Patricia Grace Jones was born in
Tuskegee, Alabama, on Nov. 10, 1947. Smith's father, after retiring from the Air Force, managed the canteen at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Tuskegee. Her mother, Wilhelmina, worked as a clerk at the hospital. As a teenager, Smith was among the first students to integrate the public schools in
Macon County, Alabama, over the protests of state officials in the administration of Governor
George C. Wallace. Ultimately, Smith was one of 12 students to file a lawsuit against the Macon County Board of Education to preserve their legal right to attend the previously all-white Tuskegee High School. Initially filed in 1963, the case resulted in the 1967 federal district court decision resulting in a blanket desegregation order for public primary and secondary schools, two-year postsecondary schools, and public universities. That ruling was later upheld by the
Supreme Court of the United States. Smith later attributed her negotiating skills to the experience she had during the struggle for integration. Smith had a son with her first husband, Gene Grace, and three children with her second husband,
John Clay Smith. Smith was 68 years old when she died of
pancreatic cancer, on June 5, 2016, in
Washington, D.C. ==Career==