Daniel Smith, the son of a Virginia slave, dies at the age of 90 after a lifetime of activism
CBSN
Washington — Daniel Smith, an American civil rights activist and son of a former slave has died aged 90, his wife told CBS News. Loretta Neumann said Smith passed away at a hospice center in Washington on Wednesday night. She said his daughter April and son Rob were by his side.
Smith's rich life story included escaping the clutches of the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South, marching on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr and attending the inauguration of the first Black president, Barack Obama. He also represented a last link to the nation's darkest chapter: his father Abram, born in 1863 in Virginia, was briefly the property of a white man, making Smith just one generation removed from slavery.
Daniel Smith was born in Winsted, Connecticut, on March 11, 1932, the fifth of six children Abram had with his second wife Clara.
