Wilford Horace Smith

Wilford Horace Smith (April 1863 - June 9, 1926) was an American lawyer who specialized in constitutional law. He was the first African-American lawyer to win a case before the Supreme Court of the United States.R. Volney Riser, Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Rights Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890-1908 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2010), p. 101

Biography
Smith was born in April of 1863 in Mississippi.R. Volney Riser uses the year 1860 in Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Rights Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890-1908, however the 1900 and 1910 US census both use 1863 as the year of birth. His father was from Virginia and his mother from Kentucky.

He attended Boston University School of Law and graduated in 1883. He married in 1895, and around the same year moved to Galveston, Texas to practice law. He moved to Manhattan, New York City by 1910. He died on June 9, 1926, in Manhattan, New York City.New York City Death Index

Writings
Carter v. Texas (1900)
The Negro and the Law (1903)
Is the Negro Disfranchised?, The Outlook, April 29, 1905, pp. 1047-1048
The Negro's Right to Jury Representation (c. 1909)

References

Category:1863 births
Category:1926 deaths
Category:African-American lawyers
Category:American civil rights activists
Category:Lawyers from Mississippi