Effie Waller Smith

1879–1960

Photographed By J. J. Prats, October 20, 2019

1. Effie Waller Smith Marker

Side A

Click or scan to see
this page online

... Miss Effie, the author of this book, as well as the others, had quite a struggle to acquire an education. Being the youngest, she was kept away from school during a great portion of each term, since the only colored school in this whole section was situated at Pikeville, several miles distant from her former home. But she pursued her studies with her mother’s help, and attended school as regularly as she could, and finally was able to obtain a teacher's certificate.

She then

Photographed By Mike Wintermantel, October 9, 2023

2. Effie Waller Smith Marker

Side B

began to teach, taking the money she saved, and paying her expenses at the Colored State Normal School, at Frankfort, until she has obtained an excellent education, and she expects to still press forward until she has fully completed it.

Miss Waller’s poems, as all who read them will observe, are possessed of much pathos and beauty, having an originality all their own. Who knows, that like Paul Lawrence Dunbar she may not one day surprise and delight her own race, and cause white critics to wonder at her genius.

She displays much rhythmic talent in the poem “In Memory of W. Hughs,” a dead classmate, from which the following is taken:

It was in the month of June, and the woods were all atune.
All atune with bird music sweet and rare;
And the flowers were all in bloom, shedding
forth their sweet, rich perfume
On the breezy atmosphere everywhere.

Then she touchingly refers to their meeting at that time, and of their future association, and the last stanza runs like this:

Little thought I, friend of mine,
You'd be called so soon to shine
In that galaxy of diadems up there;
But it was our Father’s will
And He speaks to-day: “Be still!”
To my sad and sorrow-stricken heart down here.

The scholarly Rev. Peter Clay, a writer of great ability, and

Photographed By J. J. Prats, October 20, 2019

3. Effie Waller Smith Marker

who knows our gifted little poet, a few years ago gave vent to his admiration in rhyme as follows:

Far up among the mountains,
Where rivers leave their fountains,
And happy birds send forth their merry thrills;
There dwells a little poet,
Though few there be who know it,
Whose voice is an echo from the hills.

You may not like her station,
For she is not Caucasian,
Yet God with music touched the singer’s heart;
And thoughts in liquid measure
Doth flow out like a treasure,
To charm us with the poet’s mystic art.

In Miss Waller’s verse there is that simply beautiful, lyrical quality, by which Keats and Burns charm and win all hearts.

A competent New York critic, Mr. S. G. Clow, says of Miss Waller's book:

Here indeed are poems written close to nature's heart!

Rarely have we seen such faithful, loving pictures, as within the covers of this charming book, of nature in all her moods and of simple homelike things, which steal us away from the city’s din back to the country lanes and the old kitchen porch which we knew so long ago.... By this beautiful anthology Miss Waller has done credit and honor to her race. Like her gifted compatriot, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, she will do much to dissolve the foolish prejudice of color, and to prove that poetic genius is the heritage of

Photographed By Mike Wintermantel, October 9, 2023

4. Effie Waller Smith Marker

their race as well as ours.

A unique, a wonderful book! If you desire a breath of odorous country air fresh from the dear old Southland you must read it!

—Mary Elliott Flanery.

Frontispiece from Rhymes from the Cumberland by Effie Waller

5. Miss Effie Waller