Austin High School Alumni – Austin, Texas

“She was firm, but gentle. She was a strong woman, but meek at the same time,” the former teacher’s daughter, Verna Smith, said. “For most of my life, I thought my mom was perfect.”

Verna Smith said her mother was orphaned in Waco at 14 years old and, as a young girl, took a job as a maid at a white family’s house. She later would move to Austin to attend Huston-Tillotson College.

After graduating with honors, Smith began her 42-year-long teaching career. She got her start at the old Anderson High School, where she became chairwoman of the English department and was credited with bringing the remedial reading program up to speed.

Later, in 1967, the Austin school board decided to integrate African American students from old Anderson High School in East Austin to the schools of their choice in the district.

At that point, Smith moved to Austin High, where she remained the only African American teacher for several years.

“I was the first black teacher across the tracks,” Smith told the Austin American-Statesman in 1998 after she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Austin chapter of National Women of Achievement. “By that, I mean across Congress Avenue.”

In another Statesman article, Smith had remembered the years around integration as turbulent times with high racial tensions.

“I just have to thank God that I have never been affected by people’s attitudes,” Smith told the American-Statesman in 1997. “My attitude was, I always had a job to do.”

In 1970, the district was found to be not in compliance with the U.S. Civil Rights Act, and the following year, a U.S. district judge ordered the closing of the old Anderson High School and instituted the busing of black students to white schools.

Verna Smith said she could remember angry phone calls to the house and how, at the time, her father would drive his wife to work and watch her until she disappeared into the school.

But Vernice Smith, who was always prim and proper, didn’t let tensions keep her out of the classroom.

Smith expressed her love for teaching in a poem she wrote. It reads: “Each morning when I wake, I say ‘A child depends on me today’ … And then, at night, I kneel and pray ‘Thank God, I helped someone today.’”

A religious woman, Verna Smith was president of the St. John Regular Baptist Association for 40 years.

Also a member of Ebenezer Baptist Church at 1010 E. 10th St. for more than 60 years, Smith left behind a positive impression on the congregation, said Tracie Miller, 54, who works in the church office and sings in the choir.

Smith loved to hear Miller sing and complimented her often, Miller said.

“She always inspired me to keep it up,” said Miller, who recalled the fancy shoes and hats that Smith would wear to church. “She was a very beautiful, elegant woman. She will be truly missed.”