 and later volunteered for decades at Goodwill and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Renfrow Smith lived across the street from the Hancock family during her years in Chicago. She was later credited with inspiring a neighbor, jazz legend Herbie Hancock, to attend Grinnell College.
As she aged, her memory remained unusually sharp. She was one of perhaps a thousand supercentenarians — people who live to 110 — in the world. Renfrow Smith became part of medical research focused on aging, including SuperAger studies at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, as well as a genetics study in Boston.
Renfrow Smith was inducted into the Chicago Senior Citizens Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2024, she was inducted into the Iowa African American Hall of Fame.
Grinnell College continued to recognize her legacy in her later years. In 2019, the college awarded her an honorary doctorate. In 2022, it named a new residence hall in her honor, Renfrow Hall, a $67 million facility designed to foster connection between students and the broader community.
“I think it’s the most wonderful and most exciting thing that could happen to anybody from Grinnell,” she told the Des Moines Register at the time. “Usually, when they name something for someone, the person has been dead. But look, I’m still alive, and I can enjoy what’s going to happen.”
Renfrow Smith attended the dorm’s dedication in September 2024 at age 110.
Grinnell President Anne F. Harris said Renfrow Smith “will always hold a special place in Grinnellian hearts for her steadfastness and perseverance, her brilliance, and her belief that we can do better.”
“I will miss her, I will miss the sparkle in her eye, and knowing that she is there,” she added.
Beauboeuf-Lafontant described Renfrow Smith as her family’s memory keeper, preserving two centuries of family history through firsthand recollection. Her memories of early 20th-century Grinnell, Beauboeuf-Lafontant said, expanded what the town and the college understand about their own past.
Renfrow Smith is survived by her daughter, Alice Frances Smith, and extended family across several generations. Her daughter, Edith Virginia, died in 1998. Her husband of 73 years, Henry Smith, died in 2013.
Nick El Hajj is a reporter at the Register. He can be reached at nelhajj@gannett.com. Follow him on X at @nick_el_hajj.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Grinnell’s first Black woman graduate Edith Renfrow Smith dies at 111
Reporting by Nick El Hajj, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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