The students of the Radical University: Robert L. Smith

Robert L. Smith
From The National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race

Robert Lloyd Francis Smith (b. January 6?/7?/8?, 1861; d. July 10, 1942)
South Carolina.  Born free.  Mulatto.
Occupation: businessman, politician, teacher.
Father's occupation: tailor.
Mother's occupation: seamstress.

Robert L. Smith was born in Charleston, South Carolina to Francis Arthur Smith and Mary Hamilton Talbot Smith, free persons of color.  His father worked as a tailor, and his mother as a seamstress.

Sources disagree on the exact date of Smith's birth.  An article by Pitre says he was born on January 6, an article by Carter says the 7th, while The National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race says he was born on January 8.

Smith was first a student in the Charleston public schools, but later he transferred to and graduated from the Avery Normal Institute.  At some point between February 1875 and January 1876, he registered as a student at the University of South Carolina. He was enrolled as a college student following the classical studies track. The university closed before he finished his degree.

After the university closure, Smith continued his education at Atlanta University, attending the university in the 1877-78 and 1879-80 school years.  A number of former U of SC students attended Atlanta at this time.  In particular, Smith was classmates with John L. Dart, J. J. Durham, Fletcher H. Henderson, Julius J. Holland, Samuel H. McCoy, Thomas Francis Parks Roberts, and Edward Johnson Stewart.  Smith graduated in 1880 with an A.B. degree.

After receiving his college degree, Smith taught school in Georgia and Charleston.  While in Charleston, he also edited a Republican newspaper and studied law.

Smith studied law under former State Supreme Court judge Jonathan J. Wright at the Claflin College Law Department (which was located in Charleston).  Wright's other students at Claflin included former U of SC student Thomas A. McLean and possibly J. C. Whittaker.  Smith did not complete a degree at Claflin, but he was admitted to the bar in 1882.  He then worked at a small law practice run by Wright.

In 1884, Smith ran into his own legal problems as he and another former law student of Wright's faced criminal libel changes.  Wright successfully provided their legal defense.  The next year (in 1885), Wright died, and Smith's work as a lawyer largely came to an end,

The year Wright died, Smith left South Carolina for Texas. According to one biography, he moved to Texas because he believed the state "offered the fairest field for the aspirant for distinction in the schoolroom", although a black politician that knew Smith said that he left South Carolina because he was facing social pressure for marrying a dark-skinned African American woman.

Smith first lived in Oakland (then a small farming town of less than 300 people).  He and his former classmate Nathaniel Middleton moved there around the same time.  They seem to have remained in touch as they became neighbors around 1893.

In Oakland, Smith worked as the principal of the Oakland Normal School.  Starting in 1889, he began organizing black famers, an activity would occupy him for most of his life.  In December of that year, after reading about a self-improvement society in New England, he organized the Village Improvement Society.  The society focused on getting the African American community to improve their homes, practice thrift, and avoid activities Smith regarded as immoral, like gambling.

Smith was elected to the state legislature in 1894 and served as State Representative from Colorado County from 1895 to 1899, serving two terms.  His advocacy of self-improvement, thrift, and moral behavior helped him secure the support of conservative white voters.  His candidacy was endorsed by the conservative Democratic paper the Houston Post.

After leaving the legislature, Smith tried to remain active in politics.  In 1902, during the Republican presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, he received a federal appointment as Deputy United States Marshall, an appointment he held for 8 years (until 1910).  Smith tried to get elected as a Delegate-at-Large to the 1904 Republican Convention but was unsuccessful.  Smith then shifted his professional focus to self-help societies.

In 1890, Smith had founded the Farmers Improvement Society.  This was a society of African American farmers that evolved out of the Village Improvement Society.  It promoted the older society's values (thrift, morality, home-improvement) but also advocated for farm ownership (as opposed to sharecropping) and using improved farming techniques.

The society expanded rapidly.  It had 1,800 members in 1898, and this number grew over 2,000 in 1900 and over 20,000 in 1909.  The society established an agricultural college, the Farmers' Improvement Agricultural College at Wolfe City, in 1907 and a bank, the Farmers' Bank in Waco, in 1911.

Smith himself moved to Waco in 1909.  He stayed there for the remainder of his life.  The Farmers' Improvement Society began to decline in the 1910s due to political and social changes among farmers (for example, the growth of public support for farmers decreased the need for the society).  The society was hard hit by the Great Depression, although it remained in existence until Smith's death.

Smith was in regular correspondent with Booker T. Washington.  In developing his self-help society, Smith drew on Washington's political and educational ideas.  After attending the 1896 Tuskegee Conference, for example,, he wrote to Washington to say that "I should throw myself with all the energy of my being into the work of founding a Little Tuskegee at Oakland."

In turn, Washington thought highly of Smith's work in Texas and promoted him professionally and politically.  In 1899, Smith was selected to join Washington on a national speaking tour.  Three years later (in 1902), Washington helped Smith secure his federal appointment as U.S. Marshall.  Smith was also a member of the board of the Jeanes Foundation, a foundation for the improvement of rural education for African Americans that Washington helped found.

Smith died in 1942, and he is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Waco, Texas.  His records on the Farmers Improvement Society are held at Baylor University.

R. L. Smith
From Negro legislators of Texas and their descendants

Inset of R. L. Smith over depiction of the Farmers Improvement School for Negroes at Wolfe City
From fannincountyhistory.org

Sources

1). 1880; Census Place: Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina; Roll: 1222; Page: 229B; Enumeration District: 063.

2). Charleston, South Carolina, City Directory, 1877.

3). Richardson, Clement. The National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race.  National Publishing Co.  Montgomery Ala.  1919.

4). Pitre, Merline. "Robert Lloyd Smith: A Black Lawmaker in the Shadow of Booker T. Washington." Phylon (1960-) 46, no. 3 (1985): 262-68. 

5). Reid, Debra. "Rural African Americans and Progressive Reform." Agricultural History 74, no. 2 (2000): 322-39. 

6). Brewer, John Mason.  Negro legislators of Texas and their descendants; a history of the Negro in Texas politics from reconstruction to disfranchisement.  Mathis Publishing Co, Dallas, Texas. 1935.

7). Carter, Purvis M. "Robert Lloyd Smith and the Farmers' Improvement society, a self-help movement in Texas." Negro History Bulletin 29, no. 8 (1966): 175-91.

8). Reid, Debra A. "African Americans, Community Building, and the Role of the State in Rural Reform in Texas, 1890s–1930s." In The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State: Political Histories of Rural America, edited by Stock Catherine McNicol and Johnston Robert D., 38-65. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2001.

9). 1860; Census Place: Charleston Ward 6, Charleston, South Carolina; Page: 415

10). 1870; Census Place: Charleston Ward 6, Charleston, South Carolina; Roll: M593_1487; Page: 463B

11). 1920; Census Place: Justice Precinct 4, Fannin, Texas; Roll: T625_1803; Page: 7A

12). 1930; Census Place: Precinct 4, Fannin, Texas; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 0022

13). 1930; Census Place: Waco, McLennan, Texas; Page: 8B

14). "Prominent Colored Educator." December 16, 1899.  Houston Daily Post.  p. 7.