Gerald l k smith biography

Gerald L. K. Smith (February 27, –April 15, ), a minister, publisher, orator, anti-Semite, and anticommunist, a hater of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, was one of the most inflammatory speakers of the New Deal era.

Born in a Wisconsin village to a lower-middle-class family, Smith graduated from Viroqua High School in , then completed a four-year B.

A. program in biblical studies at Valparaiso University in two years, graduating in Nephritis, a kidney disease, kept him out of World War I. Smith started his career as a Disciples of Christ preacher in small villages in Wisconsin, where he converted hundreds and was an effective money raiser.

He married Elna Sorenson, of Janesville.

Smith's career flourished and he moved to larger, richer churches in Illinois and Indiana. He accepted a call from the Kings Highway Christian Church in Shreveport, Louisiana, in because the warm climate offered the opportunity for Elna, who had contracted tuberculosis, to he