Feminist to Know: Ruth Beckford-Smith
Ruth Beckford-Smith spent her life breaking racial segregation lines and strengthening her community. Born in 1925, she was raised in an integrated neighborhood in West Oakland, CA. Her father owned a few local businesses and drove a taxi cab, and he was an active member of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.
From a very young age, Beckford-Smith enjoyed dance and was the only Black student in lessons with Florelle Batsford when she was just 3 years old. Throughout her childhood, Beckford-Smith pursued dance and earned money from vaudeville house performances, training neighbors in her own garage, and eventually touring with the legendary dancer Katherine Dunham’s dance troupe.
While pursuing her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley, Beckford-Smith became the first Black member of the university’s modern dance society chapter. After graduation, she accepted a job with the Oakland Parks and Recreation Department where she created the department’s first Division of Modern Dance. The program was designed to uplift young women based on Katherine Dunham’s philosophy of “Socialization through the Arts,” and Beckford-Smith ran it for 21 years.
Beckford-Smith worked closely with Katherine Dunham once again before opening up her own studio, the Ruth Beckford African-Haitian Dance Company. Here, she pioneered a Black creative space that provided a community hub for dancers nationwide. Throughout these experiences, Beckford-Smith earned the informal title of the Bay Area’s “Mother of Black Dance.”
In 1968, Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale asked Beckford-Smith to help organize the famous Free Breakfast for Children program, which was run out of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, where she was a member. Under Beckford-Smith’s leadership, the program went from serving nutritious breakfast to eleven children on the first day to 135 children daily by the end of the first week. Through her success with the immense organizing challenge, Beckford-Smith became responsible for one of the most radical mutual aid projects in recent history and a cornerstone of the Black Panther Party’s achievements (eventually becoming mandatory for all chapters after its success in Oakland).
One of Beckford-Smith’s lasting impacts is her attention to Black history. Through dance, and later through her writing, she worked to make Black histories accessible and available to us all. Beckford-Smith founded the oral history program at the African American Museum and Library of Oakland, and she wrote the first authorized biography of Katherine Dunham. Beckford-Smith also wrote her own book, Still Groovin': Affirmations for Women in the Second Half of Life, which provides validation, joy, and affirmations to provide validation, joy, and affirmations often denied to older women in our culture.
Ruth Beckford-Smith, who passed away in 2019, has had an underpraised hand in community organizing, Black power, and Black history work in the Bay Area and beyond. In all of her endeavors, she worked to create safer spaces for others to follow her.
To learn about Ruth Beckford-Smith, read Wendy Perron’s detailed profile.