Barbara Smith facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids Barbara Smith

Born	(1946-11-16) November 16, 1946 (age 78) Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation	Independent scholar, writer, activist
Education	Mount Holyoke College (BA) University of Pittsburgh (MA)
Literary movement	Black feminism
Relatives	Beverly Smith (sister)

Barbara Smith (born November 16, 1946) is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in Black feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s, she has been active as a scholar, activist, critic, lecturer, author, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years. Smith's essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditions and The Nation. She has a twin sister, Beverly Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.

Early life
Later life
See also

Early life

Childhood

Barbara Smith and her fraternal twin sister, Beverly, were born on November 16, 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Hilda Beall Smith. Born prematurely, both twins struggled during their first months of life, though Beverly particularly struggled after contracting pneumonia. Their mother worked as a nurse's aide and later a store clerk, so the girls’ grandmother acted as their primary caretaker during their childhood, while their mother drew an income. In 1956, when Barbara and Beverly were nine, their mother died from heart complications related to childhood rheumatic fever. After their mother's death, the girls continued to live in a two-family home with their grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Although the Smith family was of relatively little means, her grandmother, aunts, and mother were all well-educated, especially for the level of education accessible to Black women in the 1940s and 1950s. Her grandmother and great-aunts taught in segregated schools in the South before moving north, though her mother was the only one in her family to have received a college diploma, a Bachelor's of Science in education from Fort Valley State University (then Fort Valley State College). Barbara's family were all active readers who emphasized education, inside and outside of school.

For most of her life, Barbara had little knowledge of her father, Gartrell Smith, who split with Hilda before the twins were born. According to Barbara's mother's cousin, “Aunt” Isabel, Hilda and Gartrell eloped after Hilda's parents disapproved of the match. Hilda returned to Cleveland pregnant after her split with Gartrell. Barbara never met her father or saw pictures of him. Little is known of him other than that he was a member of the military during World War II and that Hilda and Gartrell met in Georgia, where Hilda attended college.

Although Barbara and her sister grew up in the northern United States, her family retained its southern roots and traditions from rural Georgia. Her mother's family was one of the millions of African-American families that participated in the Great Migration in the first half of the 20th century to escape the South's oppressive racial caste system and improve their economic circumstances. Barbara describes her identity as that of a southern woman and credits her family's experience with intense racial trauma in Georgia as a catalyst for her activism. At the same time, she does not exonerate the north from intense racial discrimination, documenting several formative incidents of anti-Blackness that she and her sister experienced. Despite obvious racial discrimination, however, both Barbara and Beverly excelled academically.

Education

Barbara Smith and her sister began their elementary education at Bolton Elementary School and moved to Robert Fulton Elementary School during 1st grade. Smith partially credits her early academic success to the high quality of the public schools she attended. Although she and her sister were selected for a special school for the academically talented in fourth grade, their family decided not to switch the girls' school so soon after their mother's death. Barbara and Beverly attended Alexander Hamilton Jr. High School and later John Adams High School.

In high school, Smith excelled in honors and AP classes and scored very high on the PSAT. Her grades and test scores gained her entrance to Mount Holyoke College in 1965, but, fatigued by racial animosity at the college, she transferred to the New School for Social Research in New York City, where she studied social sciences for a year. She returned to Mount Holyoke for her senior year and graduated in 1969.

After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1969, Smith pursued an MA in literature at the University of Pittsburgh and graduated in 1971. In Pittsburgh she began to become active in the Women's movement and the Gay Liberation movement.

In 1981, Smith completed all but the dissertation for her doctoral studies at the University of Connecticut. By that time, she was a well-established, well-known activist for Black, feminist, and LGBTQ issues.

In 2015, the University at Albany awarded Smith an honorary doctorate degree.

Early activism

Because she grew up in a deeply segregated society, Smith developed a political consciousness from a young age. As high school students, she and her sister participated in civil rights protests that centered on school desegregation. During this time, Smith was a volunteer for the Cleveland chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She describes the murder of Bruce Klunder, an activist and minister, as a catalytic force behind her involvement with the Cleveland movement. She attended several speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., and met civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer.

In 1965, Smith matriculated at Mount Holyoke College, where she was one of the few Black students. She quickly became involved with the Civil Actions Group, which, among other issues, was involved in organizing against the Vietnam War. Although Mount Holyoke did not have a Students for Democratic Society (SDS) chapter on campus, Smith and other Mount Holyoke students admired and imitated the group's efforts. During her year at the New School for Social Research, Smith traveled to Chicago and participated in the protests accompanying the Democratic National Convention.

After graduating from Mount Holyoke, Smith took a break from front-line activism, where she felt constrained by her identity as a woman in the Black nationalist movement. For a time, she reasoned that she could help advance racial justice by working within the academy. But after attending a meeting of the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO), she reentered the sphere of activism and began collaborating with many notable women of color.

Smith settled in Boston after receiving an MA in literature from the University of Pittsburgh. Her sister Beverly's staff position at Ms. Magazine allowed Beverly to obtain critical contacts, and through the publication, Barbara met Margaret Sloan, a founder of the NBFO. Intrigued by the call for attendance to the NBFO's Eastern Regional Conference in 1974, Smith caucused with women from the Boston area and made contacts in order to establish a Boston NBFO chapter.

In 1975, with Beverly and Demita Frazier, a Chicago activist, Smith established a Boston NBFO chapter. Due to lack of direction from the national organization, the Boston chapter had an independent nature, deciding as a group to focus on consciousness-raising and grassroots organizing that assisted Boston's poor and working classes.

Later life

Public office

Continuing her work as a community organizer, Smith was elected to the Albany, New York Common Council (city council) in 2005, representing Ward 4, and reelected in 2009. She also worked during this period with David Kaczynski at New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty on innovative solutions to violent crime. During her two terms on the Albany Common Council, Smith was active on issues of youth development, violence prevention, and educational opportunities for poor, minority and underserved persons. She did not seek reelection in 2013. Smith now works with the Albany Mayor's Office spearheading initiatives to address economic, racial, and social inequality.

Accomplishments

Smith has continued to lecture and speak. She donated her papers to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, New York, and gave oral histories of her life to Columbia University and Smith College. She appeared in Marlon Riggs's 1994 documentary Black Is...Black Ain't and the 2013 PBS and AOL documentary Makers: Women Who Make America. On February 2, 2017, she made a speech at Claiming Williams, "an annual event where the campus community comes together to discuss issues of race, gender, identity, religion and community". Claiming Williams is "moral courage day" at Williams College. Smith said that "taking the high ground, being honest, and deciding to do something that is objectively frightening" are key components of moral courage.

Smith was a Fellow at Radcliffe College's Bunting Institute in 1996 and received a 1994 Stonewall Award for her activism. She received the Church Women United's Human Rights Award in 2000 and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

On November 14, 2015, the Albany Public Library Foundation awarded Smith the title "LITERARY LEGEND", along with Albany native Gregory Maguire (author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West).

Smith is an activist against Islamophobia. She established a website, "Stop Islamophobia", to demonstrate support for immigrants and refugees. She created a "United States of All" decal and coordinated marches in November and December 2016.

Season 6, episode 3 of the podcast Making Gay History, released in 2019, was about Smith.

In February 2020, Smith endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in the Democratic Party primaries.

In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, Queerty named her among the 50 heroes “leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people”.

Awards and recognition

African American Policy Forum Harriet Tubman Lifetime Achievement Award (2017)
Lambda Literary Award: Publishing Professional Award
Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College Achievement Award
Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Association Sesquicentennial Award
Nomination for Nobel Peace Prize (2005)
Fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College
Scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (1995–1996)
Church Women United's Human Rights Award (2000)
Stonewall Award for Service to the Lesbian and Gay Community (1994)
The David R Kessler Award for Lesbian & Gay Studies: CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies(1994)

Smith Caring Circle

As a someone who practices what she preaches and has committed to a "lifetime of work and struggle", Smith does not have access to traditional retirement fund. Following in the collective care of a Black feminist ethos, there is a Caring Circle that supports Smith and her work. Contributions can be made monthly.