Raymond and Annie Mae Smith

Raymond (1906-1989) and Annie Mae (1910-2009) Smith were part of the Great Migration, joining thousands of descendants of enslaved people who left the South for opportunities in the North. In 1932 the couple and their firstborn son left Thomasville, Georgia, and settled in Manistee. They defied stares and discrimination to stay and provide a home and education for their children. Ray found work shining shoes and as a custodian, cook, bartender, and dancer. Always saving, in 1935 the couple put down $150 on this house. The $550 home, built around 1868, was paid in full by 1939, making the Smiths Manistee’s first and only Black land-owners for the next forty years. In 1940 Ray was hired by the local A&P super-market as a produce clerk. He held the union job for thirty-one years.

[Back]: Raymond Smith built additions to this house as his family grew to include five boys and five girls. The family’s door was open to all, and hundreds of visitors recorded their names in Annie Mae’s guest books, including Richard Austin (the first Black Michigan Secretary of State), Jesse Owens, Edith Wilson (a portrayer of “Aunt Jemima”), Black construction and migrant workers, student nurses, and many others. From 1953 to 1957 James Earl Jones stayed while he performed with Manistee’s Ramsdell Summer Theatre. Ray’s early jobs as a cook and custodian for the Methodist church laid the groundwork for his and Annie Mae’s thriving catering business. Eight of their children later earned college degrees, and one was decorated for his acts of valor in the Vietnam War. The Smiths were named the National Urban League’s “Family of the Year” in 1962.