Smith College alumni

Victoria Garvin (December 18, 1915 – June 11, 2007) was an American political activist, Pan-Africanist, and self-described "working class internationalist." While growing up in a working-class family during the height of the Great Depression, Garvin was exposed early on to the realities of both proletariat and racial exploitation. Garvin became a prominent organizer in the Black Left during the height of McCarthyism, before traveling to Nigeria, Ghana, and China. In Ghana, Garvin was a member of a committee who received Malcolm X and created his itinerary, since Garvin had previously met him in Harlem. As a lifelong activist and radical intellectual, Garvin created direct links between Black Power politics, Pan-Africanism, and Third World liberation.

Marion Carolyn Naifeh (April 11, 1928 — May 20, 2023) was an American author and educator who, with her husband, the late diplomat George Naifeh, represented the United States in diplomatic missions in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia over nearly three decades. As an author, Naifeh published two books. Her 2003 publication, The Last Missionary in China, was described by noted Harvard University sinologist Ezra Vogel as "a touching, well-written, well-researched account of the life and times of a missionary who died in China in 1951 after 34 years there, by his daughter. Objective, nuanced, broad-gauged" Naifeh's 2016 book, Foreign Service, chronicles her family's life in the U.S. diplomatic corps during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Helen Sanger (September 21, 1923 – July 30, 2020) served as the fifth chief librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library and the institution's first Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, a position inaugurated in 1990.

Halina Poświatowska (Polish: [Pɔɕviatɔvska]; née Halina Myga, entered into church records as Helena Myga; born 9 May 1935 – 11 October 1967) was a Polish poet and writer.
Poświatowska is famous for her lyrical poetry, and for her intellectual, passionate yet unsentimental poetry on the themes of death, love, existence, famous historical personages, especially women, as well as her mordant treatment of life, living, being, bees, cats and the sensual qualities of loving, grieving and desiring.

Renée Claire Fox (February 15, 1928 – September 23, 2020) was an American sociologist.She was a summa cum laude graduate of Smith College in 1949, earned her Ph.D. in Sociology in 1954 from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, where she studied in the Department of Social Relations. Renée Fox’s major teaching and research interests – sociology of medicine, medical research, medical education, and medical ethics – involved her in first-hand, participant observation-based studies in Continental Europe (particularly in Belgium), in Central Africa (especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and in the People’s Republic of China, as well as in the United States. She lectured in colleges, universities, and medical schools throughout the United States, and taught in a number of universities abroad.

Harriet Huntington Doerr (April 8, 1910 – November 24, 2002) was an American author whose debut novel was published at the age of 74.