Barbara’s parents, Hilda Beall Smith and Gartrell Smith, met while attending a historically black college in central Georgia, Fort Valley State University (then Fort Valley State College), in the mid-1940s. Employed by the armed services, Gartrell Smith was possibly stationed in Cleveland, Ohio, when he and Hilda Beall Smith eloped. Wanting to find better economic opportunities and escape from Jim Crow racism, moved from Georgia and settled in Ohio.[2]