The Washington Post - USA (2020-07-28)

B8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, JULY 28 , 2020

fell for it.”

The truth was underscored

when his older brother, Abe,

signed a contract to buy his moth-

er a house. He told Clara Smith,

whose eyes filled with tears, that

it was the white house up on the

corner. Clara looked at her son

and lit in. “You know that house is

too good for me,” she said. “It’s

better than the house of the white

woman I work for.”

Perhaps it was the fact that he

was A.B. Smith’s son, or maybe it

was just him, but “I said to myself,

‘That will not happen to me,’ ”

Smith said. “When I want some-

thing, I’m going to get it.”

By that time, the civil rights

movement had begun. In August

1955, Emmett Till was lynched in

Mississippi, and in December, af-

ter Rosa Parks refused to give up

her seat for a white passenger, the

Montgomery bus boycott was

launched, led by a young pastor

named Martin Luther King Jr.

Smith graduated from Spring-

field College in 1960 and worked

as a social worker for three years.

He and a white colleague in 1963

drove down from Massachusetts

to be part of the March on Wash-

ington. Smith had been admitted

into the veterinary program at the

Tuskegee Institute but felt in-

spired to join the movement.

He was heading up an anti -

poverty program in Lowndes

County, Ala., when the church

office where Smith worked was

burned to the ground. Not long

after, Smith noticed he was being

tailed on a dark country road. As

he whizzed ahead, he heard his

white pursuers yell, “Pull over,

black coon!”

He thinks now about what

might have happened had he not

sped into a lit service station.

Back then, there were no cell-

phones with video cameras to

capture racism and no social me-

dia on which to share it. This was

on his mind as he drove himself

down 16th Street in his red Volvo

this summer, taking in the pro-

tests over Floyd’s killing as Neu-

mann waved a sign outside read-

ing “Black and White Lives To-

gether.”

He felt inspired by what he was

witnessing. Streams of people of

all races moved toward Black

Lives Matter Plaza, led by the

youth of a brand new era. And for

a fleeting moment, as the crowds

agitated for racial justice, Smith

felt time unfolding.

 From Retropolis, a blog about the

past, rediscovered, at

washingtonpost.com/retropolis.

whether his work on the planta-

tion ended with the war. The 1870

census listed Abram Smith as “a

boy laborer,” and many newly

freed slaves, with nowhere to go,

remained where they were, mis-

treated, Green said.) “We just lis-

tened, and whatever came out of

his mouth, that’s what we heard,”

Dan Smith said.

After high school, he set out

into the world with a belief in

America and his own exceptional-

ism instilled in him by his father.

‘That will not happen to me’

Dan Smith joined the Army,

serving as a medic during the

Korean War. In the summer of

1955, he was back in Winsted after

Hurricane Diane when the Mad

River breached its banks. Eighty-

seven people died in the flood that

day, but one was saved when

Smith stripped down to his shorts

and rescued a truck driver named

Joe Horte. Smith is not the brag-

ging sort, and his bravery might

have gone unheralded if “Hiroshi-

ma” author John Hersey didn’t

mention him by name in the New

Yorker under the sub-headline

“Negro Youth a Hero.”

It was a subsequent act of hero-

ism, though, that showed Smith

exactly what it meant to be a black

man in America — so far from his

father’s ideal. At this point, he

looked up from his mask and

paused, saying quietly: “I hope I

don’t get too emotional.”

In about 1957, he was working

as a trip director for Camp Jewell,

a YMCA camp in nearby Cole-

brook, Conn., when he brought

his group of teenagers back from

a week at a lake to show them a

reservoir where he used to swim.

Upon their arrival, he spotted a

commotion — a young woman

had fallen into the quarry. Smith

rushed down to help.

The woman had been hoisted

onto dry land, and he bent over to

check her pulse: still beating. He

had leaned over to administer

mouth-to-mouth resuscitation

when a police officer yelled down:

“Hey, you, you, YOU. She’s already

dead. She’s already dead.”

At first, he didn’t know what

the cop meant — Smith knew she

was alive — but suddenly it

dawned, and he backed away. “He

didn’t want me to put my lips on

her, and she died,” he said, still

angry and “sick” about what hap-

pened.

That year, he realized that his

parents had been sold a bill of

goods about America as the land

of the free: “We were all brain-

washed.... E veryone in America

whites just to be considered

equal. And beneath the sunny

message of how extraordinary the

Smith children were lay Abram

Smith’s stories of slavery with

their frightening symbols of bru-

tality.

There was the whipping post in

the middle of the plantation

where enslaved people were tied

up and beaten.

There was the lynching tree.

Two enslaved people in chains

had run away together, and ru-

mors held that they had been

hanged there. Later, when Dan

Smith wanted to date white girls,

his mother would warn: “I don’t

want to have to cut you down.”

There was the wagon wheel.

The enslaver accused a man on

the plantation of an unspecified

offense, and the man denied it.

“The owner said, ‘You’re lying to

me,’ and had the man and his

whole family line up in the winter

in front of a wooden wagon

wheel,” Smith recounted. The en-

slaver ordered the man to kneel

and lick the wheel’s metal rim. His

tongue froze there until the des-

perate man pulled part of it away.

Smith and his siblings listened

quietly, aware any questions

about their father’s past could be

met with a strike to the face. Years

later, he thinks his father was

loath to relive the trauma and

ashamed of his roots as an en-

slaved person. (It is unclear

anything.”

A.B. Smith’s children were the

hardest workers, had the best

manners and were the brightest,

too. When the offspring asked

why they were so superior, their

parents replied: “Because you are

the children of A.B. Smith.” They

were forbidden to play with some

poor black children in town, al-

though his father cleaned a facto-

ry for a few dollars a day. “We were

poor as church mice, but we were

better because my father said we

were better,” Dan Smith said.

Looking back, he can now see

his parents as followers of the

“twice as good” philosophy — the

futile belief that black people

must perform twice as well as

in his ninth decade of life, Smith

can also see clearly the valleys and

hills — how his father was shaped

by slavery and racism and was

able to push ahead despite it, and

how Abram Smith did the best he

knew how to prepare his children

for life.

‘A.B. Smith’s children’

Abram Smith did not rise far

from his beginnings, working as a

janitor in a factory, and yet he

extolled America and was invest-

ed deeply in its promise of oppor-

tunity for all.

“I remember my father and

mother saying ‘It’s a free country.

You can do anything you want,

you can be anything you want,’

and they believed it,” Dan Smith

said.

Abram Smith spent time in

Philadelphia and Poughkeepsie,

N.Y., before settling in the early

1920s in the small, very white city

of Winsted, Conn., where he lived

with his second wife, Clara

Wheeler, who was decades his

junior. He was known in the com-

munity as “A.B. Smith,” and he

made sure his four daughters and

two sons knew what it meant to be

his children.

“A lot of black children grew up

in a world where they didn’t know

who they were and where they

came from,” Dan Smith said, “but

we were A.B. Smith’s children,

and that sustained us through

AVERAGE RECORD ACTUAL FORECAST

PREVIOUS YEAR NORMAL LATEST

<–10–0s 0s 10s20s 30s 40s50s 60s 70s80s 90s 100s 110+

T-storms Rain Showers Snow Flurries Ice Cold Front Warm FrontStationary Front

NATIONAL Today Tomorrow

High

Low

Normal

Record high

Record low

Reagan Dulles BWI

Reagan Dulles BWI

Today’s tides (High tides in Bold)

WORLD Today Tomorrow

Sources: AccuWeather.com; US Army Centralized

Allergen Extract Lab (pollen data); airnow.gov (air

quality data); National Weather Service

* AccuWeather's RealFeel Temperature®

combines over a dozen factors for an accurate

measure of how the conditions really “feel.”

Key: s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, r-rain,

sh- showers, t-thunderstorms, sf-snow flurries,

sn-snow, i-ice

Moon Phases Solar system

NATION

OFFICIAL RECORD

Rise Set

REGION

Past 24 hours

Total this month

Normal

Total this year

Normal

Richmond

Norfolk

Ocean City

Annapolis

Dover

Cape May

Baltimore

Charlottesville

Lexington

Washington

Virginia Beach

Kitty Hawk

Harrisburg Philadelphia

Hagerstown

Davis

OCEAN:

OCEAN:

OCEAN:

OCEAN:

Temperatures

Precipitation

for the 48 contiguous states excludes Antarctica

Yesterday's National

96° 3:42 p.m.

79° 5:00 a.m.

88°/71°

100° 1940

55° 1920

95° 2:27 p.m.

71° 5:44 a.m.

88°/66°

98° 1993

52° 19 77

97° 3:59 p.m.

74° 5:48 a.m.

87 °/67°

101° 1940

52° 1962

Washington 2:47 a.m. 10:13 a.m. 3:21 p.m. 10:09 p.m.
Annapolis 12:32 a.m. 6:43 a.m. 11:58 a.m. 6:31 p.m.
Ocean City 2:13 a.m. 8:32 a.m. 2:58 p.m. 9:26 p.m.
Norfolk 4:21 a.m. 10:28 a.m. 5:03 p.m. 11:27 p.m.
Point Lookout 3:13 a.m. 8:03 a.m. 2:18 p.m. 9:20 p.m.

93

°

75 ° 92

°

76 ° 95

°

74 ° 87

°

71 ° 88

°

74 ° 88

°

75 °

Sun 6:06 a.m. 8:23 p.m.

Moon 2:57 p.m. 12:53 a.m.

Venus 2:57 a.m. 5:12 p.m.

Mars 11:36 p.m. 12:02 p.m.

Jupiter 7:26 p.m. 4:58 a.m.

Saturn 7:52 p.m. 5:36 a.m.

Aug 3

Full

Aug 11

Last

Quarter

Aug 18

New

Aug 25

First

Quarter

0.00"

6.29"

3.26"

26.90"

23.09"

0.00"

4.33"

3.18"

26.06"

24. 07 "

0.00"

2.93"

3.54"

25.30"

24.13"

Blue Ridge: Today, partly sunny, afternoon thunderstorm.
High 77–81. Wind west 8–16 mph. Tonight, partly cloudy,
evening thunderstorm. Low 62–66. Wednesday, partly
sunny, shower, thunderstorm. High 75–82. Wind southwest
6–12 mph. Thursday, partly sunny, thunderstorm.

Atlantic beaches: Today, hot, humid, partly sunny,
afternoon thunderstorm. High 91–99. Wind southwest 6–12
mph. Tonight, partly cloudy, thunderstorm. Low 75–79.
Wednesday, partly sunny, shower, thunderstorm. High 86– 92.
Wind west 4–8 mph. Thursday, partly sunny, thunderstorm.

Pollen: High

Grass Low

Tr ees Low

Weeds Low

Mold High

UV: Very High

9 out of 11+

Air Quality: Moderate

Dominant cause: Ozone

99/75

99/79

91/75

93/74

93/74

91/76

93/72

94/7 2

92/ 69

95/7 8

92/ 77

91/68 93/75

87/68

76/60 93/75

77°

77°

82°

80°

Waterways: Upper Potomac River: Today, partly sunny, thunderstorm
late. Wind west 4–8 knots. Waves a foot or less. Visibility
unrestricted. • Lower Potomac and Chesapeake Bay: Today, partly
sunny, thunderstorm late. Wind south 6–12 knots. Waves a foot or
less on the lower Potomac and 1–2 feet on the Chesapeake.• River
Stages: The stage at Little Falls will be around 3.2 feet today, falling
to around 3.1 feet Wednesday. Flood stage at Little Falls is 10 feet.

Albany, NY 86/62/pc 88/66/s

Albuquerque 87/67/t 94/66/s

Anchorage 71/56/pc 74/57/pc

Atlanta 88/72/t 85/72/t

Austin 94/75/c 93/76/c

Baltimore 93/72/t 93/73/pc

Billings, MT 91/64/pc 85/63/t

Birmingham 85/73/t 83/73/t

Bismarck, ND 86/58/s 87/59/pc

Boise 95/66/pc 99/68/s

Boston 92/73/t 89/74/pc

Buffalo 82/69/pc 80/66/pc

Burlington, VT 89/64/t 87/65/pc

Charleston, SC 94/75/t 89/74/t

Charleston, WV 83/66/t 90/67/t

Charlotte 94/71/t 90/71/t

Cheyenne, WY 79/57/t 82/57/pc

Chicago 87/72/s 85/70/pc

Cincinnati 86/63/pc 89/69/pc

Cleveland 85/67/pc 87/68/pc

Dallas 87/76/t 90/79/t

Denver 87/61/t 90/59/pc

Des Moines 87/67/s 88/69/t

Detroit 85/68/s 83/65/sh

El Paso 97/76/s 101/77/s

Fairbanks, AK 65/55/sh 75/56/pc

Fargo, ND 82/56/s 81/56/s

Hartford, CT 92/67/t 92/69/pc

Honolulu 87/74/pc 87/74/sh

Houston 90/77/t 91/79/t

Indianapolis 85/66/pc 87/70/pc

Jackson, MS 86/74/t 86/74/t

Jacksonville, FL 92/72/t 89/72/t

Kansas City, MO 86/70/s 84/69/t

Las Vegas 108/84/s 110/86/s

Little Rock 90/74/t 87/73/t

Los Angeles 83/61/pc 85/62/pc

Louisville 88/69/c 91/75/t

Memphis 89/75/t 88/74/t

Miami 93/79/pc 92/79/pc

Milwaukee 86/67/pc 81/66/pc

Minneapolis 84/63/pc 83/62/s

Nashville 89/71/pc 88/72/t

New Orleans 84/76/t 89/78/t

New York City 93/76/t 90/75/pc

Norfolk 99/79/pc 92/77/t

Oklahoma City 81/70/t 86/69/t

Omaha 90/68/s 87/68/t

Orlando 90/76/t 91/76/t

Philadelphia 93/75/t 93/75/pc

Phoenix 111/89/pc 113/90/s

Pittsburgh 84/63/t 87/66/pc

Portland, ME 90/68/t 88/69/pc

Portland, OR 88/59/pc 92/63/s

Providence, RI 94/71/t 89/72/t

Raleigh, NC 96/73/t 89/73/t

Reno, NV 95/62/t 98/62/s

Richmond 99/75/t 91/73/t

Sacramento 98/59/s 96/58/s

St. Louis 90/72/s 88/73/t

St. Thomas, VI 92/81/t 92/79/s

Salt Lake City 92/69/s 94/71/s

San Diego 75/66/pc 77/67/pc

San Francisco 72/55/pc 72/56/pc

San Juan, PR 90/81/t 88/79/s

Seattle 81/59/s 85/61/s

Spokane, WA 96/64/pc 96/67/pc

Syracuse 85/65/t 84/65/pc

Tampa 91/79/pc 92/79/t

Wichita 84/70/t 87/70/t

Addis Ababa 68/57/sh 69/57/sh

Amsterdam 67/56/pc 66/53/pc

Athens 93/78/s 95/77/s

Auckland 59/50/pc 60/52/c

Baghdad 125/89/pc 124/93/pc

Bangkok 93/80/t 92/80/t

Beijing 86/71/t 88/73/c

Berlin 81/56/t 72/54/pc

Bogota 66/47/c 67/50/pc

Brussels 72/53/pc 73/53/pc

Buenos Aires 53/37/s 55/43/s

Cairo 98/74/s 98/77/s

Caracas 75/66/t 75/66/t

Copenhagen 70/56/t 65/55/sh

Dakar 88/80/pc 88/79/pc

Dublin 63/47/c 60/56/pc

Edinburgh 62/50/c 64/50/pc

Frankfurt 83/54/pc 79/55/pc

Geneva 87/65/t 84/63/s

Ham., Bermuda 87/79/pc 87/79/pc

Helsinki 68/57/t 67/51/t

Ho Chi Minh City 91/77/t 91/78/t

Hong Kong 93/82/sh 93/81/t

Islamabad 99/76/t 95/79/t

Istanbul 88/72/s 91/74/s

Jerusalem 90/70/s 91/71/s

Johannesburg 59/39/pc 64/39/s

Kabul 98/63/pc 99/65/pc

Kingston, Jam. 89/80/c 91/82/t

Kolkata 93/82/t 92/81/t

Lagos 83/75/pc 85/75/c

Lima 63/58/pc 63/58/pc

Lisbon 81/62/pc 88/64/s

London 69/51/pc 74/56/pc

Madrid 97/73/pc 101/74/pc

Manila 91/77/t 89/79/t

Mexico City 73/57/t 73/58/t

Montreal 85/67/s 82/66/t

Moscow 79/63/pc 80/63/sh

Mumbai 89/80/t 89/80/t

Nairobi 71/54/c 74/54/pc

New Delhi 97/81/c 94/79/t

Oslo 61/51/r 62/50/sh

Ottawa 85/63/s 82/61/sh

Paris 79/54/pc 80/58/pc

Prague 88/58/t 80/53/pc

Rio de Janeiro 85/72/s 77/68/pc

Riyadh 114/89/pc 115/92/pc

Rome 87/67/s 87/68/s

San Salvador 85/69/t 86/69/t

Santiago 65/37/s 69/39/s

Sarajevo 84/56/s 88/62/s

Seoul 81/73/c 83/74/r

Shanghai 91/81/c 93/81/pc

Singapore 86/77/sh 82/78/t

Stockholm 65/53/r 66/51/c

Sydney 64/52/r 65/50/pc

Taipei City 93/79/t 96/81/t

Tehran 103/81/pc 102/83/pc

Tokyo 84/73/t 78/70/r

Toronto 83/66/s 82/61/pc

Vienna 94/68/pc 84/60/r

Warsaw 87/65/pc 78/54/pc

Today

Heavy t-storm

Wednesday

Partly sunny

Thursday

Partly sunny

Friday

T-storm

Saturday

Partly sunny

Sunday

T-storm

possible

Th F Sa Su M Tu W Th F Sa Su M Tu W Th

through 5 p.m.yesterday

Difference from 30–yr. avg. (Reagan): this month: +4.2° yr. to date: +2.8°

High: Blythe, CA 112°

Low: West Yellowstone, MT 35°

World

High: Badrah, Iraq 126°

Low: Summit Station, Greenland 10°

Weather map features for noon today.

WIND:WSW 7–14 mph

HUMIDITY:Very High

CHNCE PRECIP:60%

FEELS*:101°

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:98°

WNW 6–12 mph

Moderate

5%

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:100°

W 4–8 mph

High

15%

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:92°

N 4–8 mph

High

30%

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:91°

N 6–12 mph

Moderate

20%

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:94°

SSW 6–12 mph

High

30%

Chance of late-day storms

It’s rather sunny early, but the high
heat and humidity will lead to cloud
development as the day warms up.
There’s a chance of an afternoon or
evening storm, but activity should
remain scattered. Heavy rain, frequent lightning
and damaging wind will be the main threats.
Highs range from about 93 to 96 in most spots.
Dew points in the low 70s will make it feel more
like 100 to 105. Winds will be from the west-
southwest about 5 to 10 mph.

The Weather

WASHINGTONPOST.COM/WEATHER. TWITTER: @CAPITALWEATHER. FACEBOOK.COM/CAPITALWEATHER

medic in the Korean War and a
hometown hero who rescued a
man from a flood. He’s been
chased on a dark road by white
supremacists in Alabama as a foot
soldier in the fight for civil rights.
Smith was there when a young
firebrand named John Lewis
roused the crowd at the March on
Washington, and he linked arms
with activists in Selma across the
Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Just weeks before Martin Lu-
ther King Jr. was assassinated,
Smith moved to the Washington
area, where he built a rich and
meaningful life. Smith and his
first wife, who was black, raised
their two children in Bethesda
while he pursued his career as a
federal worker promoting health
and education and fighting pov-
erty. He retired in 1994 and in
2006 wed his second wife, Loretta
Neumann, who is white, at Wash-
ington National Cathedral, where
as head usher he escorted presi-
dents.
What does it mean to Smith to
be the living son of an enslaved
person in the 21st century?
“Quite frankly, I’ve just grown
up and been busy, and I’ve never
thought much about it,” Smith
said.
A courtly man with pecan-
colored skin wearing a perfectly
pressed blue and white striped
collared shirt and khakis, Smith
shared his life story from the wide
front porch of his home in North-
west Washington on a sweltering
July day. Cars rushed by as Neu-
mann leaned in at his side to
listen.
Yet when he thinks about it in
this moment, time feels elastic.
The 157 years since his father’s
birth had once seemed like “a
solid gap,” but now the time
strikes him as distressingly brief.
With Trump as president, the
years feel to Smith like an accordi-
on — the decades folding, folding
— back toward slavery “almost to
the point where it could happen
again.”
And with a mountaintop view

RETROPOLIS FROM B1

Man shows

how recent

the stain of

slavery was

SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST

Dan Smith and his wife, Loretta Neumann, walk past their garden this month in Northwest

Washington. The 1963 March on Washington inspired him to join the civil rights movement.

As a young boy, left, Smith

listened to his father’s stories of

slavery and his work as a “boy

laborer” in Virginia after the

Civil War. He was a medic in

the Korean War and made

headlines after rescuing a man

from a flood in Connecticut that

killed 87 people in 1955.