Edith Renfrow Smith Dies at 111

Wednesday, January 07, 2026

Edith Renfrow Smith grew up in the 1910s hearing her grandparents' stories of surviving slavery, including a grandfather who escaped bondage with a group led by abolitionist John Brown.

Posted by south_american at 04:33 PM | 3 COMMENTS | permalink

Last year, for Black History Month, NPR's Scott Simon spoke with Edith Renfrow Smith of Chicago, who has died at 111 years old. n.pr/4pqsvpa

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-- NPR (@npr.org) Jan 6, 2026 at 7:00 PM

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More from the cited article ...

... Asked in 2023 how much history she had witnessed, she sighed: "A lot, a lot, a lot. A lot of good, and a lot of bad."

Renfrow Smith, a secretary turned public school teacher, lived a life directly connected to America's history of slavery as well as to the progress made in the 20th and 21st centuries.

"This has been the greatest century we have seen," Renfrow Smith told WGN, a television station in Chicago, where she lived most of her life. "There have been so many changes." ...

R.I.P. Edith Renfrow Smith

#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-01-06 11:33 PM