Edith Renfrow Smith, part of Northwestern’s ‘SuperAgers’ study, dies at 111

Edith Renfrow Smith, the first Black woman to graduate from Grinnell College in Iowa and a longtime Chicago schoolteacher, remained mentally sharp well past 100, becoming the subject for medical researchers studying what they called “SuperAgers.”

Smith, 111, died of natural causes on Friday at the Breakers assisted living facility, where she had moved in October, said her daughter, Alice Frances Smith.

Edith Renfrow was born in Grinnell, Iowa, on July 14, 1914, the fifth of six children. Her grandparents, George Craig and Eliza Jan Craig, were born into slavery. Her father was a hotel chef.

The Renfrows were one of the only African American families in Grinnell at that time, and her parents stressed the importance of education for all of their children.

“My mother insisted that education was the only thing that could not be taken away from them,” Smith told National Public Radio’s Scott Simon in 2023.

Smith graduated from Grinnell College in 1937 — 91 years after the college was founded — with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, becoming the first Black woman ever to graduate from the small liberal arts college and the 11th Black graduate of the college to that point.

While at Grinnell, Smith met Amelia Earhart when the famed avi...