Professor Gertrude Grant Croom has been introducing herself the same way for years: born in Birmingham, Alabama, shaped by her mother, and grateful for every opportunity she has had. The list of those opportunities is long, and she is not done yet.
Prof. Croom is a Grand Rapids institution. She spent her career at Grand Rapids Community College teaching political science, anthropology, state and local government, and international relations. She was named professor of the year. She became the first female and first African American to serve as chair of the college’s social science division, a call she received from the college president while she was out of state at a family event. She has traveled to Ghana and China for scholarly exchange. She has spoken at churches, law schools, and community gatherings from Grand Rapids to New York. She has been recognized for her journalism, her voter registration work, and her community service.
Her title — the Griot — comes from a trip to Ghana, where she encountered the community’s wise elder and thought: that is what I want to be. The griot is the keeper of stories, the one the children run toward. It fits.
Where she started
Prof. Croom grew up in the Birmingham projects after her father died when she was five, the middle child in a family of seven raised by a mother who could not afford kindergarten tuition. Her mother’s solution was a worn chalkboard and chalk borrowed from older siblings’ teachers. By the time Prof. Croom reached second grade, her teacher had to skip her ahead — she had already learned everything twice.
She became the first female student body president at her high school, walked to mass meetings to hear Dr. King speak, and participated in the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager. She went to Knoxville College on a scholarship her principal quietly arranged after she tucked the application in a drawer, assuming her family couldn’t afford it.
The arc from Birmingham’s projects to Grand Rapids’ community college classrooms is one she tells deliberately, because she believes young people need to hear it.
What she is building now
At an age when most people are looking back, Prof. Croom is looking forward — specifically at the gap between lower-income youth and the trades.
She is developing an initiative to connect underserved students in grades nine through eleven with trade and technical programs, creating a pathway into Grand Rapids Community College’s early enrollment programs. The goal is for students to arrive at GRCC already ahead — with trade exposure, early credits, and mentorship and financial literacy built into the experience from the start.
She sees the current moment clearly. Trades are good-paying work, unions offer stability and benefits, and the diversity gap in these programs is significant. She wants minority youth in those seats before they are passed over — not because they lacked ability, but because nobody handed them a map.
Watch the full conversation
Prof. Croom sat down with Community Creators Arlena and Leon Jones on the Intervene show to share her story — from Birmingham to Grand Rapids, from the civil rights movement to the community college classroom to whatever comes next.
