Evanel Elizabeth Renfrow was born in 1908 in Red Wing, Minnesota. She grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, where she graduated from Grinnell High School in 1926. Renfrow started her Bachelor’s degree coursework in Home Economics at Iowa State that fall but left without completing coursework (Kaiser, 2020). She finished her B.S. degree at the University of Iowa before earning a Master’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from that school in 1935. Beyond her academic accomplishments in Iowa, she completed several fellowships at the University of Chicago and the Freedman’s Institute in Washington, D.C.
Renfrow taught at multiple HBCUs, including Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri; Tuskegee University; Florida A&M University; and Savannah State University. At both Lincoln University and Savannah State University she established chapters of the African American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. The majority of her professional career was spent working at Savannah State University, where she served as chairperson of the Home Economics Department for two decades. Retiring in 1976, she moved to Chicago and later passed away in 1994. She and her husband, Carl C. Terrell, are buried in Beaufort National Cemetery in South Carolina.
Sources
Photo Credit: Grinnell College. (1926). The Grinnellian.
Kaiser, Daniel H. (2020). Grinnell stories: African Americans of early Grinnell. Grinnell, IA: Grinnell History Museum.
