Lydia C. Smith

Biographical Database of Black Woman Suffragists

Biographical Sketch of Lydia C. Smith, 1871-1948 (Lydia Cuffee Smith-Ward)

By Michelle Sibilla

Undergraduate, University of Michigan-Dearborn

Lydia Cuffee was born in Berkeley, Virginia, in 1871, to Jeremiah and Martha Cuffee. Jeremiah was a minister for the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Martha a homemaker. Lydia was the second oldest of their four daughters and at least two sons. From a young age, she was surrounded by A.M.E. Church activities that shaped many of her later efforts on behalf of women and African Americans. Through her organizational affiliations, writing, and suffrage activism, Smith gave a voice to African American women.

Lydia Cuffee attended Norfolk Mission College and then Hampton Institute of Virginia. She served as secretary for General Armstrong, the founder of Hampton, before taking a teaching position. In 1893, at the age of 22, she married Virginia attorney and journalist Richard T. Smith and moved to Brooklyn, New York. The couple had three children, Harrison (1896), Frissell (1898), and a third child who died. Richard Smith died sometime in 1900, leaving Smith to care for their two sons and a nephew. In 1913, Smith moved to Kansas City, Kansas. Two years later, Smith married Rev. Armstead Milton Ward, a pastor for the A.M.E. Church. The couple relocated to Denver, Colorado and then Oakland, California. In 1941, Smith’s second husband died and she returned to Brooklyn.

Smith dedicated herself to a variety of social and political causes important to turn-of-the-century African Americans. In 1895, Smith and her first husband began to publish Brooklyn’s first African American newspaper, The Brooklyn Telegram. Smith served as editor, co-publisher, and reporter. She relinquished control of the paper after her husband’s death in 1900 and began writing for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. As one of the few African American women to be regularly employed by a New York daily, Smith used her position to advocate for civil rights, political activism, education, and the importance of women’s suffrage for the race.

Smith worked on behalf of the women of her race through both the Equal Suffrage League and the Young Women’s Christian Association. Upon Smith’s departure for Kansas City, the organization’s president praised Smith as an indispensable member of both organizations. Smith also joined the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and was a strong proponent of other African American women becoming active members. After the Equal Suffrage League became part of the NACW in 1907, Smith continued her efforts for suffrage. Her church, Bridge Street AME Church in Brooklyn, created a special committee to pursue suffrage work and appointed Smith secretary. This committee raised money for and generally supported the work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, of which Smith was also a member.