Below is an excerpt found on the YouTube page for this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx28A4GOeME&t=70s
Effie Waller Smith was born to two former slaves and became one of the first female African American poets to be published in a national literary magazine. She was born and raised near Pikeville, Kentucky. There she taught school, wrote and published poetry, made influential friends, and explored the Breaks of the Big Sandy–sometimes called the Grand Canyon of the South. She moved to Wisconsin in her late 30s, then adopted a deceased friend’s daughter. The last years of her life were spent with her adopted daughter, Ruth, in Neenah, Wisconsin.
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