[NFBOH-Cleveland] Meet Alfonso Smith In Recognition of Celebrating Black History Month

[Suzanne Turner]

Meet Alfonso Smith In Recognition of Celebrating Black History Month

 

Braille Monitor, March 1970 issue:

 

"MEET OUR STATE PRESIDENT--ALFONSO SMITH

 

STATE AFFILIATE--OHIO Alfonso Smith has been President of the Ohio Council
of the Blind for the past two years and is now serving his third term. He
was preceded in this office by Frank Jasinski (1947), Harry Stiller (1948),
Clyde Ross (1949-1963) and George Bonsky (1963-1967). Smith was a charter
member and one of the organizers of the Youngstown Council of the Blind, an
Ohio Council affiliate, and he is familiar with this organization at every
level, having been elected president five times and having served in all of
its offices except that of secretary. In the state organization he has held
the offices of first vice-president and second vice-president in addition to
his present office and he has served on its Resolution, Legislative, and
Broom Shop Committees. He is a newly elected member of the NFB Executive
Committee.

 

Alfonso Smith was born November 1, 1913 in Coosa County, Alabama but was
raised and schooled in Youngstown, Ohio where his family settled in 1917. He
graduated from Rayen High School in 1933. His blindness is a result of
scarlet fever at the age of thirteen and the gradual deterioration of vision
until age twenty-six. Before rehabilitation at the Ohio Commission for the
Blind in 1945 where he learned his trade of broom making Smith worked for
construction companies. As an independent businessman he owned and operated
the Steel City Broom Company for thirteen years. The Youngstown Society for
the Blind hired him as a supervisor to train men in his trade eleven years
ago. A strong believer in personal dignity and self-reliance, Smith believes
that each person has a human worth which should be developed to the greatest
extent of his ability.

 

In June, 1938 Smith married Amanda Wallace and they have three daughters and
two grandsons. His interests include sports, having played both baseball and
football, fishing, reading, and an avid interest in legislation. He is a
board member of the Ohio Chapter of the AAWB and the McGuffey Center, Inc.

 

In 1940, when seven states gathered in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to form
the National Federation of the Blind, Ohio was represented by Glenn Hoffman.
Ohio is proud to have been a charter member of the NFB. Because the Ohio
Federation of the Blind was not growing leaders of the blind gathered in
Canton in 1946 to draft a constitution that would set forth the real goals
of the Ohio blind. In January, 1947 a convention was held in Columbus and
from this issued the Ohio Council of the Blind with five chartered
affiliates.

 

With the help of the Ohio Lions the OCB got the White Cane Law enacted. It
secured a $200.00 yearly medical benefit before the arrival of Medicaid and
Medicare and it helped in the abolition of the twelve-day hospital tenure.
The OCB blocked a bill to permit the publication of names of public
assistance recipients as well as a bill that would have permitted the
wholesale and retail of fireworks without a license. When title XVI of the
Social Security Act took effect, lumping all public assistance under one
head, the OCB was able to save the separate law for Aid to the Blind
recipients. The OCB was also instrumental in defeating a bill to combine the
handicapped under one commission. The Council helped reduce residence
requirements from three years to one year before the decsion of the Supreme
Court. Recently the OCB prevented the building of a superhighway through the
grounds of the Ohio State Schools for the Blind and Deaf.

 

To inform the blind of Ohio about the goals and achievements of the NFB,
Alfonso Smith arranged regional meetings in four sections of Ohio. National
Federationists such as John Nagle, Chief of the Washington Office, Jim Omvig
of the Iowa Commission and Bob Whitehead, Executive Board Member from
Kentucky spoke and answered questions at these meetings. People who had
never attended state or national conventions were exposed by these seminars
to NFB philosophy. The OCB hopes in the future to get the Model White Cane
Law and the Little Randolph-Sheppard Act passed. Other goals are the
advancement of H.R. 3782 in Congress and the establishment of a commission
for the blind in Ohio."

 

Sadly, just a few months later, Dr. Jernigan as President, had to report the
following from one of his letters in May of 1970:

 

"Dear Colleagues:

This is one of those letters which I write to you from time to time to bring
you up to date on general happenings. My first piece of news is, indeed, not
pleasant. Word has just reached me of the death of Alfonso Smith, president
of our Ohio affiliate and member of the NFB Executive Committee. I do not
have very much in the way of details--just that Al went into the hospital
with what appeared to be the flu, that he was placed on the critical list
and that he was dead of pneumonia within something like a week. Al was a
staunch Federationist, a friend, and a colleague."

 

Apparently Alfonso Smith  died in the office of Presidency, but it is safe
to say that his legacy continues. I don't know when this award was
established (perhaps others can chime in here) but let's never take it
lightly and keep is as prestigious and memorable as it remains today. This
was a Black, blind person that, if I am not mistaken, served at a time when
there were segregated chapters in our affiliate based on race and ethnicity.
By all accounts, he served with positivity, credibility, and distinction
through some potentially turbulent times.

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