Washington Post Profiles Takoma Resident Daniel Smith — the living son of a slave

July 27, 2020 Christopher Alexander 2132 Views Daniel Smith

Today’s Washington Post had a wonderful article about local Takoma DC neighbor Daniel Smith. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Smith a few times due to the Civil War historic preservation activities that he and his wife Loretta Neumann contribute to. However, I had no idea about his own personal historic legacy.

The whipping post. The lynching tree. The wagon wheel. They were the stories of slavery, an inheritance of fear and dread, passed down from father to son.

The boy, barely 5, would listen, awed, as his father spoke of life in Virginia, where he had been born into bondage on a plantation during the Civil War and suffered as a child laborer afterward.

As unlikely as it might seem, that boy, Daniel Smith, is still alive at 88, a member of an almost vanished demographic: The child of someone once considered a piece of property instead of a human being.

The article goes on to detail many elements of the life of Mr. Smith’s father, Abram Smith.

Please read the article in its entirety here: Daniel Smith, living son of a slave

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