Dr. Walter L. Smith (1935-2021) was a Tampa native and served as the 7th President of Florida A&M University (FAMU) from 1977 to 1985. An international educator, Dr. Smith promoted education and liberty first in the United States then in South Africa. The high school dropout eventually earned two degrees at FAMU, a bachelor’s in biology/chemistry then a Master of Education. In 1965, he became a program officer facilitating the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Title I of the 1965 Elementary Secondary Education Act for the U.S. Office of Education. Smith also helped to develop desegregation and graduate education training centers for African-American administrators at the University of Miami and the Desegregation Center at FAMU. Smith was the first Assistant Executive Director of the Florida Education Association. For his work, he received a full scholarship by the African-American Institute of African Studies to Study abroad. He studied at universities in Ghana, Togo, Dahomey (Benin), and Nigeria. He received his doctorate in 1972 from Florida State University. Following his role at FAMU, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Malawi, 1985-86. In 1993, Smith was asked to go to South Africa to develop South Africa’s first American-style two-year college and became its founding president. In 2002, Smith opened the Dr. Walter L. Smith Library in West Tampa.