Carol Smith was my counselor at CCNY when I was 19 years old. She was instrumental in my graduating and continuing to go to Fordham University for my masters in Social work.  You will always be in my heart and I will never forget you my friend, counselor and guiding light.

Continuation of my remembrance of Carol: Carol spent many of her remaining years educating people on how these historical resurgences of repression impacted her CUNY career and still arise in the present. She also traveled extensively--friends share of her limitless capacity to connect and build with new people while visiting different parts of the world. Carol was an active member of Jewish Voice for Peace and the PSC International Committee. 
When we first met in spring 2011, she spoke on a panel I organized at the Graduate Center, ‘Academic Freedom and the New McCarthyism,’ and we became instant comrades. With current resurging rightwing attacks on CUNY students and faculty, I wish she could be here to present it again. I’m heartened that my Chilean CUNY & SUNY compas got to meet Carol before she died, and that her surviving husband Joe Esposito recently gave her Chile movement archives to them to find a permanent home. 
Carol will be forever championed by the CUNY movement—and by our entwined global struggles for social liberation—which she nurtured with such focused principle throughout her life. ¡Carol Smith, presente! ❤️‍🔥 (3/3) 

Continuation of my remembrance of Carol: After the '76 retrenchment, when tuition was imposed and all adjuncts were fired, Carol sustained energies through internationalist popular education.
In 1980, Carol obtained a PhD with a dissertation on Dominican and Puerto Rican garment workers in NYC. During the 1980s and '90s, she hosted hundreds of CCNY cultural events and film festivals on Latin American and Caribbean struggles. She studied anthropology with June Nash and Eleanor Burke Leacock, and collaborated closely with Haywood Burns—who had been the lawyer for Angela Davis and Attica prisoners, and once secured 12 scholarships for ANC anti-apartheid student militants to study at CCNY—before his tragic early death in South Africa. 
Immediately after 9/11, Carol was instrumental in CCNY hosting an event, "Threats of War, Challenges of Peace," that converged over 200 students and dozens of faculty and staff to mourn together while critiquing the drumbeat for war and Islamophobia. The New York Post and other rightwing rags ran a headline "CCNY Bashes America," and death threats ensued. The Chancellor and Trustees decried the event as "seditious," and Carol was forced out of CCNY into early retirement. 
She dedicated herself to study previous eras of internationalism and political repression at the university, and produced the brilliant visual archive "The Struggle for Free Speech at CCNY, 1931-1942." This archive documents Jewish and Black CCNY students' commitment to anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, and anti-capitalism through multi-ethnic coalitions, and it also traces how the Rapp-Coudert Committee investigation on CUNY was a precursor to the McCarthy HUAC hearings. For anyone wanting to learn about the expansive radicalism that preceded the 1960s and '70s at CUNY, start with this resource. (2/3)

I just learned today of Carol Smith's passing. I shared this remembrance with friends: Carol was a truly extraordinary lifelong revolutionary and CUNY people's historian who I will forever cherish, and who I had the honor to interview in fall 2021 for my book New York Liberation Schoo. Even until age 81, Carol had a vivacious curious spirit, an unwavering clarity of radical politics, and a dreamy gleam in her eye when exchanging movement stories. To be her comrade, even in passing throughout a dozen years, was a rare gift.
Carol was born in 1941 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and grew up in Hollywood. Her grandparents were garment workers, and her dad was a 1920s City College student expelled for radical campus work, then later blacklisted in CA. Carol was involved in the 'Fair Play for Cuba' campaign at Berkeley, and graduated from there in 1963. When her parents died, she moved back to NYC in her early 20s.
With a degree in clinical social work, Carol became a counselor at the City College SEEK Program in 1970, the first white woman hired by Black and Puerto Rican students who had organized the 1969 Harlem University takeover. She soon learned of and contributed to the CCNY movement ecosystem: with Fran Geteles who had brought food to the takeover, with Aijaz Ahmad who had nourished SEEK students' radicalization at Alamac Hotel dorms, with the Childcare Center which held weekly meetings with Kenneth Clarke and neighborhood activists. 
In 1972, Carol visited Chile in a time of revolutionary possibility that became severed with the 1973 Pinochet coup. For the rest of her years, she became an ardent solidarity worker with Latin American and Third World/Global South struggles. Back at CUNY, when the Newt Davidson Collective produced the militant research classic 'Crisis at CUNY' in 1974, Carol sold 400 copies herself. From 1970-75, many radicals expressly came to work at CUNY to foster this movement milieu. (1/3)

I met Carol and Joe at our Dance for a Variable Population class and, from our very first interaction, she showed her political activism in Latin American and world affairs. She was a compassionate human being that will be sorely missed.

I first met Carol when she moved to New York from California. She was 21 and I was 14. Carol had just, tragically, lost her parents and my mother Ruth embraced her as a daughter. Carol and Ruth formed a strong bond that continued throughout Ruth’s life. And Carol embraced us as family, taking a sincere interest in my sister, brother, and me, and then years later, in each of my children. So many memories!
That gift for connection, that generosity of spirit, and genuine concern for the wellbeing of others was at the center of Carol’s being. It informed her professional life as social worker counseling first generation college students, as well as her political activism. Carol had a passion for travel – not just to see the sights, but to connect with people wherever she went. And Carol had more friends than anyone else I have ever known. She also had a passion for learning and for the arts and for all things Spanish and Latin American.
When Carol met Joe, he quickly became an important part of our family and we grieve with him now. 
I’m grateful that after the long isolation of the pandemic, Carol was able to share a trip to Maine with Joe and to visit with dear friends in New York State. 
Carol, you made our lives all the richer, and we miss you. We will always treasure our memories of our time together on this earth. Rest in peace, dear Cousin.


Cousin Carol was a very special woman who had great respect and love for her fellow man. She was a lifetime learner and someone who directed her natural curiosity so as to connect with people and their cultures as best she could every day of her life. She overflowed with kindness for her family and friends. Although she and Joe were very busy and traveled extensively they made the time to look in on my grandparents Ruth and Jess, with whom Carol had a special relationship. She also went out of her way to connect with me and my sister and brother and she even facilitated my sister accompanying her on a trip abroad when my sister was just a teenager. Most adult PhDs would not want to be slowed down with a teenage kid but that was not remotely the way Carol was; she honored the unique wisdom of each person especially if the person did not receive that honor elsewhere. She made life a little bit more special for everyone she met. My heart goes out to Joe, the love of her life, and everyone else who knew and loved this extraordinary woman.

My whole life, my dear Cousin Carol was my greatest inspiration and role model: politically, actively for important causes, as a compassionate humanitarian......Teacher and counselor to so many students, her influence, as a Doctor of Social Work, left a wide impression, as it did with me......When I lived in her NYC apartment, early 1970's, I listened to all of Beethoven's sonatas sequentially from her stunning record collection...... I shall miss her beautiful smile and laughter.... You will always and forever be my guiding light for a principled life.....And, will always be in my heart......
- Loretta Ayeroff, First Cousin, Los Angeles, CA

Carol was a lovely person, thoughtful and compassionate.  We had only recently become reacquainted and were looking forward to getting to know her better.  

Our deepest condolences to Joe.

John Henderson and Pat Bega

I am truly sorry that we did not get to know Carol.  My family was visiting at the lake…two cabins over.  Are thoughts and prayers are with you.  Fondly,  Anita Ligon

OBITUARY

Carol Smith

10 August, 1941 – 18 August, 2022

Riverside Memorial Chapel

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