Daniel Smith, Child Of American Slave, Dies At 90: Reports

WASHINGTON, DC — Daniel Smith, a civil rights activist and one of the last living children born to Black Americans enslaved during the Civil War, died Oct. 19 at a hospital in Washington, D.C., according to a report by The Washington Post. He was 90.

Daniel Robert Smith was born in Winsted, Connecticut, on March 11, 1932, according to Post. The fifth of six children, his father was born into slavery in 1863 in Virginia and was a child laborer before moving north to Connecticut.

Smith's father was 70-years-old when Smith was born, according to the Post.

Smith, who said in an interview with The Economist that a friend often referred to him as the "Black Forrest Gump," served as a medic in the Korean War. He marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., fought with the Black Panthers and escaped the Ku Klux Klan in rural Alabama, Smith told The Economist last year.

Just weeks before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Smith moved to the Washington, D.C. area, he told The Post in 2020. Smith and his first wife raised their two children in Bethesda, while he worked for the federal government promoting health and education and fighting poverty.

Smith retired in 1994 and in 2006 wed his second wife, Loretta Neumann, at the National Cathedral. He worked as an usher there as well, meeting presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, according to CBS News.

When Obama was inaugurated in 2009, Smith was in attendance, tears streaming down his face, he told The Economist.

It's possible Smith was the last living child of an enslaved Black American. While researching her 2009 book "Sugar of the Crop: My Journey to Find the Children of Slaves," author Sana Butler tracked down 40 people who were still alive, according to the Post. Smith was not included in the book, and all who were have since died.

Smith spent the first years of his life listening to his father recount his time as a slave.

"I used to sneak out of bed and sit listening on the floor. I remember hearing about two slaves who were chained together at the wrist and tried to run away. They were found by some vicious dogs hiding under a tree, and hanged from it," Smith told The Economist. "I also remember a story about an enslaved man who was accused of lying to his owner. He was made to step out into the snow with his family and put his tongue on an icy wagon wheel until it stuck. When he tried to remove it, half his tongue came off. My father cried as he told us these things."

Still, Smith said in 2021 that he and his siblings could never speak ill of America in front of his father.

"He did not have much but he really, really loved America," Smith said. "Isn’t that funny?"