SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) - A student of Shreveport's Providence Academy became one of the first African Americans to serve as a clerk in the Railway Mail Service and may have been an early follower of Marcus Garvey in early 1900s Mississippi. Furrh once had a post office, as is evident in the United States Offical Postal Guide for the 1896. It was located in Caddo Parish. John Milton Smith was born in Furrh, Louisiana, on Oct. 28, 1872. The Blanchard Furrh Road in Caddo Parish still passes through what remains of the village, which had a post office during its heyday. John's parents, William and Ida Smith, did the best they could with limited financial resources, sending John to attend Providence Academy in nearby Shreveport. Providence Academy: One of Shreveport’s first Black educational institutions In August of 1891, John converted to Christianity and was baptized by Bishop L. W. Canfield at the Republican Baptist Church. After completing his studies at Providence Academy, John attended Bishop College and passed the necessary examinations to become a teacher. This image of John Milton Smith was published in William Hicks' History of Louisiana Negro Baptists from 1804 to 1914. He married Crenzia Patsy Hicks on Mar. 13, 1898. John Milton Smith's career Smith passed his Civil Service Examination and began working for the Railway Mail Service on June 2, 1903 where he became the Clerk in Charge. The Railway Mail Service was a system of train lines that revolutionized communications in the United States by carrying mail across the nation. Railway Mail Service clerks grabbed mailbags from passing trains. The work was dangerous. When Smith began working for the Railway Mail Service in 1903 and became the Clerk in Charge, he was ahead of the times. History shows that Smith would have likely experienced the effects of racism when he was a clerk with the Railway Mail Service in Meridian, Mississippi. When steel railroad mail cars began replacing the older, wooden cars, and the job became less dangerous, the Union of Railways Mail Clerks (The Railway Mail Association) became segregated. Smith resigned from the position in 1912, and the next year, African Americans founded a separate union for African American mail workers, the National Alliance of Postal Employees. "There was an unspoken gentleman's agreement during the early 1930s. The whites would work inside (as clerks) blacks work work outside (as carriers)... But when times got tough they disregarded that agreement, and the whites were working inside and outside," stated Willenhem Castilla of Jackson, Mississippi, in Philip F. Rubio's book There's Always Work At The Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality. Minnie Cox (left) was the postmaster of the Indianola, Mississippi post office in 1891. She had to resign in 1902 when white residents petitioned to have her removed from her position as postmaster. In 2009, Congress named the Indianola Post Office after her. Wayne Wellington Cox (right) was Minnie's husband and a railways postal clerk in Indianola. Both photos were taken around the turn of the century. (Source: There's Always Work at the Post Office by Philip F. Rubio) Castilla also said that African American postal workers in Mississippi were "the backbone" of the NAACP, in part because "the local (postal officials) couldn't fire them so easily." Clipping from The Meridian Press, Mar. 20, 1903, describes what working at the Railway Mail Service might have been like for John Smith when he began his duties a few months later. In the 1930s through the 1960s, Mississippi's NAACP leadership often came from African American postal workers. John Milton Smith worked for the Railway Mail Service for nine years before resigning. He then returned to farming and played an active role in raising his eight children. He was active in El Bethel Baptist Church and their Sunday school in Meridian, Mississippi. Interestingly enough, William Hicks wrote about John Milton Smith in his book History of Louisiana Negro Baptists from 1804 to 1914. William Hicks was the pastor of El Bethel Baptist Church in Meridian, Mississippi, and likely would have known Smith through El Bethel. Hicks was not only the pastor of El Bethel Baptist Church--he was also an author. Hicks wrote Bible Thoughts with Questions and Answers--a book that dealt with Christian philosophy and theology beginning with the early days of the faith. It was published by the National Baptist Publishing Board in 1908, before Hicks became the pastor of El Bethel Baptist in Meridian, Mississippi. At the time, Hicks was the pastor of two churches simultaneously: Palestine Baptist Church in Gabsland and Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church in Arcadia. "What is a sermon--what is the meaning of the term sermon? The Latins give it to us from their word sermo, accusative of which is sermonem, which means discourse, a speech, writing," wrote Hicks in Bible Thoughts with Questions and Answers. Hicks' writing in the book may give us a glimpse into the preaching style he used behind the pulpit at El Bethel Baptist Church. In May of 1913, the year after John Milton Smith quit working for the postal service in Meridian, Rev. William Hicks received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Selma University. Shreveport man born in 1869 established schools, led churches, worked with Booker T Washington In 1914, Hicks wrote that John Milton Smith supervised a division of the Negro Boys Improvement Association at El Bethel Baptist Church in Meridian. "Scattered evidence also suggests that a surprising number of black Mississippians early in the period of the third stage joined chapters of the separatist Universal Negro Improvement Association, " wrote Neil R. McMillin in Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow. "Although the history of the UNIA in the South has not been written, it seems clear that the charismatic Marcus Garvey's appeal was not limited to northern inner cities as historians once believed. In Bolivar County alone, there were perhaps eleven different Garvey cells and researchers have recently documented the existence of UNIA chapters in at least thirteen other MIssissippi counties. Membership figures are crude estimates at best, but at one time or another during the 1920s and early 1930s Mississippi may have been home to some 500 dues-paying Garveyites." Article about Marcus Garvey that appeared in The Shreveport Journal, Oct. 1, 1919. Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914. In 1919, an article about Garvey and his mission appeared in The Shreveport Journal. The history of Garveyism in the Deep South has not been thoroughly researched yet. But in 1938, Garvey wrote a letter to Senator Theodore G. Bilbo, the Mississippi politician and vocal segregationist. "We write relative to your special work in the United States in the effort of presenting a motion to Congress calculated to interest the United States Government, in the efforts to repatriate as many negroes of the country as may be disposed to be repatriated to Africa... In keeping with the feeling of the Association, we, at our Convention, have decided on passing a resolution that would give our concrete evidence of our support... It is hoped that this resolution will be regarded as a sincere effort of our Association to stand behind your motion, which has been made, and which also you intend to bring up in the 1939 Congress." Yes, that's right. Garvey worked with a Mississippi segregationist. Fact is indeed stranger than fiction. The Negro Boys and Girls Improvement Association was still going at El Bethel Baptist Church in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1933, as is evidenced by this clipping from The Echo, Sept. 1, 1933. Prince’s family lived in Cotton Valley, Louisiana for generations; here’s their story An article in The Echo, a newspaper in 1933 Meridian, Mississippi, documents a picnic for the Girls and Boys Improvement Association at El Bethel Baptist Church. By the 1960s, many Meridians were active participants in the civil rights movement. James Earl Chaney, one of the three civil rights workers who were murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on June 21, 1964, was from Meridian. Meridian, Mississippi now has a civil rights trail. Sources: History of Louisiana Negro Baptists from 1804 to 1914 by William Hicks, published by the National Baptist Publishing Board in Nashville, Tenn., 1915. The Meridian Press, Mar. 20, 1903. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Him Crow, by Neil R. McMillen, University of Illinois Press, 1990. There's Always Work at the Post Office by Philip F. Rubio, The University of North Carolina Press, 2010. The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, edited by Robert A. Hill, Vol. VIII, Nov. 1927-1940, printed by the University of California Press, 1990.