… Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He no longer felt safe in Manhattan’s lower 4th Ward, his life-long home. All across southern Manhattan, black neighborhoods like his were being attacked, and black-owned businesses, such as the pharmacy Dr. Smith had once owned and a boarding house owned by his childhood friend Albro Lyons, were being destroyed. His hard work for African American freedom and social equality, as well as the struggle to advance himself and his family, had suffered a violent blow.
The mob had nearly destroyed the drugstore of Philip White, who had been an apprentice of Dr. Smith, but luckily White’s reputation in the neighborhood drew a sympathetic army of protectors. Shocking to many New Yorkers was the burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum, where Dr. Smith was acting physician. Luckily the children had escaped to safety by the time the rioters struck, largely due to the timely arrival of a military attachment from the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Not long before the riots, he had been offered a teaching position at Wilberforce College in Ohio, but he fell ill and felt the move would be too difficult. After the riots, he set up his new practice in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and lived there for two years until his death in 1865, seven months after President Lincoln’s assassination. In spite of his discouragement over the riots, Dr. Smith had seen significant advancement for African Americans and could take pride in his own role.