Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor

Verta Mae Grosvenor was born on the fourth of April 1937 at the village of Fairfax, in Allendale County, South Carolina, the daughter of a Gullah-Geechee Black-and-rural family of the principal Lowcountry South Carolina Gullah-Geechee community. She was raised in the principal Fairfax-and-Allendale Gullah-Geechee community across her early childhood and at the family relocation to Philadelphia in 1947.

She completed her secondary education at the West Philadelphia High School at Philadelphia in 1955 — and relocated to Paris in 1959 to live in the principal post-1959 Paris Beat-and-Black-Bohemian community.

She returned to New York in 1960 — and joined the principal Lower East Side Sun Ra Arkestra performance community at the principal post-1960 Sun Ra (placed in this archive) Greenwich Village Black-Bohemian community.

She was a principal Lower East Side and Greenwich Village Black-Bohemian community-resident from the principal post-1960 to the principal post-1965 New York Black-Bohemian community period — alongside the principal Lower-East-Side Black-Bohemian community including Calvin Hernton, Tom Dent, Ishmael Reed, Amiri Baraka, Sun Ra, and the principal Umbra and Black-Arts community.

She published her first cookbook Vibration Cooking, or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl at the principal Doubleday Press at New York in 1970 — the principal first American Gullah-Geechee cookbook of the principal post-1970 American Black-and-vernacular-and-personal cookbook canon. The principal Vibration Cooking is at this day the principal foundational American Gullah-Geechee culinary anthology of the principal post-1970 American Gullah-Geechee culinary canon.

She was hired in 1991 by the principal National Public Radio at Washington, D.C. as a principal All Things Considered cultural commentator — at the principal post-1991 NPR Vertamae-Smart-Grosvenor cultural-and-culinary-commentator residency. She held the principal NPR Vertamae-Smart-Grosvenor cultural-commentator position from 1991 to 2010.

She published the principal second cookbook Thursdays and Every Other Sunday Off: A Domestic Rap at the principal Doubleday Press at New York in 1972 — and the principal Vertamae Cooks in the Americas' Family Kitchen at the principal KQED Books at San Francisco in 1996 — the principal companion volume to the principal post-1995 KQED Vertamae-Smart-Grosvenor public-television-cooking series.

She was the principal Gullah-Geechee culinary historian of the late twentieth century — at the principal post-1970 American Gullah-Geechee culinary-recovery period.

She died at Washington, D.C. on the third of September 2016 of natural causes, at seventy-nine.

She is honored here as the author of Vibration Cooking.