Daniel R. Smith was one of the last surviving children of an enslaved person, and a reminder that slavery in the United States existed just two lifetimes ago.
These were brutally vivid stories of bondage, for his father had been born into slavery in Virginia during the Civil War and had toiled as a child laborer before making his way north to Connecticut, where the Smiths were among the only African Americans in their town.
Historians say it is impossible to know how many children of enslaved people are left. But while researching her book “Sugar of the Crop: My Journey to Find the Children of Slaves” , author Sana Butler was able to track down about 40 who were still alive. All have since died. Mr. Smith was not featured in the book, although he later met Butler, who helped edit his forthcoming memoir, “Son of a Slave: A Black Man’s Journey in White America.
and, upon his return, said he was propositioned by a CIA officer who wanted him to spy on the African National Congress liberation movement. Decades later, Mr. Smith was standing in the crowd, moved to tears, as Barack Obama was sworn in as America’s first Black president.
By 1955 he was back home in Winsted, where flooding killed nearly 100 people throughout Connecticut in the aftermath of Hurricane Diane. The death toll would have been higher were it not for Mr. Smith, who rescued a truck driver from the floodwaters, an act of heroism that was documented by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporterAbout two years later, Mr. Smith found himself in another life-or-death scenario while working at a YMCA camp near Winsted.
After he retired in 1994, Mr. Smith volunteered at Washington National Cathedral, where he escorted presidents including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush while serving as head usher. His first marriage ended in divorce, and in 2006 he married Loretta Neumann at the cathedral.
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