Grinnell College names new off-campus dorm after pioneering 108-year-old alum

It took Grinnell College 91 years to graduate its first Black female student.

Eighty-five years later, and with growing recognition of her as a figure in the history of the college, she's still around to tell her story.

Edith Renfrow Smith, age 108, was honored Monday as college leaders announced she would be the namesake for the new Civic Engagement Quad at the prestigious Iowa liberal arts school, founded in 1846.

Smith remains healthy and engaged, though she's among the oldest Americans. She's been one of the subjects of a Northwestern University SuperAging study since 2016, as featured on the "Today" show.

Speaking to the Des Moines Register, she said she's excited not only that the college is bestowing her with the honor, but that she is around to appreciate it.

"I think it's the most wonderful and most exciting thing that could happen to anybody from Grinnell," Renfrow Smith said. "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."

Born in 1914, weeks before the start of World War I, Renfrow Smith is a living link to the history of Grinnell, with a family descended from some of the city's first Black residents. According to the online historical archives of the Drake Community Library, her grandfather was an escaped slave from Missouri who made his way to Grinnell in 1859 via the Underground Railroad. Her grandmother also was born in slavery, sent north from her South Carolina home as a child by her plantation-owner father, who wanted to ensure her freedom.

The fifth of six children of Lee and Eva Pearl Renfrow, Renfrow Smith attended local public schools. The family were members of a church with many congregants from the college, attended college events, hosted young Black men who were enrolled at the college and had relatives who worked in largely service roles there.

Renfrow Smith's mother was an advocate for education, and all the children were expected to pursue college degrees. Though three of her older siblings attended historically Black colleges, Renfrow Smith always was determined to go to Grinnell.

She majored in psychology with a minor in economics, and graduated in 1937.

Throughout her four undergraduate years amid the Great Depression, she was the only Black student on campus, and lived at home to save money. It wasn't easy, and she said that even in the 1970s, when she received a book a resident had written about the history of Grinnell, it gave little attention to the influence of the town's Black residents.

"It was like we didn't even exist in this city," she said.

Now, domestic students of color make up 26% of the student body at Grinnell, according to the college website.

"The picture for Black students has changed so much over the years," Renfrow Smith said.

Despite barriers, she was active in the life of the college community, bolstered by her mother's insistence that her children regard themselves with the utmost self-respect.

“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," said Dr. Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, professor of gender, women's and sexuality studies at Grinnell College. "To me, this is what is at the heart of Edith Renfrow Smith's success and her family's success, to have this woman who firmly believed in her children and equipped them to push back against all the negative images that they would encounter as Black children in a white community,"

After graduation, Renfrow Smith moved to Chicago, married and raised two daughters. In 1954, she began work as a public school teacher. After her retirement in 1976, she spent some 40 years volunteering at Goodwill and the Art Institute of Chicago, and was inducted into the Chicago Senior Citizens Hall of Fame in 2009.

She's credited with influencing a Chicago neighbor, now-world-famous jazz musician Herbie Hancock, to attend Grinnell, from which he graduated in 1960.

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The naming of the new Civic Engagement Quad for her isn't the first honor she's received from Grinnell. In 2007, at her 70th class reunion, the Smith Gallery, an art exhibition space in the Joe Rosenfield Center, was named for her. And in 2019, Grinnell College established the Edith Renfrow Smith Black Women's Library in the Conney M. Kimbo Black Cultural Center.

Also in 2019, the college presented her with an honorary doctorate at its commencement ceremony.

The Civic Engagement Quad will be an off-campus dormitory in downtown Grinnell. The initial designs include 24 apartments and a first-floor pavilion dedicated to civic engagement and dialogue, which will be open to the public.

The building, scheduled to open in fall 2024, bridges the campus and the town, just as Renfrow Smith did nearly nine decades ago.

“This endeavor requires determination and optimism. It requires a commitment to civic trust. It requires a bit of risk taking," said Grinnell College President Anne Harris. "As we thought about Grinnellians whose lives and accomplishments embody these values and who have served as a positive and undaunted inspiration to others, it quickly became clear that Edith Renfrow Smith was that alumna. As Renfrow Hall will reside in a space that connects the City of Grinnell and the college, it will do so carrying the name of the truest of true Grinnellians.” 

Nina Baker is a news reporter at the Des Moines Register. She can be reached at NBaker@gannett.com or on Twitter@Nina_M_Baker.