EFFIE WALLER SMITH

A SISTER, DAUGHTER, POET AND EDUCATOR

 

Effie Waller Smith (1879-1960) was the third of four children born to Frank Waller and Sibbie Ratliff, both former slaves. Home was a farm in Chloe Creek, Kentucky, a few miles away from Pikeville, and the Waller household was one in which God was heavily praised and education highly prized.

 

After completing the eighth grade at a local school, like her older siblings Alfred and Rosa, Effie attended Kentucky Normal School for Colored Persons in Frankfort, where between 1900 and 1902 she trained to be a teacher. Little is known about her teaching career except that she taught school off and on for more than a dozen years, sometimes in Kentucky and sometimes in Tennessee. Of Effie Waller's writing life, we know a little bit more.