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Ethel morgan smith biography

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ETHEL MORGAN SMITH is the author of three books

 

  • Path to Grace: Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement (August 2023);

  • Reflections of the Other: Being Black in Germany, a finalist for Indie Award (2017);

  • From Whence Cometh My Help: The African American Community at Hollins College (2016);

  • From Whence Cometh My Help: The African American Community at Hollins College (2000).

 

Her work has appeared in following: 

  • The New York Times,

  • Green Mountain Review,

  • Callaloo,

  • STIR Journal,

  • African American Review,

  • The University Florida Journal,

  • Tusculum Review,

  • De Standaard-Brussel, Belgium

  • Midnight & Indigo

  • Mr. Wrong

  • Honey Hush! African American Women’s Humor

  • Spittoon 3.23

  • Burying Gems

  • Mad Hearts

  • Shaping Memories

  • From My People: 400 Years of African American Folklore

  • All of the Women in My Family Sing

  • An Anthology of Grandmothers

  • The Potomac Review

  • Kestrel

  • Re-Visioning the Past-Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier-Germany

 

Smith adapted her first book—From Whence Cometh My

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The Problem with Evolving

Ethel Morgan Smith


“I have some news I need to share with you,” my oldest friend Sarah says over the phone. We met more than 35 years ago when our sons were the new kids in the third or fourth grade at the Fernbank School in Atlanta. Sarah says third grade; I say fourth. We volunteered to help with the Halloween party that year.

“Is everybody okay?” I try to prepare myself for bad news.

“Oh yeah.”

“In that case I can take anything,” I say with confidence.

“We sold the Park Avenue place.”

“You did what?” I gasp.

“We knew this was going to be hard on you.”

“You damn right this is hard on me. This is worse than somebody dying. I’ve had a Park Avenue address since forever. You just can’t take it away.” Both of us had left Atlanta more than 30 years ago. I was awarded a fellowship to graduate school; and Sarah moved to Rye, New York; her husband Charles had accepted a new position at Pace University. In Atlanta he had been the Dean of the Business School at Emory University. A few years after they moved to Rye, he died from a massive heart attack

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We Create Birmingham: Ethel Morgan Smith

Interview by Tonia Trotter
Photos by Ambre Amari

Ethel Morgan Smith is an American author and professor. In addition to her articles and essays penned for The New York Times, Callaloo, and African American Review, the Fulbright Scholar and Rockefeller Foundation fellow has published two books that explore the Black experience — in the world of academia and living abroad. 

A native Alabamian and downtown resident, Ethel shares with us about her most recent project The Theory of Grace: Voices and Visions of the Civil Rights Movement, a compilation of stories from her own life as well as collected retellings of those silent voices.

Ethel, you moved to Birmingham three years ago from Morgantown, West Virginia. What brought you here?

I was a professor at West Virginia University from 1993-2017, when the University offered buyouts, I was looking for a new way to live, and wanted to be near my family in Barbour County. My childhood friend is a physician here in Birmingham. We reconnected in 2006. I started spending time with

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