Lena O. Smith
*This date marks the birth of Lena O. Smith in 1885. She was a Black attorney and civil rights advocate.
In 1906, she moved with her family from Lawrence, Kansas, to Minnesota. Smith enrolled in Northwestern College of Law, one of five law schools that became William Mitchell College of Law. In 1921, with a class of 16, she opened her firm and became the first Black woman to practice law in the state. As an attorney, she was instrumental in the housing discrimination case of Arthur and Edith Lee in South Minneapolis.
Four years later, the talented attorney helped found the Minneapolis branch of the Urban League, and between 1935 and 1939, Smith served as president of the Minneapolis branch of the NAACP. Her contemporaries recall Smith as one of the most aggressive and successful civil rights lawyers of her time.
In 1937, she defended a Black man beaten by two off-duty white police officers for drunkenness. Smith got the charges dropped, a monetary settlement for the client, and persuaded the police department to transfer the offending officers to another district. Smith was active in the Minnesota state and local bar associations. She was honored in 1965 as one of the guests at the Johnson-Humphrey inaugural in Washington, D.C.
Lena Smith died in 1966, leaving a record of accomplishments that serve as a lasting example of citizen's rights through the rule of law. In 1991, her home in South Minneapolis was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Minnesota Historical Society
345 W. Kellogg Blvd.
Saint Paul, MN 55102-1906
