[2] When Smith was 2 years old, his father accepted a position on the faculty of the University of North Carolina, and moved the family to Chapel Hill.

[4] Their main clients were the many railroad workers injured on the job; three-quarters of the cases they took involved personal injury and they won the bulk of them.

[5] Smith served as chairman of the Fulton County and State Democratic Conventions and was president of the Atlanta Board of Education.

[6] He worked hard to right land patents previously obtained by the railroads, for rationalization of Indian affairs and for the economic development of the South.

[8] Smith returned to Atlanta and resumed his lucrative law practice netting around $25,000 per year and slowly rebuilt his local reputation.

[10] Smith allied himself with Bryan's vice presidential candidate, Populist Tom Watson, one of Georgia's most influential politicians.

[15] He promoted several Jim Crow laws in a constitutional amendment that required either a literacy test or property ownership for voting, and then adding a grandfather clause exemption for poor whites.

In 1911 while still governor, he was chosen by the Georgia General Assembly to fill out the term of United States Senator Alexander S. Clay.