Moranda Smith was a black labor organizer and unionist who served as the first regional director of Winston-Salem, North Carolina's local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America (FTA) in the 1930 and 1940s.
Born of a sharecropping family in South Carolina, Smith led thousands of Winston-Salem workers to win $1,250,000 in back pay in the leaf houses and stemmeries.
In 1943, after a Black worker fell dead at a Reynolds Tobacco Company plant, Smith, along with thousands of other Black women, participated in a spontaneous sit-down leading to a massive walkout forcing Reynolds to temporarily shut down.
The union also increased voter registration in the area, leading to the election of the first Black alderman in the South.
Throughout her career as a unionist, Smith worked extensively, "openly defying" the Ku Klux Klan.