90-year-old descendant of a man born into slavery passed away
Daniel Robert Smith, 90, descendant of man born into slavery in Virginia during the Civil War passed away last week. Smith passed away at a hospital in Washington D.C. according to The Washington Post. His wife Loretta Neumann says he had cancer and congestive heart failure.
Smith, the fifth of six children was born on March 11, 1932, in Winsted, Conn. His father, Abram “A.B.” Smith — 70 at the time and working as a janitor passed away in an automobile accident when he was 6 years old. Smith mother, 23-year-old Clara (Wheeler) Smith, was reportedly white with Scotch-Irish and Cherokee ancestry.
“I remember hearing [from my father] 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 Post.
He also talked about the story about an enslaved man 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,” Smith said, The Post reported. “When he tried to remove it, half his tongue came off.”
Smith served as an Army medic during the Korean War and later marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington. He also protested next to civil rights activists in Selma, and ran anti-poverty and literacy initiatives in rural Alabama.
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