Barbara Smith

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.

During one such incident, she and her sister brought homemade cookies to their summer French class, which was taught by an unabashedly racist woman.

None of the white children in the class ate any of the cookies.

Despite obvious racial discrimination, however, both Barbara and Beverly excelled academically.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).