Honoring My Grandmother on #WomensEqualityDay

How My Grandmother Influenced My Life

As a #LinkedInCreator, I recently published an article for #WomensEqualityDay, August 26.

It was hard for me to choose just ONE woman who influenced my life. There have been so many…but today I decided to honor my maternal grandmother, Gussie Adelle Smith Russell, affectionally known as “Dell” by her family.

She was born in 1897 in Eufaula, Alabama, the youngest of four sisters. She grew up picking cotton and having crosses burned on her front lawn by the KKK.

She graduated from Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), the only one in her immediate family to graduate from college.

She was active in the women’s suffrage and local civil rights movements, marching and working for women’s rights in general and the rights of Black people in general, starting in the early 20th century and continuing throughout her life.

She married my grandfather, Genise Russell, and moved with him to East Chicago, Indiana, where he found work in the nearby steel mills. They bought a home in a primarily Polish neighborhood. She was a reporter and columnist for the local weekly colored newspaper. Most of her family also moved to Chicago and the surrounding areas during the Great Migration.