Johnson C. Smith

Who was Johnson C. Smith?

Johnson Crayne Smith was an early 20th-century businessman from Pittsburgh and the namesake of Johnson C. Smith University.

After graduating from Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, Smith operated a drug store in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. He later became one of the pioneers of street railway construction and served as a director of the People’s Bank in McKeesport. He owned a substantial amount of real estate and co-founded the McKeesport Tin Plate Company.

After he died in 1919, his wife, Jane Berry Smith of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania gave funds to build a theological dormitory, a science hall, a teachers' cottage, and a memorial gate at the Biddle University, an historically black university in Charlotte, North Carolina. She also donated significant sum to the endowment in memory of her late husband.

In appreciation, the Biddle University trustees changed the name of the university to Johnson C. Smith University. The change was made official on March 1, 1923. The university's seminary, the Biddle Memorial Institute, was also renamed the Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary, which is now part of the Interdenominational Theological Center.