Robert Lloyd Smith had big dreams for his fellow African-Americans a century ago, when he founded Farmers’ Improvement Bank in Waco. A savvy businessman, former Texas legislator and established educator by the time he came to Waco and sunk his roots here, it was in his workaholic DNA to seek the betterment of his race.

“We want to teach the common people — those who never went a day to school in their lives — industry, economy, thrift , perseverance, self-control and to develop higher ideas of home and its functions,” Smith wrote to his hero and mentor, Booker T. Washington, in 1899. Both men thought blacks needed to focus their efforts on peaceful economic self-improvement and cultural pride rather than fight for political and social equality.

“I have had a straight out struggle this year. I’ve had to fight every inch of my way in everything, but thank God I am still on gaining ground, and am enabled by his help to say ‘Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.’ ”

Robert Lloyd Smith earned degrees in English and mathematics from Atlanta University in 1880, and headed west to make a career in education.

Smith was a member of the black bourgeois: born free in Charleston, S.C., on Jan. 8, 1861, to educators Francis Arthur and Mary Hamilton (Talbot) Smith, the lad was groomed at elite institutions for aspiring middle-class and upper-crust African-Americans.

Smith earned bachelor of science degrees in English and mathematics from Atlanta University in 1880, and headed west to make a career in education.

In the little town of Oakland, (about halfway between Houston and San Antonio) Smith began teaching at Oakland Normal School. By 1885, he became the school’s principal while also working in the community for racial progress.

Improvement society

In Colorado County, he saw many black families exploited by certain white planters, trapped in a kind of multigenerational serfdom through sharecropping and a credit-lien system that ensnared poor farmers in a hopeless cycle of debt.

So, in 1890, Smith founded the Farmers’ Home Improvement Society to promote economic self-sufficiency through home and farm ownership.

The organization touted frugal practices such as growing one’s own food, crop diversification, cooperative buying and selling of land for cash, and even provided health coverage for its members.

According to the research of Robert Carroll, who wrote his 1974 master’s thesis at Baylor University on Smith and his economic development strategies, the society grew almost exponentially.

In 1898 it claimed 1,800 members; by 1900 it had grown to 86 branches and 2,340 members; and by 1909 it boasted more than 21,000 members spread across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

The Farmers’ Home Improvement Society sponsored agricultural fairs and established the Farmers’ Improvement Agricultural College at Wolfe City in 1906.

Meanwhile, Smith found other ways to serve his neighbors — black and white.

In 1894, Smith was elected to the 24th Texas Legislature as a Republican, and even won re-election in his predominantly white district.

From 1902 to 1909, Smith served as deputy U.S. marshal for the Eastern District of Texas after his appointment by President Theodore Roosevelt. He lost the job when William Howard Taft was president and Smith never held a public office again.

When his political life ended, Smith taught at Prairie View Normal School (now known as Prairie View A&M University).

National Negro Business League

In 1907, because of his business acumen, Smith was elected the first president of the Texas branch of the National Negro Business League. Founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900, the National Negro Business League promoted self-reliance and racial solidarity through the engine of black commerce.

To help implement Smith’s overall vision, also in 1907, the Farmer’s Improvement Society bought the two-story building at 109 Bridge St. in old Waco. On the first floor, he opened the Farmer’s Improvement Society Bank to provide FIS members a source of low-interest loans.

Alas, like many other banks in Waco, the FIS bank succumbed in 1930, as farmers joined the bank panic that followed the 1929 stock market crash and faced total crop failure after years of drought.

But during its heyday, some scholars note, the Farmers’ Home Improvement Society was responsible more than almost any other organization in the state for promoting the long-term prosperity of black Texans, catapulting many out of poverty and into the middle class.

For the remainder of his life, Smith continued to pound the drum for black business concerns.

When he died in 1942 and was buried in Waco’s Greenwood Cemetery, he left a second wife, Ruby Cobb — daughter of the former slave-turned-preacher Stephen Cobb — whom he married in 1919.

They had two adopted children: Roscoe Smith, who worked as a cashier of the Farmers’ Improvement Bank at Waco, and Olive Bell, who taught at the Farmers’ Improvement Agricultural College.

Additional sources: The Handbook of Texas Online, BlackPast.org, HistoryCooperative.org; www.tsl.state.tx.us.