Smith Hayes was born enslaved in Mississippi in 1845. He joined the Union Army in 1864 at Vicksburg, serving in the 72nd Illinois Infantry, Company C as a Private, Undercook. After the Civil War he made his way to Illinois and to Lake Forest, where he became one of the  leaders of the Black community.

In Lake Forest, he worked as a laborer and scavenger, was a founder of the Lake Forest African Methodist Episcopal Church at Maplewood and Washington, and, with wife Mary, was one of the earliest African American property owners in town. He owned a large lot on the south side of Illinois Road between Oakwood and Bank Lane (see map above). The lot included multiple residences, often rented by Black residents, as well as a barn which apparently housed dairy cows for a time.

The amount of political influence Smith Hayes had as a community leader and a property owner did not always sit easily with some of his white neighbors in Lake Forest. Compare and contrast the content and tone of the two articles below, one from the Chicago Tribune and the other from the Chicago Defender, a longtime Black-owned newspaper.