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Daniel R. Smith, a civil rights demonstrator born to an enslaved father, passed away on Wednesday, Oct. 19, according to The Washington Post. He was one of the remaining living people whose parents were in American bondage. Reporters say he died at a hospital in Washington at age 90.
Smith, who grew up in the 1930s, remembers sneaking out of bed to listen to his father, Abram “A.B.” Smith, talking about his slavery days.
“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 Post, along with other horrific incidents that took place on Southern plantations. “My father cried as he told us these things.”
Sana Butler, who extensively documented Black Americans born to enslaved people, said Smith was a living reminder that “that slavery was not that long ago.”
“You talk about the transatlantic slave trade, you talk about Reconstruction, and people really think that it’s history,” Butler told reporters. “Mr. Smith is a reminder that it’s impossible to ‘get over it,’ because it’s still [present] within these families’ lives.”
