Renfrow subject of next Bucket Course

GRINNELL — The first Bucket Course of 2024 welcomes Grinnell College Professor Tamara Beauboeuf and her presentation “Becoming Edith Renfrow: Snapshots of an Affirmed Early 20th Century Black Girl.”

  Buy Photo

The course will be held Wednesday, Feb. 7, from 10-11:30 a.m. in the Caulkins Community Room at the Drake Community Library. Bucket Courses are open to everyone in the community; no preregistration or fee is required. Donations toward refreshments are welcome.

The lecture will describe Beauboeuf’s ongoing research on Edith Renfrow Smith who was born in 1914 in Grinnell. The session will draw on a set of sixteen snapshots picturing Edith Renfrow from age one to 21.

Beauboeuf will examine these images from Smith’s family album and school yearbooks for insight into how she developed into the young woman who recruited herself to Grinnell College at the age of 18 and became its first African American woman graduate.

Beauboeuf hopes that Bucket Course participants will gain a sense of the affirmation Renfrow received in her family home and a window into the opportunities for school-aged girls that existed in Grinnell in the 1920s and 1930s.

Beauboeuf joined the Grinnell College faculty in 2019 as the Louise R. Noun Chair in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies. She has spent the last three years heading up Team Renfrow, a group of Grinnell College students, alumni and townspeople focused on researching the life and continuing significance of Edith Renfrow Smith.

Beauboeuf is working on a book about Edith Renfrow’s matrilineal history and its impact on her girlhood and college years.

Bucket Courses are sponsored by Grinnell’s Community Education Cooperative whose members include UnityPoint Health Grinnell, Grinnell College, Drake Community Library, Grinnell-Newburg Community School District, Grinnell Area Arts Council, Mayflower Community, Grinnell Education Partnership, Read to Lead and Iowa Valley Community College.

Videos of previous Bucket Courses are available on the YouTube channel Grinnell Community Education Cooperative.