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Smith Act

(Encyclopedia)Smith Act, 1940, passed by the U.S. Congress as the Alien Registration Act of 1940. The act, which made it an offense to advocate or belong to a group that advocated the violent overthrow of the gover...

Smith, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Joseph, 1805–44, American Mormon leader, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, b. Sharon, Vt. When he was a boy his family moved to Palmyra, N.Y., where he experienc...

Smith, Tony

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Tony, 1912–80, American sculptor, b. South Orange, N.J., studied Art Students League, New York City (1933–37), New Bauhaus, Chicago (1937–38). Trained as a painter and architect and for a...

Hoyer, Steny Hamilton

(Encyclopedia)Hoyer, Steny Hamilton stĕnˈē, hoiˈər [key], 1939–, U.S. politician, b. New York City, grad. Univ. of Maryland (B.S. 1963), Georgetown Univ. Law Center (J.D., 1966). A pragmatic centrist Democra...

Smith, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Robert, 1757–1842, U.S. government official, b. Lancaster, Pa. Admitted to the bar in 1786, he practiced law in Baltimore before serving in the Maryland state senate (1793–95) and in the Ba...

Smith, Sydney

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Sydney, 1771–1845, English clergyman, writer, and wit, ordained in the Church of England in 1794. In 1798 he went as a tutor to Edinburgh, where he studied medicine, occasionally preached, an...

Hamilton, Andrew Jackson

(Encyclopedia)Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, 1815–75, American politician, b. Huntsville, Ala. Moving to Texas in 1846, he served (1849) as attorney general, was a member of the legislature (1851–53), and in 1859 wa...

Smith, Lillian

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Lillian, 1897–1966, American writer and social critic, b. Jasper, Fla. She was a social worker in Georgia for several years. Her best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944) is set in the South an...

Smith, Adam

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Adam, 1723–90, Scottish economist, educated at Glasgow and Oxford. He became professor of moral philosophy at the Univ. of Glasgow in 1752, and while teaching there wrote his Theory of Moral ...

Smith, Goldwin

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Goldwin, 1823–1910, English educator, historian, and journalist. Educated at Oxford, he took a prominent part in executing reforms at the university and became (1858) professor of modern hist...

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