Born 1938 in Hampton County, South Carolina, Vertamae Smart Grosvenor is a culinary writer, activist, and, anthropologist. From low country South Carolina, she is perhaps best known for her book Vibration Cooking, also known as The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl which was first published in 1970. The book is part memoir, part culinary anthropology, part cookbook. In the 1960s she lived in Harlem where she, among other activities, cooked for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) fundraisers. She and her SNCC colleagues served the food at parties where supporters enjoyed her delicious low country food and the music of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gay, and other. Like Montgomery’s Georgia Gilmore, Grosvenor played an important part in feeding the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.
