Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson - Early Life

Early Life

African American
topics
History
  • Atlantic slave trade
  • Maafa
  • Slavery in the United States
  • African-American military history
  • Jim Crow laws
  • Great Migration
  • Redlining
Civil Rights Movement
1896–1954 / 1955–1968
  • Second Great Migration
  • Afrocentrism
  • Post–Civil Rights era
Culture
  • African-American studies
  • Art
  • Black mecca
  • Black schools
  • Black colleges and universities
  • Juneteenth
  • Kwanzaa
  • Literature
  • Museums
  • Music
  • Neighborhoods
Religion
  • Black church
  • Black liberation theology
  • Black theology
  • Doctrine of Father Divine
  • American Society of Muslims
  • Nation of Islam
  • Black Hebrew Israelites
  • The Nation of Gods and Earths
Political movements
  • Pan-Africanism
  • Black Power
  • Capitalism
  • Conservatism
  • Leftism
  • Nationalism
  • Populism
  • Black Panther Party
  • Garveyism
Civic & economic groups
  • Rights organizations
National Association for
the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC)
  • Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC)
  • National Urban League (NUL)
Association for the
Study of African American
Life and History (ASALH)
  • United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
  • Thurgood Marshall College Fund
National Black Chamber
of Commerce (NBCC) National Pan-Hellenic
Council (NPHC)
  • The Links
National Council of
Negro Women (NCNW)
Sports
  • Negro league baseball
Athletic Associations / Conferences
  • Central (CIAA)
  • Southern (SIAC)
  • Mid-Eastern (MEAC)
  • Southwestern (SWAC)
Ethnic subdivisions
  • Black Indians
  • Gullah
  • Igbo
Languages
  • English
  • Gullah
  • Louisiana Creole French
Diaspora
  • Nova Scotia
  • Liberia
  • Sierra Leone
  • France
Lists
  • African Americans
African-American firsts
Landmark African-American
legislation
  • African American-related topics
Topics related to
Black and African people
  • Category: African American
  • African American portal

This hard-nosed administrator and legendary activist was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 25, 1942 and spent her childhood in Atlanta's Black Summerhill neighborhood. She was the second oldest of seven children born to Alice, a beautician, and J. T. Smith, a furniture mover and Baptist minister. The Smith children lived a comfortable existence in their separate Black world. They had strong adult support, and they had their own churches, schools, and social activities. At the age of 16, Ruby graduated from Price High School and went on to Spelman College. No matter how insulated they were, however, the reality of American racism and segregation intruded from time to time. Smith-Robinson recalled her feelings about segregation in those early years.

"I was conscious of my Blackness. Every young Negro growing up in the South has thoughts about the racial situation." She also remembered her reaction to the white people she came in contact with when she was a youngster. "I didn't recognize their existence, and they didn't recognize mine. ....My only involvement was in throwing rocks at them." (Garland 1966)

Read more about this topic:  Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:

    “... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
    —George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    “Three early risings make an extra day.”
    —Chinese proverb.

    “We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.”
    —Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)