During a hot July week in 1931, thousands of people milled about outside a small house at 4600 Columbus Avenue in Minneapolis.\u00a0 They gathered each night to terrorize the Black family who had bought the house\u2014Arthur, Edith, and their young daughter, Mary, Lee\u2014hoping that hate and fear would convince them to vacate the house they had moved into only weeks before.\u00a0 The mob of white neighbors shouted threats to burn them out.\u00a0 The family dog was poisoned and the throng jeered every time a person left the house.\u00a0 They threw stones and paint, feces and firecrackers at the house as the Lees and about 20 of their supporters defended it, guns in hand.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The Lee family had bought this home in the Field neighborhood of Minneapolis knowing it was across an imagined color line.\u00a0 They had consulted with Lena Olive Smith, President of the Minneapolis NAACP, before doing so, yet were not certain of all they would face by breaking the taboo.\u00a0 They knew that children might harass them, but did not believe the adults would do so.\u00a0 When a woman contacted the Lees and warned that crowds would be gathering and that the house might be stormed, the Lees turned to the American Legion.\u00a0 Arthur Lee had fought for the United States in France during World War I.\u00a0 The American Legion provided a lawyer, H.E. Maag, and then the Urban League provided a mediator, H.W. Rubins.\u00a0 These two, along with Lee, Mayor William Anderson, Police Chief William Meehan, and Albin J. Lindgren, head of the \u201cCitizens Committee\u201d formed to oust the Lees from the neighborhood, met at City Hall to quench the menacing situation before it flared out of control.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
This worry was grounded in recent events. During and after World War I, race riots had broken out across the country\u2014including Houston, East St. Louis, Tulsa, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. \u2014over other perceived incursions on white privilege by Black people.\u00a0 Only six years earlier, in 1925, a mob had attacked and thrown stones through the living room windows of a black physician who had moved his family into a \u201cwhite\u201d block in Detroit.\u00a0 A stray gunshot from the besieged house and death of a white man led to the (unsuccessful) murder prosecutions of the homeowner, Ossian Sweet, his wife, two brothers, and seven supporters.\u00a0\u00a0 Correspondence between Lena Smith and the national NAACP office makes clear that they feared that white anger over the Lee home could lead to the same kind of destruction and death in Minneapolis.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
After several days of mediation, during which Arthur Lee continued to consult by telephone with Lena Smith and at which Lee was the only Black person present, Maag counseled the Lees to accept an offer from Lindgren\u2019s group.\u00a0 The proposed settlement was for the white neighbors to buy the house from the Lees for slightly more than they had paid and in exchange the family would move away.\u00a0 As the hostile crowds continued to gather and threaten the family every evening, Maag and Rubins advised the Lees to leave town for a vacation in order to lower the temperature and allow the neighbors time to raise money for the settlement.\u00a0 This plan was published in the Minneapolis Star<\/em> newspaper as a resolution of the matter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Lena Smith was stunned by the newspaper account, and contacted Arthur Lee to discuss it further.\u00a0 Her experience as a realtor and as an NAACP activist had taught her that accepting buy outs \u201cwould have no effect other than to convince the mob that their action has been successful.\u201d\u00a0 She had heard it argued that Black people bought homes in so-called white neighborhoods only to make a profit by coercing neighbors into buying them out.\u00a0 With her encouragement and the invocation of the long-term welfare of other members of their race, the Lees dismissed Maag as their lawyer and put their faith in Smith and the support of the NAACP.\u00a0 She took on the matter without fees.\u00a0 Smith spoke forcefully with the Mayor, the Police Chief, Governor Floyd B. Olson (like Smith, a Northwestern College of Law graduate), Lindgren, and Rubins, advocating the Lees\u2019 right to stay in their home and the city\u2019s responsibility to keep them safe and restore public peace.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n On Monday morning, July 20, after a weekend of meetings, Smith made an unflinching statement in the newspapers. \u00a0Her words were firm and steady, not defensive, as she set out the alternatives.\u00a0 Either the white citizenry would leave the young Black family in peace, or she would ask Governor Olson to call out the National Guard to disperse them.\u00a0 She and the national office of the NAACP also had exhorted the Mayor and Police Chief to enhance police patrols at the house.\u00a0 She made clear that the Lees would not<\/strong> be leaving their new home despite these white neighbors\u2019 demands.\u00a0 They have a right to establish a home where they wish, she announced, and the Mayor and Police Chief have promised more vigorous protection from now on.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Several dozen police were sent to protect the Lees.\u00a0 National attention was drawn to the volatile situation.\u00a0 And though the demonstrations continued and the police were subjected to harassment as well, the number of protester diminished in size. After a few more weeks, the street activity subsided.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Smith\u2019s reputation as an effective lawyer who could not be bullied was enhanced in this dispute, as she helped a family resist the threats of white homeowners and the entreaties of government agents.\u00a0 It is worth noting that she did not turn to the courts, for the law was not clearly on the Lees\u2019 side (except, perhaps, for laws against vandalism). Though the NAACP had long asserted that discriminatory covenants in housing violated the 14th<\/sup> amendment of the Constitution, that view was not fully endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court until 1948.\u00a0 In 1931, housing segregation practices were expanding and gaining wide acceptance.\u00a0 Public opinion in Minnesota endorsed segregation so long as it was a matter of \u201cpersonal choice\u201d and not government mandate.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Minnesota had never had laws mandating segregation of the races in housing (laws purporting to enforce separate white and black zoned residential areas, mostly in the south, had been ruled unconstitutional in 1917) and had long prohibited race discrimination in public accommodations.\u00a0 Yet private contracts requiring that a home not<\/strong> be sold to a person other than of the \u201cCaucasian\u201d race were spreading wherever people of color, and particularly African-American people, were trying to establish households. These restrictive covenants normalized the practice of segregation, so that even though the house at 4600 Columbus did not have a covenant in its deed making discrimination formal, thousands of white people acted as if the Lees were the ones who had broken a rule.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Encouraged by the real estate industry, racial segregation boundaries further hardened when the Federal Housing Administration [FHA] was created in 1934 and began to guarantee home loans–but only for properties where racially restrictive covenants were in place.\u00a0 By the time the FHA changed its home loan practices, banks and savings and loans had followed the example and were \u201credlining\u201d cities block by block, i.e., refusing loans or charging higher rates inside defined perimeters where people of color lived.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Standing up with the Lees and the NAACP to the white supremacist mob highlighted the racism in Minnesota that is often hidden. \u00a0And though housing in Minnesota remains quite segregated, the Lees\u2019 courage\u2014bolstered by Lena Smith and the NAACP–is an example to the community into the present day.\u00a0 Their house was named to the National Register of Historic Places as a marker of its significance in the struggle against racism.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Smith graduated from Northwestern College of Law in 1921 and that June became the first Black woman to be licensed to practice law in Minnesota.\u00a0 Practice she did, for 45 years as a general practitioner in the Twin Cities.\u00a0 Her office was downtown Minneapolis, within walking distance of City Hall and the courthouse.\u00a0 She represented individuals in all the matters that send people to attorneys today:\u00a0 criminal defense, family, real estate, probate, licensing, and tort issues.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n In the course of representing clients in their individual legal matters, she could see systemic racism in some of what her Black clients brought to her.\u00a0 And she often\u2014as she did with the Lees\u2014counseled them about the larger interests of the community that were at stake as well as about their individual interest.\u00a0 At a time when many Black people believed it was safer and wiser to avoid confrontation with dispiriting or dangerous racists, Smith thought that public and explicit resistance to structures of inequality was the better strategy for change.\u00a0 The NAACP mostly encouraged her in that position though she was in the militant vanguard with that organization as well.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Smith began experimenting with methods for challenging discrimination in Minnesota even before she became licensed to practice.\u00a0 Shortly after she began law school in 1916, she and four Black men together entered the Pantages Theater in downtown Minneapolis, knowing it had a policy to ask Black patrons to sit upstairs.\u00a0 When the five of them refused to take seats in the balcony and insisted on the main floor, they were denied admission.\u00a0 Each of them sued to recover damages under Minnesota\u2019s Public Accommodations Act, the statute that forbid discrimination in public accommodations.\u00a0 Smith sued for the maximum damages under the statute, $500.00, and added a $1000.00 claim for assault.\u00a0 This implies that the theater employee had to eject her with some force or threat of force.\u00a0 Representing herself at trial, Smith lost.\u00a0 But the group won the larger war:\u00a0 publicity about the cases led the theater to end its segregation policy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Work as a real estate agent for a year or two likely influenced Smith\u2019s decision to begin attending law school at night.\u00a0 Real estate practices were an area where disparate treatment based on race was overt and common.\u00a0 Minnesota had progressive laws on the books and had long considered itself a state that was less racist than most others, especially those in the South.\u00a0 Hadn\u2019t it always prohibited enslavement (yes, but only of Minnesotans, not of those, like Dred and Harriet Scott, who were brought here from outside).\u00a0 Hadn\u2019t it given the franchise to Black men several years before the 15th<\/sup> Amendment required that?\u00a0 Didn\u2019t its law prohibit segregation in the schools?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Yet Minnesota\u2019s veneer of good law and professed lack of prejudice often masked racist social practices.\u00a0 Segregation, insult, and exclusion were in fact widespread.\u00a0 They flourished quietly at restaurants, department stores, movie theaters, and hotels.\u00a0 Minnesota even had \u201csundown\u201d towns, where Black people would be attacked if they remained within the town boundaries after sunset.\u00a0 Three Black men were pulled from jail and hung from lampposts by a cheering horde in Duluth in 1920, a crime that was not punished and was hushed up for decades.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n In real estate the stakes for the Black community were especially high: they were cheated, denied access, and charged thousands more for property in desirable areas than were white people.\u00a0 And so, shortly after graduating from law school and exactly 11 days after being sworn into the bar (there was no bar examination at the time), Smith brought suit in Hennepin County District Court on behalf of an older Black couple, the Parkinsons, who were being refused title to their home after paying for 25 years on their contract for deed.\u00a0 From the pleadings one learns that the landowner had taken their payments for years, but when asked for a summary of their account, asserted falsely that they had been merely his tenants.\u00a0 Smith pointed out all of the improvements the couple had made to the property\u2014bringing running water into the house, a bathroom, gas piping, a front porch, a new roof and so forth–over the decades they had lived there.\u00a0 She tried the case to a jury and won.\u00a0 This case meant a lot to Smith; it was an encouraging start to her career as a lawyer and fighter for equitable treatment for members of her race.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Smith was an early member of the Minneapolis NAACP, formed in 1914, and was head of its Legal Redress Committee before being elected its President in 1930.\u00a0 She was a member and collaborated closely with the group to the end of her life. \u00a0The NAACP led people to Lena Smith\u2019s door; she then used her skills to open other doors for them, sometimes for pay, sometimes without payment.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The NAACP is one of the most grassroots civic organizations ever generated within the United States.\u00a0 It existed on $1.00 annual membership dues from thousands of working people across the United States as it worked to \u201cadvance\u201d people of color and \u201csecure full civil, political and legal rights to colored citizens and others.\u201d\u00a0 (Dues are up to $30 per year in 2020.)\u00a0 It did this in many ways, from calling out disparate treatment, organizing picket lines, lobbying legislators, and challenging race discrimination in the courts.\u00a0 It protested the Duluth lynchings and supported the passing of Minnesota\u2019s anti-lynching law even as Congress failed to act.\u00a0 Its work was aided by many solo and small practice lawyers like Smith, who did not hesitate to seek redress for members and others of the race who needed help.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Smith was well embedded in her community in Minneapolis, and, as in the Lee case, many times her work against discrimination did not involve the court system.\u00a0 She turned to persuasion of government, business, and other civic institutions instead.\u00a0 As is true today, in the 1920s, \u201830s, and \u201840s, legal services were unaffordable for many.\u00a0 Also, the courts often could not provide solutions as effective as those that could be obtained through negotiation and public or government pressure.\u00a0 For example, when potential clients came to Smith with complaints about a restaurant refusing them service, Smith would ask the Mayor to speak with the owner.\u00a0 Usually, it seems the owner would blame an unknowing waiter for the problem, but Smith (with the backing of the NAACP) would push for changed management practice and more training for staff.\u00a0 A sign saying \u201cno colored\u201d would be met with a visit from the police ensuring the sign was removed, a visit prompted by Smith\u2019s discussion with the Chief. \u00a0Smith knew to get publicity for these incursions as well:\u00a0 the main way we know of them is from contemporaneous newspaper accounts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Yet Smith did not avoid court when it was required or was the best path.\u00a0 In criminal law, Smith\u2019s reputation grew when she confronted prosecutors who made explicit appeals to racial prejudice in their arguments.\u00a0 She won one motion for a new trial on a rape charge after a prosecutor asked the all-white male jury \u201cAre you gentlemen going to turn this Negro loose to attack our women?\u201d \u00a0Smith\u2019s argument for her client, Earl Haywood, made in 1928, acknowledged that the jurors did not believe themselves to be prejudiced on the basis of \u201ccolor.\u201d\u00a0 They did not lie when they answered during voir dire that they had no bias.\u00a0 \u201cYet it is common knowledge a feeling can be so dormant and subjected to one\u2019s sub-consciousness, that one is wholly ignorant of its existence.\u00a0 But if the proper stimulus is applied, it comes to the front, and more often than not one is deceived in believing that it is justice speaking to him; when in fact it is prejudice, blinding him to all justice and fairness.\u201d\u00a0 Smith\u2019s reasoning reveals a subtle and sophisticated view of the operation of race in the legal system.\u00a0 Its description of implicit or unconscious bias contains insight that, almost a century later, we still struggle to incorporate into our administration of justice.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n During the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, when she was in her 60s and 70s, Smith\u2019s legal work was steady but was not as much in the public eye.\u00a0 She was active with Minnesota State Bar Association\u2019s Legislation and Public Relations committees.\u00a0 She served on the Urban League Board and with her Selective Service Board.\u00a0 She was consulted by Hubert Humphrey while he was Mayor of Minneapolis and Senator and was happy and proud to be invited and present at the inauguration of President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Humphrey in January 1965.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n What were the sources of Smith\u2019s pioneer spirit?\u00a0 How did she develop into an activist for justice?\u00a0 She was born in Olathe, Kansas on August 13, 1885 to John and Geneva Smith and attributed her fearlessness to being \u201cfrom the West.\u201d\u00a0 The oldest of five, she went to high school and some college until her father died in 1906.\u00a0 Then she moved with her mother and younger siblings to Minneapolis.\u00a0 There, she began searching for more learning and for a life\u2019s work that also could support the family.\u00a0 She tried being a \u201cdramatic reader\u201d on the Chautauqua, then became a \u201cdermatologist\u201d before going to embalming school.\u00a0 Facing difficulty finding employment with an undertaking firm, she then opened a hair salon on Nicollet Avenue with a white woman partner. After the salon failed, Smith turned to real estate.\u00a0 This decision illustrates her feistiness, as this was a profession that few women took up at the time.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Smith never married nor had children, and lived with and supported her mother until Geneva died.\u00a0 She was dedicated to her work, to her extended family, and to her community in south Minneapolis, where her modest home is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\u00a0 She enjoyed playing the piano, reciting drama or poetry at family gatherings\u2014e.g., the \u201cquality of mercy\u201c speech given by Portia from Shakespeare\u2014and driving with friends to Chicago for the horse races for relaxation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n She died in 1966, at age 80, on a day when she was due in court.\u00a0 Her cellar was filled with fruits and vegetables that she had canned for the winter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Smith\u2019s contributions to the community were many, but perhaps her greatest contribution is this:\u00a0 she saw injustice and gave her clients the choice and the means to resist it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n *The quotations in this biography are taken from the references below.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Ann Juergens, Lena Olive Smith:\u00a0 A Minnesota Civil Rights Pioneer<\/em>, 28 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 39 (2001).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Shelley v. Kraemer<\/em>, 334 U.S. 1 (1948) (landmark case establishing that judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants violates the 14th<\/sup> Amendment\u2019s guarantee of equal protection of the laws).<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During a hot July week in 1931, thousands of people milled about outside a small house at 4600 Columbus Avenue in Minneapolis.\u00a0 They gathered each night to terrorize the Black family who had bought the house\u2014Arthur, Edith, and their young daughter, Mary, Lee\u2014hoping that hate and fear would convince them to vacate the house they … <\/p>\nA Community-Based Practice Woven Through with Civil Rights Efforts<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Personal Life<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
References<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n