Gloria Smith Goes Down Home

Gloria Lawsha Smith had a lot of friends when she was growing up in Fort Worth’s Southside neighborhood, an African American part of town. It was the sixties, and many of them would go “down home” during the summers and visit their grandparents in small Texas towns. They would always return with stories of riding horses and playing in swimming holes, which made her jealous. Every time she asked her mom where her “down home” was, her mom said the same thing. “You don’t have a ‘down home’ to go to.”Smith grew up and married, becoming a technical writer for IBM. She and her husband, Charles, a Baptist pastor who also worked at IBM, as a graphics illustrator, began having children, and the couple decided…

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