1. Michael Hoke Smith was an American attorney, politician, and newspaper owner who served as United States secretary of the interior, 58th governor of Georgia, and a United States senator from Georgia.
19 Facts About Hoke Smith
1. 2.
Hoke Smith was a leader of the progressive movement in the South and in the successful campaign to disenfranchise African American voters in 1907.
3.
When Smith was 2 years old, his father accepted a position on the faculty of the University of North Carolina, and moved the family to Chapel Hill.
4.
Hoke Smith attended Pleasant Retreat Academy and was primarily educated by his father.
5.
In 1868, when the elder Hoke Smith lost his position at the university, he moved the family to Atlanta, Georgia, the city that would remain the younger Hoke Smith's home for the rest of his life.
6.
Hoke Smith did not attend law school, but read for the law in association with an Atlanta law firm.
7.
Hoke Smith passed the bar examination in 1873, at age seventeen, and became a lawyer in Atlanta.
8.
Hoke Smith maintained a small office in the James building downtown.
9.
Hoke Smith's practice began to grow when he began to argue injury suits.
10.
Hoke Smith served as chairman of the Fulton County and State Democratic Conventions and was president of the Atlanta Board of Education.
11.
Hoke Smith was appointed as Secretary of the Interior by Cleveland in 1893.
12.
Hoke Smith worked hard to right land patents previously obtained by the railroads, for rationalization of Indian affairs and for the economic development of the South.
13.
Hoke Smith returned to Atlanta and resumed his lucrative law practice netting around $25,000 per year and slowly rebuilt his local reputation.
14.
Hoke Smith was instrumental in organizing the North Avenue Presbyterian Church and was re-elected to the Atlanta Board of Education.
15.
Hoke Smith allied himself with Bryan's vice presidential candidate, Populist Tom Watson, one of Georgia's most influential politicians.
16.
Hoke Smith promoted several Jim Crow laws in a constitutional amendment that required either a literacy test or property ownership for voting, and then adding a grandfather clause exemption for poor whites.
17.
Hoke Smith won re-election in 1914, but was defeated by Tom Watson in 1920.
18.
Hoke Smith died in 1931 and is buried in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, the last surviving member of the Cleveland Cabinet and the second Cleveland Administration.
19.
The Hoke Smith Annex Building on the campus of the University of Georgia was named in honor of the late senator.