On International Women’s Day, we celebrate Emma Riley Smith, born 1881 in Arkansas.
In 1895 — Emma was 14 — her family moved to Liberia with the “Back to Africa” movement. For years, they farmed ginger and coffee and ran a store.
But suddenly, illness swept all but two of the family away. Emma, 29 by now, took her sister back to Arkansas for college.
After Africa, though, Emma couldn’t believe how African-American women suffered, vulnerable to violence, without rights or opportunities.
Emma set out to find a better place. First to Wyoming, then Butte, where she met and married Martin Smith, a railroad man, and started a family.
They moved on to Lewistown, then, around 1920, settled in Great Falls in the old Black section of town.
Emma’s house, fragrant with cooking-spice, was always full of books and kids — her own and the whole Black community’s. They came for cookies, stories of Africa, and words of Kru, Emma’s Liberian language.
Emma loved Montana, her community’s church and slipping off by herself to places like Lima to fish.
All five of Emma’s kids graduated college. Two became librarians—one, the head librarian at MSU in Bozeman; the other, Montana’s State Librarian from 1971 to '83.
To Black kids growing up in Great Falls, Emma Riley Smith proved the world was wide with possibility.
Celebrating Women's History Month, Bold Women of Montana is brought to you by Mountain Press, publisher of Bold Women in Montana History, and is produced by Beth Judy, Jake Birch and Michael Marsolek. Theme Music by Naomi Moon Siegel.