Matthew H. Smith, Philadelphia NAN president and retired social worker, dies at 79
Mr. Smith, a respected deacon at St. Phillip’s Baptist Church in North Philadelphia, had worked for years as a social worker, employed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to work in youth group homes.
Matthew H. Smith, 79, of Philadelphia, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Action Network and a retired social worker who was inspired to a life in activism after attending the 1963 March on Washington, died Sunday, March 27, at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, only days after he was diagnosed with Stage 4 stomach cancer.
Mr. Smith, a respected deacon at St. Phillip’s Baptist Church in North Philadelphia who was known as Deacon Smith, had worked for years as a social worker, employed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to work in group homes for troubled youth.
In 2011, he was elected president of the Philadelphia National Action Network, according to Paula Peebles, chair of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Action Network civil rights organization. And he was scheduled to receive the Philadelphia NAN Drum Major Award on May 14 at NAN’s Legacy Awards Gala.
“He was my left and my right hand,” Peebles said.
Peebles said she and Mr. Smith were looking forward to the Philadelphia awards gala in May and were also making plans to attend the annual national convention in New York this week.
Mr. Smith walked with a limp from having polio when he was 8 years old and having undergone surgeries on his legs. However, his limp did not slow him down, Peebles said.
“Nothing slowed him down,” she said. “He would go all over the state of Pennsylvania, wherever we were called to answer some injustice or discrimination.”
The Philadelphia NAN chapter plans to rename its scholarship in honor of Mr. Smith, Peebles said.
Matthew Henson Smith was born Jan 4, 1943, in Swansea, S.C., to Johnny Williams and Earline Smith Zeigler.
He was the eldest of 10 children in a blended family and was known by his family as “Mack.” As an adult, he was often called “Deacon Mack.”
Because of his polio, and after the death of his stepfather, his mother put Mr. Smith in charge of cooking and cleaning the house while the older siblings worked on a farm with their mother, according to his sister Betty Mattos.
Mattos said her brother was strict with his siblings about reading and completing their homework.
He was known in the family for his intelligence and graduating as valedictorian of his class at Monroe Pinckney High School in Swansea.
“Mom was so proud of him,” Mattos said. “She knew he was really smart. She saw something different in him.”
For nearly two decades, Mr. Smith was the only sibling to graduate from college, until Mattos, the ninth child, and her youngest sister, the 10th, completed college, Mattos said.
Mr. Smith enrolled at Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., at a time when college students took part in student sit-in demonstrations at the Woolworths and Kress stores in 1960, “fighting for the right of Black people to merely enter the store and sit and eat wherever they chose,” a family statement said.
In 1963, when he was 20, Mr. Smith went to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and listened to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other speakers.
“I was a little girl when he went to the March on Washington, but I remember he was enthralled at being at the march,” Mattos said.
“He said it was life-changing for him. He was already doing civil rights stuff and supporting the movement. But going to the march and getting to see Dr. King, that got him fully committed. That’s what he wanted to spend his life doing [social justice work].”
After graduation from Benedict, where he was a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, Mr. Smith moved to Philadelphia to start his career in social work.
A first marriage ended in divorce. He was later married to Frances Smith, with whom he had three children. That marriage also ended in divorce.
In addition to his sister, Mr. Smith is survived by a daughter, Marcella Greaves; sons Matthew Smith Jr. and Michael Smith; five grandchildren; three other sisters; two brothers; and other relatives and friends.
A funeral was held Saturday, April 2.