At Vassar she was active in the feminist movement and after graduation in 1912 she went back to North Dakota where she continued campaigning for women's suffrage.
She joined the National Woman's Party as one of their writers and at the same time specialized in biographies of women with a prominent role in American history.
[1][3] She was also affiliated with Schlesinger Library (advisory committee), Notable American Women (consultant), Massachusetts State Equal Rights Amendment Coalition (secretary).
[4] They both became National Woman's Party members and shared a house in Boston and a summer home, Highmeadow, in Berlin, New York, from 1918 until Smith's death in 1959.
(Alma Lutz to Florence Kitchelt, July 1959)[6] Lutz and Smith are included among the historical couples of the suffragist movement, which also include Katharine Anthony and Elisabeth Irwin, Jeannette Augustus Marks and Mary Emma Woolley, Lena Madesin Phillips and Marjory Lacey-Barker, Alice Morgan Wright and Edith J. Goode, Mabel Vernon and Consuelo Reyes-Calderon, and Grace Hutchins and Anna Rochester.