Daniel Smith Sr. was laid to rest Saturday in the District. You might not know his name, but Smith's life is linked to the most painful part of our nation's history. It's believed that he was the last living person born to a parent who had been enslaved.
Smith died earlier this month at age 90.
He was born in 1932 — 67 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment, which statutorily ended slavery when his father, Abram (A.B.) Smith, was a young child. Dan's grandparents, William and Augusta Smith, were enslaved in the Massies Mill area of Nelson County, Virginia.
A.B. Smith was 70 when Dan was born. He had stories to tell his children.
"The siblings, they'd pile in on a Saturday night, in the bedroom of the parents," said Dan Smith's second wife, Loretta Neumann Smith. "[They'd] get around the bed, and then the father would start telling them the stories."
Neumann Smith would hear those stories, too, of whipping posts, hanging trees and the cruelty of those times. One was a story of an enslaved man accused by his enslaver of telling a lie.
"In the middle of winter, and it's freezing, and made him put his tongue on a metal wheel on a wagon," Neumann Smith said. "It froze, and when he pulled it off, he pulled off half his tongue."
U.S. & World
Smith, one of the last known living children of enslaved parents, was a treasure to his family.
"It's acknowledgement that this horrible piece of American history wasn't that long ago," Smith's nephew Brandon Cody said. "But he has a family who are pretty strong and were able to endure."
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Smith's father would eventually move his family to Connecticut. Dan Smith thrived throughout his life, despite the fact that he too experienced discrimination. But he and his generation persevered.
"He grew up during the Depression," his niece Margaret Reed said. "They had no food. But they still lived life; they laughed and joked about it, and still muddled through."
And Dan Smith also left some guidance for this generation.
Neumann Smith cited his own writing from the book they worked on right until the end of his life, with Smith sharing "how I used the many opportunities that living in America presented me with, and how I did my best through action and industry to try to change things politically, and to direct my future personally."
Note: This article previously stated Smith died at age 98. He was 90 at the time of his passing.
