Jerome Smith

Jerome Smith was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 21 May 1939, the son of Walter Smith, a merchant seaman, and Leona Juluke, a seamstress. He attended Joseph S. Clark High School, where he was a drum major, and enrolled at Southern University in Baton Rouge, joining the band before leaving in his sophomore year. He worked on the docks, entered labor organizing, and soon joined the New Orleans chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

As a boy in the 1940s he watched his father remove a Jim Crow seating screen on a streetcar. Riding alone on the St. Claude Avenue line, Smith took a seat in the section reserved for white riders. White passengers and the conductor reacted with rage. An elderly Black woman slapped him, pulled him off the car, and apologized to onlookers, then walked him around the corner, hugged him, and told him never to quit. Smith told StoryCorps and Amistad Research Center interviewers that the moment opened the door to the life he would live. His mother, Leona, taught the family to insist on dignity, including that white merchants address her as Mrs. Smith.

In September 1960 Smith took part in a multi-hour CORE sit-in at the segregated Woolworth lunch counter on Canal Street and was arrested. In 1961 he became a Freedom Rider. Held in a New Orleans jail after a sit-in, he missed the first national ride; after release he rode from Montgomery, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, and was arrested again (Mississippi Department of Archives and History booking photo, 24 May 1961). On a later ride into McComb, Mississippi, a mob met the bus. Smith was beaten with brass knuckles, suffered a traumatic brain injury, and lived with headaches for the rest of his life. A Black man in a weathered truck pulled him and fellow rider Thomas Valentine to safety. When Justice Department official Burke Marshall urged them toward a hospital, Smith recalled answering that they were not stopping and were going back.

In May 1963, recovering in New York, Smith joined James Baldwin, Lena Horne, Lorraine Hansberry, and others at Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's Manhattan apartment. Smith told Kennedy he had watched Justice Department staff take notes while activists were beaten, and that the meeting felt like public relations unless power was restructured. Hansberry pointed to Smith as the person who should be listened to; Horne later said he communicated the plain suffering of being Black. President Kennedy addressed the nation on race about a month later; the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) followed. Smith told Amistad that improvements had not yet changed the spirit of the plantation, but that he had to believe change would come.

In 1968 Smith and fellow CORE activist Rudy Lombard co-founded Tamborine & Fan (also spelled Tambourine & Fan in some local sources), a Treme-based youth organization linking Black history, New Orleans street culture, brass bands, Mardi Gras Indian traditions, and social justice. Children followed him so closely that he earned the nickname Big Duck. Through the program and Super Sunday gatherings he helped nurture musicians central to the brass-band revival and kept mentoring generations at the Treme Recreation Community Center and Hunter's Field. Trombone Shorty later dedicated a track titled "Tambourine And Fan" to him. U.S. Rep. Troy Carter called him a freedom fighter and mentor who had little patience for excuses when children needed help. Former Mayor Marc Morial, later National Urban League president, called him a civil rights warrior whose work was a calling.

Smith also pressed city politics, including Confederate monument removal debates, and told The Times-Picayune in 2014 that his mission was not labeled "civil rights" so much as a demand that humanity be respected. He remained a culture bearer into his eighties, appearing at second lines and Super Sunday events documented by WWOZ photographers in 2025 and 2026.

Jerome Smith died of cancer at his Mid-City New Orleans home on 21 August 2026, aged 87. Daughter Farin Smith confirmed the cause to The New York Times. Friend and Tamborine & Fan program officer Robert "Two Scoops" Stanley confirmed the death to NOLA.com. Mayor Helena Moreno, Rep. Troy Carter, District Attorney Jason Williams, council members, Marc Morial, and the National Urban League issued tributes. Community visitation was set for 11 September 2026 at Gallier Hall and a celebration of life for 12 September 2026 at the Mahalia Jackson Theater. The City Council advanced renaming the Treme Recreation Community Center in his honor. He is survived by three daughters and a son (New York Times), including Farin Smith.

This memorial is for Jerome Smith (1939-2026), the New Orleans civil rights activist known as Big Duck, Freedom Rider, CORE organizer, and co-founder of Tamborine & Fan. It is not for other people named Jerome Smith in sports or entertainment.