By Zhane Amin
Aniya Smith and other members of Towson University’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter were preparing for their weekly Wednesday meeting. It was a crisp October evening and per usual, the NAACP meeting was held in Towson’s Liberal Arts building.
A few days prior, the NAACP co-sponsored an event with Her Campus: Towson for a breast cancer awareness walk on Oct. 18. In addition to NAACP, many organizations across Towson’s Black community were in attendance such as the Black Theatre Alliance, Caribbean Students Association and The Lunch Table, a media organization. The purpose of this walk was to honor the lives of women fighting breast cancer, survivors and women who lost their lives.
Smith, the chapter’s president and a 22-year-old business major, stood at the front of the room in an all-black jumpsuit, a pink wristband and a pink breast cancer awareness pin. Usually, the meetings start off with a game such as Mafia or an icebreaker, but this week’s meeting was different.
In the background, soft R&B played as chatter filled the room. Members of the group’s press and publicity committee went around to interview various people for social media content. They had tiny microphones and asked questions such as “Do you have any advice for women who are currently battling breast cancer?” and “What made you guys come out today?” Lights from cameras flashed as people took photos and Instagram boomerangs.
With October being breast cancer awareness month, the Oct. 22 meeting’s focus was shifted to a community service event, where both members and non-members created care kits to give to The Red Devils, a local organization that focuses on the support of breast cancer patients and families. With this being an event that was open to everyone, not just members of the NAACP, Smith went around the room collecting attendance for non-members to get their community service hours and getting to know everyone around her.
Smith referred to attendees as “love” or “darling” before asking their name and how they were doing. Her voice was soft yet firm as she asked for people’s contact information, but all the while she maintained her professionalism. Her eyes were focused, and the energy she exuded felt familiar to me as I’ve grown up around many women who had a similar cadence to her when speaking in a formal setting. Watching her, you can tell she felt comfortable in her role as the NAACP’s president. But she’s much more than that. She’s a hard worker and through learning more about her and speaking to her, I could tell she’s determined when it comes to doing anything that progresses into the Black community. This means doing outreach on other campuses and things that raise awareness of the issues Black students face at Towson. Through NAACP and her major in marketing, Smith’s future goals are to continue pushing for and doing things that will improve the Black community.
Professionalism and Personality
Smith leads with confidence that she appears to draw from within. When speaking to rooms full of people, Smith makes you feel like she’s talking directly to you. At the end of the Oct. 22 meeting, as she looked around the room, it looked as if she made direct eye contact with almost everyone there. She gestured towards the board behind her, the items beside her, and when she wrapped up her concluding words, she made a heart with her hands and turned her body to make sure it was seen by everyone.
She tells jokes, she’s casual, she’s sassy and she balances her professionalism all while remaining herself. During our interview, we spoke as if I wasn’t asking her a series of planned out questions, but as if we were having a chat over a meal. She used slang and colloquialisms, and at one point a few swears dropped but rather than letting that fluster her, she kept speaking as if nothing were said at all.
I asked her what dish or food she described herself as, and she told me: “It gotta be something good, something extra,” before settling on a lobster burger because to her it sounded good and expensive.
Beating the Odds
Smith was born in Lanham, a city in Prince George’s County, Maryland, or, as she calls it, “Pretty Girl County;” a term coined by author LaKita Wilson. Though she moved around a lot, she was raised by her father, as she is not as close to her mother. Smith says growing up surrounded by the men in her family shaped who she is today. She describes herself as a “tough cookie,” and handles hard situations with a tougher “no emotion” exterior due to this lack of maternal influence.
However, with her growing up around the men in her family, Smith did say it felt almost as if she were raising herself. Because of this, she feels as if she must hold herself to a different standard, being a young Black woman from the area she’s in and migrating to Towson, which is predominantly White. “It’s like you’re pushed to become something good, because of the area you’re in,” Smith says. “Being strong, being determined. I feel like we’re stubborn sometimes, and that stubbornness gets you somewhere.”
This is what drew her to social work in the Black community.
Calls for Change
When living with her grandparents, her grandfather would always educate her about the issues going on in the world, making her want to do her own research. Smith says around the age of 10, she marched with her family during the Trayvon Martin protest. “I was young,” she says. “I didn’t really understand the full concept of the situation.” A few years later, at the age of 13, she had begun to educate herself on similar issues and getting a peak interest in issues within the Black community. In late 2019, Smith’s interest in social work formed through working with YHELP!, a nonprofit that provides youth with mental health services through other youth. She got involved with YHELP! through her best friend, who’s the stepdaughter of the founder.
During the pandemic is when this all came to a head with the Black Lives Matter movement going on, the killing of George Floyd, and her exposure to the different issues in the area she grew up in. In school, Smith recalls the school system’s apprehension to teach race related topics due to that climate, and her teachers’ insistence to do so anyway.
“With the predominantly Black school I went to,” she said, “we weren’t educated on stuff in the world… as much as we should’ve been.”
Despite the campus not being a historically black college, Smith first came to Towson in high school during an orientation program and was lost wandering near Smith Hall; she spoke to a few enrolled students at the time and described them as warm. The students mistook her for being a current student herself, but when revealing she was in high school, they walked her to West Village where she was initially supposed to be. Looking back on this moment, this was how Smith ended up at Towson despite it not being her first choice for a school. “I was like ‘OK, this is a school that is open and welcoming,’” she said.
For Us, By Us: Restarting Towson’s NAACP
Being so active as a teenager prompted Smith to continue her work into adulthood. She wants to use her skills to help the Black community and open them up to programs that will help people flourish in a political climate that’s tough to live in. When asked why, she said she feels as if there isn’t much unity with the way things are set up, and when it comes to the “for us, by us” model. I asked her if this is why she wants to go into marketing, to which she said yes. “As a marketing major, I want to market towards my people.”
This determination still pushes her to this day, especially with taking on a role such as this one. To restart the NAACP on campus, which was inactive due to lack of interest, she needed 25 members to restart the chapter. Additionally, she needed to get in touch with NAACP’s headquarters to be recognized, and this was a challenge for Smith because they’re always busy. When it came to filling out paperwork, everything had to be done in person and through handwriting, instead of online.
“Being in a new position like this… trying to figure stuff out has so much pressure,” Smith says. “You have members who already paid their dues looking at you like ‘OK, what are we doing next?’ Trying to figure out what to do next is probably the hardest thing.” Her duties as president consist of recruiting for new members, finding supplies needed for meetings, tabling, and events, and helping the different chairs get organized.
Smith’s can-do attitude is noticed throughout the organization. Zakya Liggins, the NAACP’s social media manager and Smith’s older sister, describes her as reliable with a strong ability to push through adversity. “When we were first getting started, Niya, doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Liggins said. “If one person says ‘no’, she’ll go ‘Oh, OK!’ and figure out who else she can contact to get that yes.” Liggins especially noticed this when trying to get the chapter restarted. She described seeing Smith hard at work getting everything sorted out with the restart of the chapter.
Life Beyond NAACP
Smith not only uses these skills for NAACP, but for her role as a marketing intern for Tiger Hospitality, and formerly she was a residential floor mentor for Students Achieve Goals through Education (SAGE), which is a peer mentoring program at Towson.
When asked how she was able to get all of this done she said, “I’m a go-getter…I have to be determined and once I’m determined, I’m just going to do exactly what I want to do and try to make an impact, and if I have the resources or ability to, I’m going to do it.”
Future Plans
After she graduates, Smith hopes to start working as a public relations specialist, and hopefully start her own business teaching people how to market and promote themselves. Like what she’s doing now, she wants to give back to her community; this could involve teaching people who might not have a degree in the steps on how to either accomplish that or any form of higher education. In doing all of this, she wants to stick to marketing.
“Marketing has something over me,” she says. “I love designing, I like event planning. I like having fun, and that’s what marketing lets me do.”