[1] Homer Smith Jr. studied journalism at the University of Minnesota between 1922 and 1928, financing his schooling while working for the U.S. Post Office as a clerk.
[citation needed] He wrote columns under the pen name "Chatwood Hall" and his real name that were published in papers including The Chicago Defender, The Crisis and The Afro-American, including a weekly column for the Defender in at least December 1934.
[1] When Germany invaded Russia in the summer of 1941, he became a full-time war correspondent for the Associated Negro Press.
In January 1944, he was part of the delegation of Western correspondents who visited the graves in Katyn forest at the invitation of the Soviets.
[5][4] Smith left Russia for Ethiopia in 1946, where he worked for the Ethiopian Press Service; he never returned to the Soviet Union.