Oral history interview with Patricia Smith, 1999

Biographical Note

Patricia Smith, born in 1943, is one of seven children born to George and Idell Smith, of Atmore, Alabama. Her father, a college graduate, worked as a teacher in Tuscaloosa and Mobile, Alabama before the family relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana. He also worked as a mechanic, Negro League baseball player, and a bootlegger. Smith began protesting Jim Crow conditions at the age of twelve, and by the age of eighteen, she was active with the New Orleans chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She participated in picketing, coordinating housing needs for out of town Freedom Ride participants, and other protest activity. She married Frank Nelson, a civil engineer, in New York City in 1962. He too was active in CORE and was one of three white men whose beating by the New Orleans Police Department was broadcast on a local news station. Smith worked for CORE in New York City. She also started several groups to encourage community engagement for youths between the ages of ten and twenty: Teens in Trouble (Detroit, Michigan), Teens on Top (California), and Teen Network (New Orleans). Smith Nelson has one son, Wendell

Scope and Contents

In this interview with Sheila Michaels, Patricia Smith discusses her family background and her involvement in the civil rights movement, especially with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Smith reminisces about the women who influenced her growing up, including her career-woman mother, her grandmother, and her older sister Carlene, who was her primary caregiver. Smith describes how her sister instilled in her a sense of mission, and helped her recognize the inequality in their hometown of New Orleans. She recounts an early childhood encounter with a white grocer. Smith reflects on the support she received from her high school, enabling her to miss classes and participate in protest activity while she was still a student. Smith discusses her attendance at the Louisiana Military Political Camp during her sophomore year. The camp, focused on government and organizing, admitted Black and white students but housed and trained them separately. Smith recalls her picket activity at Woolworth's and McCrory's, and details her rank and file role in this action. She discusses New Orleans' role as a stopping point for CORE activists and her role in coordinating housing for movement volunteers. Smith also discusses an incident in 1961 where she, Frank Nelson, and Alice Thompson were arrested, tried, and nearly lynched in Poplarville, Mississippi. They were there testing the Southern states' compliance with a ruling from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) that banned discrimination on buses. Smith also discusses her father's arrest and ninety-day prison sentence because of her and her sister's protest activity. Smith also speaks about her former husband Frank Nelson: the details of their wedding and his hunger strike after his arrest for testing Howard Johnson's and Holiday Inn's along the interstate highway

Subjects

• Civil rights demonstrations--Louisiana--New Orleans.
• Civil rights movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Congress of Racial Equality.
• Congress of Racial Equality. New York (Harlem) Chapter.
• Imprisonment--United States.
• Interviews.
• Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017, interviewer.
• Oral histories.
• Segregation in transportation--Southern States--History.
• Smith, Patricia (Nelson)--Interviews.
• United States--Race relations--History--20th century.