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{{Infobox person
| name = James Carmichael Smith
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| birth_date = 1852
| birth_place = Bahamas
| death_date = 1919
| death_place = London, England
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| nationality = Bahamian
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'''James Carmichael Smith''' (1852 - after 1914) was a
Nassau Legislative Council and in 1887 founded the newspaper ''Freeman''. He was a [[Market Socialism|Market Socialist]] and [[Egalitarianism|Egalitarian]] who published numerous books and writings promoting these views during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a [[Pan-Africanism|Pan Africanist]] and a strong defender of Black people, made evident in the lengthy exchange he had with the Englishman John Gardiner in 1886 after the latter referred to Black Bahamians as "Lazy and good for nothing". He also supported Caribbean integration, promoting the idea of federating the West Indies and charting their own path to prosperity. He was a strong supporter of the Empire but believed in the Self Governance of the British West Indies as a federal province within the Empire.▼
==Early life and family==
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==Career==
In 1887, Smith founded the pro-black newspaper ''Freeman''.<ref name="sher" /><ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Saunders |first=Gail |title=Race and Class in the Colonial Bahamas, 1880–1960 |date=2016 |publisher=University Press of Florida |pages=143-144}}</ref> He was a [[Market Socialism|market socialist]] and [[Egalitarianism|egalitarian]] who published numerous books and writings promoting these views during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
He served as postmaster in the Bahamas from 1889-1896.<ref name=":0" /> He served in the Legislative Assembly from 1882-1896 representing the Western District of New Providence.<ref name=":0" />
In 1896, he was appointed Assistant Postmaster of Sierra Leone,<ref name=":0" /> making him very likely one of a small number of people of colour serving in the British Colonial Service.
== Social views ==
=== Pan African views ===
▲
James Carmichael Smith was among the earliest Bahamians to express Pan African views. In a speech, he gave on 1 August 1887, he focused on the importance of Africa as a central point in which all Black people should unify in the cause of its development: "let us endeavour to become more and more united, and let the children of Africa throughout the Western Hemisphere remember Fatherland or Motherland, let them remember Africa". Continuing this idea he said: "Let us use Africa as the unifying point, and attempt to organize the League of Africa, which should aim to include every human being having a drop of African blood in his veins of which he is not ashamed". He continues: "a league which, after inheriting the blessings of the latest civilization, would undertake the task of carrying or sending those blessings to the people of Africa by the hands of her own children; which would endeavour to teach the unenlightened people of Africa all the arts and manners of civilization, and so fit them to become citizens of free and independent nationalities. This is the special, the high duty of the enlightened children of Africa."<ref>Nassau Guardian, 3 August 1887, pg. 2</ref>
=== Views on Caribbean intergration ===
Smith was among the earliest in the Caribbean to express [[Afro-Caribbean leftism]]. In 1892, he published ''The Distribution Of The Produce
==Later life and death==
Smith retired to Jersey from Sierra Leone in 1914.<ref name="sher" /> He subsequently moved to London, married, and had a daughter.<ref name="Green">{{cite book|author=[[Jeffrey Green|Green, Jeffrey]].|title=Black Edwardians: Black People in Britain 1901-1914|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VDmwAxL2rp0C&pg=PT273|year=1998|publisher=Frank Cass|location=Abingdon|isbn=978-1-136-31830-6}}</ref> Smith died in London in 1919.
==Selected publications==
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