Black Leader Who Fought Trump Rally Killed in Her Home

Sherry Gamble Smith's death believed to be a domestic incident
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jul 8, 2022 12:21 AM CDT
Black Leader Who Fought Trump Rally Killed in Her Home
Stock photo.   (Getty Images / carlballou)

A Black business leader and community activist who joined Tulsa civic leaders in fighting then-President Donald Trump's plan to hold a campaign rally on Juneteenth in a city known as the site of one of the nation's deadliest white-on-Black mob attacks has been killed in what police describe as a domestic incident at her home. Investigators were trying Thursday to develop a timeline that led to Sherry Gamble Smith and her husband, Martin Everett Smith, being fatally wounded in their home in the Tulsa suburb of Bixby, Oklahoma, the AP reports.

Police dispatched on a call about a reported death about 8am Wednesday went to the Smith home and found Gamble Smith dead and her husband wounded. The husband died later at a hospital. A Bixby police statement issued Wednesday night said Gamble Smith's death "appears to be domestic in nature but the investigation is still underway to determine the timeline and what (led) to this tragedy.”

Gamble Smith was president of the Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce, named after Tulsa's Greenwood commercial district—an area of concentrated Black wealth—that white rioters burned in 1921. Up to 300 Black Tulsa residents were killed, and the area never recovered. She was vocal in her opposition to Trump's plans to hold his first campaign rally of the COVID era there on Juneteenth 2020. Trump's event was met with protests during a time of nationwide protests just weeks after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd. (More Oklahoma stories.)

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