The legacy of Florida A&M University President Emeritus Walter L. Smith
If you knew me while growing up in Tallahassee in the 1980s, then you likely remember that my cousin Walter L. Smith II and I were practically inseparable throughout our school days. Such is why news hit hard last night when I learned that his father (and my uncle), former Florida A&M University President Walter Lee Smith, had passed away at the age of 86.
When my family moved to Tallahassee in 1980, for the next decade until I left home to attend Morehouse College in 1990, “Lil’ Walt,” as he was known, and I would spend countless days and nights either with my folks at our house on Daniels Street, with his folks out at their house on Randolph Circle, or alternately visiting our grandfather, George Catchings, up in Cairo, Georgia. From that vantage point, the revered "President Smith" was simply “Uncle” Walter to me, but no less the legendary educator, brilliant orator, and Jim Crow era storyteller who was known to spare no quarter in teaching all about systemic white supremacy.
While I have stories that I could tell for days, when I reminisced with Lil' Walt last night, we laughed a hearty laugh about the time that his dad drilled us literally all night long in preparation for a Jack and Jill Oratorical contest the next afternoon. You see, Uncle Walter was a mesmerizing speaker who rarely spoke from a prepared text, such is why he pushed us to memorize our speeches so that we "didn't embarrass him" the very next day. That night, every single time we even looked like we were drifting off, he would raise his voice and tell us to "wake up and do it again;" Lil' Walt came in 1st place and I came in 2nd thanks to his tutelage.
But again, my fondest memories of Uncle Walter was his passion for history, one that we most certainly shared. Like all of our teaching elders who grew up during the Jim Crow era, there was an edge to his voice when he would recount the legal and cultural horrors that he experienced first-hand during that period. His knowledge was further enhanced later in his professional life as he regularly toured or worked across Africa and, invariably, would return home to teach about the impact of racism and colonialism on the Mother continent.
Such is why as Lil' Walt and I remembered his dad last night, his wife, Yolanda, spoke up at one point and told me "you sound just like my husband" as I recounted my thoughts about their father's place in history.
When Dr. Walter L. Smith was named President of Florida A&M University in 1977, segregation had only "officially" ended in Florida less than a decade before his arrival on campus. During that prior decade, there were open and hostile attempts by the Florida legislature to merge FAMU with nearby predominantly white Florida State University. In fact, the original FAMU College of Law was closed in 1968, only to find a Florida State University College of Law open a few years later; to this very day, a vast number of books in the FSU Law Library are stamped "FAMU College of Law" as they were simply boxed up and removed to the former from the latter!
During the tenure of FAMU President Benjamin L. Perry (1969-77) on through to Uncle Walter's, hardly a year went by when merger didn't loom like a very real threat for the viability of FAMU. Which is why I would be remiss if I did not note that had a fierce and unapologetically Black advocate like Smith not been named President in 1977—there may not have been a FAMU by the early 1980s and beyond!
Looking back, the disparate funding between FAMU and FSU at the time was made palpable in a major way during the 1979-80 football seasons when FAMU’s Bragg Stadium, built in 1957, fell in desperate need of repairs. FAMU was allowed to use FSU’s Doak Campbell Stadium—built and maintained at the time by state funds—but the football team was not allowed to use FSU’s locker room and was forced to get dressed and conduct halftime adjustments on the bus.
These slights only raised the stakes for Uncle Walter as he worked indefatigably to obtain renovations of the stadium and historic Lee Hall, the school’s iconic administration building. Smith also pushed for a full engineering school, one that would further its mission as a "Land-Grant" college under the Morill Act, a designation that it only shared with the University of Florida—not Florida State University.
In fact, while it was commonly known that FAMU had been offering engineering classes since 1949 and was better situated for a new stand-alone school in Tallahassee, true to its then voracious take over form, FSU, seeking its own engineering school, made a similar petition to the Board of Regents; after much debate between stakeholders, a compromise was struck that created a joint FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. Since that time, despite years of mistrust and frustrations between the two schools and, in the last decade, a renewed attempt by FSU to develop its own separate engineering school, a significant number of engineers of all races, but especially Black engineers, owe their educations to the efforts of President Walter Smith!
For these and countless other reasons, if ever a Mount Rushmore of FAMU presidents is erected, Dr. Walter Lee Smith's visage most certainly will be carved in stone. But what I will always remember about the late Walter Smith is his easy going nature in which he could be sitting in his office or walking on campus among luminaries like Muhammad Ali, Jesse Jackson, and Nelson Mandela one minute—then asking whether Lil’ Walt and all of his friends wanted to get some after school snacks from his University dining room the next (which we often did 😆)!
Sigh…
As the Smith legacy will be fondly remembered in the days ahead, I respectfully ask that you keep his wife, Barbara, sons Walter, Johnny, and Andre, daughter Salesia, nephew/son Cory Brown, and his grandchildren/extended family in your prayers in the days ahead!
Requiescat in Pace…
Such a lovely remembrance. (Despite the dressing-on-the-bus BS. 🤬).
Lovely tribute. I'm sorry for your loss, his family and friends' loss.