A mother's motto: "No one is better than you."
Lee Augustus Renfrow and Eva Pearl Craig Renfrow, Edith Renfrow Smith's parents, were the children of formerly enslaved persons. Mama Renfrow raised her six children expecting all of them to earn their college degrees. As Mrs. Renfrow Smith recalls, “[My mother] always loved school. Her sisters didn’t like school and she did…. She always had her nose in a book.” Being too poor to attend college and earn her own degree was something Mama Renfrow always regretted. As a result, she insisted to her children, "You must get an education. You must learn.”
In addition to stressing the importance of an education, Mama Renfrow affirmed her children's inherent worth. On a daily basis, she would remind them, “No one is better than you.” With deep conviction in her voice, Mrs. Renfrow Smith still repeats her mother's powerful affirmation:
I don’t care who it is. There is no one born any better than you are. They may have more money, and they may be more beautiful. They may have outward things. But there’s no one any better.
Growing up with this affirmation has profoundly shaped Mrs. Renfrow Smith’s outlook on life. As she reflects, “So naturally if you’re taught there’s no one any better than you are, why you think you’re pretty special. And so, I think that that made a great difference.” Drawing on her mother’s words enabled Mrs. Renfrow Smith to reframe the exclusions and slights she experienced as a Black child in a white town. When she was called names, not allowed to play with other children, or refused entry to the local ice cream shop, she would “just remember that… they’re not better than you.”