This photographic portrait of Benjamin L. Smith was taken around 1955, by an unindentified photographer. Smith was Greensboro's Superintendent of School at this time.
Photograph of Benjamin L. Smith
Benjamin Lee Smith was born February 6, 1893 in, Caldwell County, N.C. He received his A.B. from Duke University in 1916, and his M.A. from Duke in 1937. He served as superintendent of schools in the western North Carolina cities of Forest City, Rutherford-Spindale, and Shelby before assuming the same position in Greensboro, N.C., in 1935. His twenty-three year tenure in Greensboro included the years immediately following the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision ordering desegregation of public schools. In 1959, he participated in the National Civil Rights hearing on school integration. Smith died in 1961. Ben L. Smith High School in Greensboro is named for him.
1955
Greensboro (N.C.)
1950-1959
still image
photographs
Segregation in education--United States Race relations
North Carolina African-American History
Primary and secondary education School desegregation, 1954-1958
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Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University
Benjamin Lee Smith Papers Civil Rights Greensboro
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Duke_RL.01210.0964
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884367489