| Petric Smith tribute |
| Title | Petric Justice Smith Tribute: Alabama Forum |
| Date | March 1998 |
| Description | Petric Justice Smith, known to friends as “Pete,” was born in 1940 in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up there as Elizabeth H. Cobbs. In the mid-1970s, she became a minister in the United Methodist Church, serving as a pastor in Birmingham. Cobbs testified during the 1977 murder trial against her uncle Robert Chambliss, a Klan member and one of the perpetrators of the 1963 Birmingham Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Her testimony helped lead to his conviction. Afterward, she received death threats, and left the Birmingham area. Cobbs completed gender reassignment surgery in Galveston, Texas, in 1981. Petric J. Smith returned to the Birmingham area in 1985 after Chambliss died. Smith was one of the organizers of the first Pride Parade in Birmingham in 1989, worked as associate editor and columnist for the LGBTQ newspaper Alabama Forum, and wrote a book about his experiences surrounding the Chambliss testimony, Long Time Coming: An Insider’s Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing That Rocked the World, published in 1994. Smith died on February 3, 1998. The March 1998 Alabama Forum was dedicated to his memory and contained many reminiscences about his life as an activist in the LGBTQ community of Birmingham. The March front page pictured here lists his birth name as Elizabeth Ann Hollifield. |
| Donor | The University of Alabama Libraries |
| Collection | Hoole Library Alabama Collection |
| Repository | The University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections |
| Related Items | Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come ; Pride Parade 1989, Birmingham: Information Packet ; Alabama Forum, March 1998 |